Weird & Wild: MLB manager firings, Murakami's epic start and a minor-league classic

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If you’re familiar with this column, you know the answer. But in this edition of Weird and Wild, we need to kick off the festivities with two teams that have already achieved max weirdness — all because they’re … One of the things I like to do in this column is theorize about stuff. I probably don’t need to explain my next theory to, say, Alex Cora or Rob Thomson. But here it comes anyway: Heck, it’s not even Mother’s Day yet, and Cora and Thomson are both getting paid not to manage. So it seems like I might already have proved this theory. But how unusual is it for two managers as accomplished as them to get fired in April? As always, the Weird and Wild column is here to help with that. REMEMBER OCTOBER? As recently as seven months ago, Cora was managing the Red Sox in the postseason, and Thomson was managing the Phillies in the postseason. Seems like a sign they were actually kind of good at their jobs, right? So naturally, before they’d even flipped the calendars to May, they’d both lost those jobs, because … baseball! How many other times have two managers been fired in April after making the postseason the year before? As always, zero is an astute guess! Baseball Reference’s amazing Kenny Jackelen looked into it and found that not only had two managers never been fired in any April after managing in the previous postseason, but also … Only one other manager in history had ever been gonged in April after a visit to the previous year’s Octoberfest — and George Steinbrenner hit that ejector button, because of course he did. Bob Lemon took the Yankees to the World Series in 1981. He was the ex-manager of the Yankees by April 26 (14 games) the next year. HANG 10 … THEN WAVE GOODBYE — In the very last inning that Alex Cora managed the Red Sox, on April 25, a crazy thing happened. See that ninth inning? A Red Sox lineup that hadn’t scored 10 runs in any game all season then scored 10 runs in one inning in Baltimore … after which … the manager got fired. This seemed weird to me (and also wild). So how weird (and wild) was it? According to Jackelen, the complete list of managers in history whose teams scored 10 runs in their final inning on the job consists of … And to find the previous record for most runs in a final inning by a manager who got fired in midseason, you’d have to go back a mere 92 years. Bob O’Farrell’s 1934 Reds put up “only” five runs in the ninth and he got canned anyway — possibly because his team was 30 games under .500 and 28 out of first in July. BITTERSWEET 16 — Then again, you know what else is almost unheard of? Managing a game in which your team wins, 17-1, and then getting fired anyway. Which also happened to Cora that crazy day in Baltimore. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last manager to get fired after winning a game by that many runs was a dude named Bob “Death to Flying Things” Ferguson, who was dumped by the 1887 New York Metropolitans after an 18-2 win. Could it have been because of that nickname? Can’t rule it out. Since I never covered Ferguson, I looked into his story. It’s nuts. He’d once gotten fired from a previous job as the player-manager in Philadelphia, but only from the manager part. That team still kept him around as the second baseman — and also as the business manager. After he moved on, he went into umpiring. But then the Metropolitans hired him to manage, which means they hired an umpire as the manager. Take a second here and imagine Steinbrenner hiring Joe West, and you’ll get that picture. Then they, too, fired Ferguson and … he went back to being an umpire. I know that has nothing to do with Alex Cora, but hey, it’s the Weird and Wild column. READY, AIM, FIRE (AGAIN) — Now, let’s look at the Phillies’ first eight games after their last two midseason managerial firings: 2022: 8-0 (under Rob Thomson) 2026: 7-1 (after firing Rob Thomson) So does firing the manager actually work? Not for most teams, but for some reason, it does in Philadelphia. I don’t know what you’ve been thinking, but I know what I’ve been thinking: Has any team been better at changing managers in midseason than Dave Dombrowski’s Phillies? Jackelen looked into that one, too. And that answer is … nope! Only one other team in history has even matched them in the “first eight games” standings. (Source: Kenny Jackelen / Baseball Reference) The weird (and wild) part of that chart is that in all three cases, it was Don Mattingly who replaced Thomson, Jeff Torborg who replaced Dave Garcia and Bill Norman who replaced Jimmy Dykes. In other words, all three of them were clearly The Answer until they became Not The Answer. Whereupon they wound up in this column. Baseball is something, isn’t it? In our last Weird and Wild, we debuted Weird and Wild trivia — a hopefully regular feature of this column, which I can’t confirm nor deny may be in here to provide incentive for you to read all the way to end. Here’s this week’s question: Don Mattingly is one of only five men in history who have won both an MVP award and a Manager of the Year award. Can you name the other four? (Answer at the bottom of the column.) WHILE THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE NFL DRAFT WAS GOING ON … two players who were once taken with the first pick in the baseball draft got walk-off hits on the same day! And we’d like to express our thanks to Dansby Swanson and Spencer Torkelson for making that note possible. IF THE GLOVE DON’T FIT … OK, that’s not actually what happened to Angels first baseman Nolan Schanuel last Sunday. His first-base mitt fit fine. But when the baseball Juan Soto had just chopped to him got stuck in his glove, Schanuel remembered those magic words we should all live by at times like that: So he flipped the whole glove, baseball included, to his pitcher, Jack Kochanowicz, for a very weird out at first base. Nolan Schanuel made the ultimate adjustment when the baseball got stuck in the webbing of his mitt pic.twitter.com/0eImqlUFVT Kochanowicz seemed pretty proud of that out. But he also missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As the great Mike Krukow once told his first baseman, Bob Brenly, after Giants pitcher Terry Mulholland had the same thing happen and lobbed his glove to first: “You blew it. You should have whipped the glove around the infield.” DON’T WALK THIS WAY! Ever heard of a game in which an actual professional pitching staff did this: 21 walks, 24 outs? It happened last Saturday in the Weird and Wild column’s favorite minor league, the Arizona Complex League. Final score: ACL Mariners 24, ACL Dodgers 6, in a rookie-league classic in which hits were definitely optional. Ready for the “highlights”? 24 runs on only 14 hits? Yeah, that happened. Rough day for that ACL Dodgers bullpen? Oh, man. You have no idea. 17 runs on 8 hits, 18 walks and 8 wild pitches? Yep, that bullpen did that, with seven relievers combining for that zany line. Four relievers who tallied more walks than outs? Uh-huh, that also transpired. 191 pitches by that Dodgers ’pen — and 88 strikes? Does it seem hard to throw 103 pitches out of the strike zone in one game, just by the bullpen alone? Well, that happened, too. A 10-run inning on three hits? We are not making any of this up. That can also transpire, if you also mix in seven walks, two wild pitches, a hit batter and a passed ball. Do you need proof this was a real game? You should. So here’s visual evidence. STRANGE BUT TRUE INJURY OF THE YEAR ALERT! How did Cubs pitcher Matt Boyd tear his meniscus this week? Playing with his kids, of course. Somewhere between hanging out on the floor with them and making it back into the upright position, the most Cubbies thing ever happened to poor ol’ Boyd. Should have aborted that takeoff! Cubs manager Craig Counsell used the word “unexplainable” to … explain it. But we have a way better explanation. It’s … FELIZ CINCO DE MAYO — Don’t ask me why I keep track of this every darned year. But once again this season, not a single player went 5-for-5 on Cinco de Mayo. Last to get all those cincos lined up: Omar Vizquel, in 2002! DON’T CHANGE THAT SONG — Don’t tell Bruno Mars or Lady Gaga, but is there any question what song has been sung the most in 2026? It’s “Go Cubs Go,” naturally. And since the Cubs never lose, 34,000 Chicago fans have been warbling it at the top of their lungs every darned day. So did you know … that Steve Goodman wrote that song in 1984 … and the Cubs then won eight in a row at Wrigley Field a few weeks after WGN radio first started playing it? True story. But there’s also this. Current Cubs Wrigley winning streak — 15 in a row Longest Wrigley streak in Goodman’s lifetime — 10 in a row Hey Chicago, what do you say? When you down that next frosty beverage, how ’bout a toast to Steve Goodman. MEET ME OUT IN THE STREAK — Nobody has taken a long, serious run at Joe DiMaggio in decades now. But what the heck. Just this month, we had Nick Kurtz. More than three weeks ago, the A’s first baseman drew a first-inning walk against the Mets’ Clay Holmes. It didn’t seem like a big deal in the moment. But it kicked off the coolest walking streak in a long, long time. Kurtz wound up drawing at least one walk in 20 games in a row. Incredibly, that was a longer streak than Babe Ruth (17 games) or Ted Williams (19 games) ever had. And once Kurtz got to 20, he had our full attention — and his own. That’s because streaks are an awesome, everyday, baseball-y special — and it’s been years since any hitter challenged one of the truly significant streak records. In the last few decades, nobody has gotten to within two weeks of DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. And for all the talk about Shohei Ohtani’s 50-game on-base streak, no hitter has ever made it to within 20 of Williams’ historic 84-game on-base streak. But Kurtz made it all the way to within two games of Roy Cullenbine’s 79-year-old record of drawing a walk in 22 games in a row. Except then … The bad news is, Kurtz’s streak stopped at 20. The good news is, 20 still tied him with Barry Bonds’ longest walk streak. And that, Kurtz told the Weird and Wild column, is a name he’ll be dropping for the rest of his life. “Maybe a few years down the line,” he quipped, “I’ll tell my kids: ‘Yeah, me and Barry — we did that.” STREAK SMART — Speaking of streaks, Matt Olson’s ironman streak is up to 820 games played in a row. And I bring that up because, in the 813th game of this streak, he did this. MATT OLSON WALK-OFF HOMER! pic.twitter.com/U6i57D6BgR That walk-off bomb got me thinking: Who was the last man, who had played (at least) that many games in a row, to hit a walk-off homer before Olson did it? I’d have guessed Cal Ripken. But … nope! Ripken thumped two walk-offs in the early days of his streak and hit two after it was over. But somehow, he never hit a walk-off home run between Games 800 and 2,632. What about Miguel Tejada, who once played 1,152 in a row? No sir. His last mid-streak walk-off came in Game 746. I also checked Steve Garvey … and Billy Williams … and Stan Musial. But amazingly, it wasn’t any of them either. So … Olson just hit the first walk-off home run by a guy with that many consecutive games played since … On Sept. 8, 1937, in game No. 1,936 of his fabled 2,130-game streak, Gehrig broke a 6-6 tie against the Red Sox with a walk-off three-run homer with two outs in the ninth. It scored Joe DiMaggio and Red Rolfe. And nearly 90 years later, it just roared back to life, here in the Weird and Wild column. We can all thank Matt Olson. ON WITH THE SHOH — Here’s a (trick) question for you: Who has more Pitcher of the Month awards — Tarik Skubal or Shohei Ohtani? OK, so they’re tied, at one apiece. But what the heck. You know that dude who hit 55 homers last year (yep, Ohtani)? He’s now the reigning pitcher of the month. Incredibly, that means a man who owns more 50-homer seasons (two) than Henry Aaron and Barry Bonds combined (one) now also owns as many Pitcher of the Month awards as Skubal … or Paul Skenes … or Garrett Crochet … or Cristopher Sánchez  … or Logan Gilbert … or Kevin Gausman … or … you get the idea! ROOKIE POWER — I know we’re still six months from handing out any of those prestigious baseball award trophies, but … In an April 25 Reds-Tigers game, Kevin McGonigle homered for the Tigers in the top of the first … and Sal Stewart homered for the Reds in the bottom of the first. And if they both go on to win the Rookie of the Year awards this year, they’ll join a really fun list, dug up for us by the great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference. (*won award in that season) (Source: Katie Sharp / Baseball Reference) LEGENDS FIELD — For three decades, you never had to ask: Who’s calling the Yankees game on the radio tonight — because the late, great John Sterling broadcast 5,060 of them in a row! As a tribute to Sterling, who died this week, I wanted to put that streak in perspective. This man never missed a day in the booth, between Opening Day 1989 and July 3, 2019. So I thought you’d want to know that during Sterling’s streak of 5,060 regular-season games in a row … Derek Jeter got 3,465 hits* … and nine different Yankees got at least 1,000 hits. Alex Rodriguez launched 351 A-bombs* … and seven different Yankees hit at least 200 homers. Jeter stole 358 bases* … and nine different Yankees stole at least 100. Andy Pettitte started 438 games* … and two other Yankees started at least 200. (Fun trivia question!) Mariano Rivera saved 652 games* … but because he did it for so long, only one other Yankees reliever saved as many as 90. (Another fun trivia question!) And … The Yankees won 2,763 regular-season games, plus another 108 postseason games … and after every one of them, if you were listening at home, you always knew THEEEEE YANKEES WON! (Special trivia answers: CC Sabathia and Mike Mussina were the other Yankees to start 200 games … and Aroldis Chapman was the only Yankee not named Mariano to save 90.) HAPPY NEW YEAR — Jackson Chourio finally came off the Brewers’ injured list this week. So what’s so Strange and True about that? Check out Chourio’s first game of the season the last two years: 2025 — made it to the plate five times, struck out in all five of them (0-for-5, 5 K) 2026 — made it to the plate five times, reached base in all five of them (4-for-4, BB) Baseball! Such a strange and mysterious sport. And yes, that’s a compliment! OUCH, OUCH AND ALSO … OUCH — There are so many ways in baseball to score a run … or three. The way the White Sox and Angels picked to do that Wednesday isn’t one I’d recommend … unless you have lots of ice packs loaded up and ready for action. The last three runs in White Sox vs Angels have all scored because of hit-by-pitches 😭 pic.twitter.com/kvt2woFVY1 — Skubal's Burner (@SkubalsChangeup) May 6, 2026 They combined for three bases-loaded hit-by-pitches in the same game, all right. And you don’t see that much — by which we mean ever. Reliable HBP data goes back 70 years. Want to guess how many games, in all that time, have produced three run-scoring hit-batter debacles? Zero is still the best guess of the day. (Hat tip: Elias Sports Bureau and the great Sarah Langs of MLB) But wait. We have more bases-loaded HBP fodder for your enjoyment. Over the last two seasons … there hasn’t been a single game with two run-scoring HBPs — and these teams managed to combine for three of them. Osvaldo Bido of the White Sox is in his fourth season in the big leagues. He’d never drilled a single batter with the bases loaded. Naturally, he nailed two in a row in this game. Drew Pomeranz of the Angels is in his 13th season in the big leagues. He, too, had never plunked even one hitter with the bases jammed in all that time. But who capped off the HBP trifecta in this game? You guessed it! And the White Sox went through the entire 2025 season and hit just one batter with the bases loaded. Then, in this game, Bido drilled two of them on back-to-back pitches. GOOD INTENTIONS — Guardians phenom Travis Bazzana was the first player taken in the 2024 amateur draft. That’s not the only hint that he’s going to be a playuh. There was also this: In the ninth inning of Bazzana’s very first game in the big leagues, Rays manager Kevin Cash intentionally walked him. Does that seem Strange But True enough to get him into this column? I asked Katie Sharp how many other No. 1 overall picks have gotten the intentional-BB respect treatment in the first big-league game they ever played. Excellent question. Chipper Jones? No! Ken Griffey Jr.? Sorry! Bryce Harper? Fraid not! Joe Mauer? A-Rod? Darryl Strawberry? You can guess all day. Only one No. 1 has ever had that happen. His name is … DOUBLE TROUBLE — The honorable Munetaka Murakami hit a double Monday. We can prove it. The first 14 extra-base hits of Munetaka Murakami’s career were home runs. He snapped that streak by recording his first career double tonight. — Brent Maguire (@bmags94.bsky.social) May 4, 2026 at 11:06 PM So what’s so Strange But True about that? Oh, only the part where he’d already hit 14 home runs this season, but no doubles or triples. And yes, that would be a record, for the start of anybody’s career, because how the heck could it not be? That puts Murakami on pace for this totally hilarious season: 62 homers 4 doubles 0 triples 241 strikeouts 123 walks So that’s 426 trips to the plate in which the ball would never even land on the field. But we’ll revisit that part down the road. The 62-homer, four-double part? Now that’s Strange But True material. This is where we roll out the three players in history with the fewest doubles in a season with at least 40 home runs (let alone 60). You’ve heard of them. Harmon Killebrew, 1964 — 49 HR, 11 doubles Henry Aaron in 1973 — 40 HR, 12 doubles Babe Ruth in 1932 — 41 HR, 13 doubles Munetaka Murakami. He may not be the next Killebrew, Aaron or Bambino. But he might be at least the next Adam Dunn. And we are all in on that. THE NEW COMEBACK KINGS — Let’s play two is no longer what you call every modern player’s favorite motto. But last Thursday, the Phillies played a doubleheader anyway. And as the Giants could now testify … so much for that coma Philadelphia spent the first month snoozing through. They trailed in the ninth inning of Game 1 — and roared from behind to walk it off in that game. They trailed in the ninth inning of Game 2 — and also wound up walking it off in that game. So was that Strange But True enough for you? Let’s find out. I ran a bunch of questions past Katie Sharp. Here’s what she reported. Only three teams in the last 38 seasons have trailed in the ninth inning of both games of a doubleheader — and still willed their way to walk-off wins in both games. Two of those teams are known as the Phillies. They also did that on July 24, 1998. (The only other team on that list: Jason Kendall’s 2004 Pirates.) How about these three at-bats, back to back to back — Also that day, the Phillies had a three-batter span that went this way: Walk-off hit by Justin Crawford to end Game 1 … leadoff homer by Trea Turner to start Game 2 … then another homer by Kyle Schwarber four pitches later. That seemed to me like a Strange But True thing — possibly because … it had never happened in any other doubleheader in the Baseball Reference/Retrosheet database, which goes back more than a century. Two spoonsful of Shugart — Then there was Phillies reliever Chase Shugart, who pitched in two games that day and merely became … the first pitcher to get a win, via walk-off, in both games of a doubleheader since Jesse Orosco did that for the Mets, at sun-baked Shea Stadium, on July 31, 1983. (Hat tip: Ryan Spaeder.) But also … Shugart became the first pitcher in 50 years to win two games like that, even though his team was trailing in the ninth in both games. The other: John Hiller, for the Tigers on June 1, 1976. Oh, and one more thing — How about that Crawford family! April 8, 2014 – Carl Crawford gets walkoff hit for the Dodgers. His manager: Don Mattingly April 30, 2026 – Justin Crawford gets walkoff hit for the Phillies. His manager: Don Mattingly Baseball! pic.twitter.com/bWc1NDLB0r — Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) April 30, 2026 VIVA LA FRANCE — Has France ever been bigger in Mexico? No, that’s not a question for the United Nations. That’s a question the Weird and Wild column was practically invented to answer, all because of this. Two home runs, by a guy named France (Ty), in Mexico? You have no idea how much that upended my theoretically normal life. France launched those two long balls April 25, when the Padres journeyed to Mexico City to play a couple of games against Arizona. So of course I got out my (digital) atlas and launched into the usual crazed research. The question of the day was simple: Has any other player, whose last name was also the name of a country, ever hit a home run in a nation that wasn’t the United States or Canada? Yeah, I looked … at Mark Portugal … and Esteban German … and Jonathan India … and all the usual suspects. I even allowed Todd Hollandsworth (who once scored a run in Puerto Rico) a special pass. But when I was finished, it was official. The champion of the world is … Ty France. His world domination is unmatched by any of those other national heroes. And you can tell your friends the Weird and Wild column looked it up. COME WHAT MAY — Finally, you can have your Cinco de Mayo. You can celebrate the heck out of May Day from dawn to midnight. Go right ahead. We won’t stop you. But you’ll never beat this. Cardinals Pitcher Dustin May pitching on May 3rd led to this super rare name, jersey, and date combo. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/J9REKaEfbL — The Sporting News (@sportingnews) May 3, 2026 Dustin May wears No. 3 for the Cardinals. And who pitched for those Cardinals last Sunday, on May 3? Yup. That guy. It was the Strangest But Truest calendar photo op in baseball history. And yeah, I know because I spent way too much time looking this up too. Wouldn’t you think that just once, some other pitcher named May would have pitched on a day that matched his uniform number? Ha. If you’re a normal person, you wouldn’t think that at all. But if you were a person who wrote a column known as Weird and Wild, that’s all you would have thought about. So did I check every pitcher named May I could find in the annals of Baseball Reference? Um, I might have. I can definitively tell you who never did what Dustin May just did. That would be pitchers named Trevor May … and Rudy May … and Scott May … and Darrell May … and also Jakie May. All the other pitchers named May, best I could tell, pitched in a time before players even wore uniforms. So that left only one May who has ever pitched on the same day as the back of his uniform … yep, Dustin. Which also meant it’s the first time ever for any name, month or number, because if there has ever been a pitcher who wore APRIL, MAY, JULY, AUGUST or SEPTEMBER on the back of his jerseys, he slipped past my way too industrious research. So here’s a tip of the cap to Dustin May. Now he can tell his grandkids how the stars, the planets, the calendar and whoever assigns numbers in St. Louis all lined up — to allow him to do something never before done in … Kirk Gibson, Joe Torre, Frank Robinson, Don Baylor Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms