Is Aaron Nola pitching to Austin Nola the least common shared surname pitcher-batter matchup in MLB history (assuming direct relatives are excluded, like I’m sure back in the day Tungsten Arm pitched to his brother Pewter O’Doyle)
They are brothers. They are the first siblings to face each other as pitcher/hitter in playoff history.
Well that explains a lot lol
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Obviously the broadcast focused a lot on their parents last night. Their dad had both jerseys on. Must be a pretty surreal moment for a baseball parent to watch their kids compete against each other in the NLCS.
I was a pitcher. I would have HATED to face my brother, mainly because I would be sad if I beat him - I’d actually be happier if he got a hit off me.
I’ve thought about that before with Ronde and Tiki Barber. You know at some point Ronde had to tackle Tiki in an NFL game and maybe even hit him really hard. That would be weird.
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One time I went to watch my brother play after I had a game earlier in the day. He is 2 years younger than me so we had never played with or against each other. The opposing team was short a player and their coach asked if I could fill in. My brother was unaware of this. My first at bat I hit what may have been my furthest shot up to that point, ball hit the bottom of the left field fence in the air. Good for a stand up double, where my brother was standing waiting for the throw. He says “damn, nice hit man” before realizing it was me and then he goes “wait what the fuck?!”. One of my favorite baseball memories.
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lol that’s awesome
Yeah, my brother is 3 years younger than me, so we only played on the same team once, in little league when I was 12 and he was 9. Our team was terrible: 1-12 and that win was on a forfeit (they were 0-13, so we would’ve beat them, anyway). I was the only 12-year-old on the team, which why we were so bad - they actually got good once the kids got older (at the time, you kept the team intact season-to-season and just filled in with new players as needed).
It was fun, though. I pitched and played SS and he played 3B and 2B. He was probably the third-best player on the team, so it was cool when he was playing in the infield behind me or we got to play side-by-side on the left side of the infield.
We did both run track in high school, but I was on varsity when he was on the freshman/JV team and we ran different events.
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Lol one of hockey’s greatest moments was when two brothers didn’t just play against each other at the highest level, they got in a fight.
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There’s some good baseball brothers trivia. Most HRs by brothers I think this still works. Tommy Aaron had 13 + Hank’s total at the time. Another: brothers above #X on the hit list where X is what Robin Yount had at the time; Larry Yount was a pitcher who had only one official MLB appearance and never threw a pitch. He was also his brother’s agent.
lol, he’s fine like 99% of the time but it feels like in big spots he panics and spazzes out
he became coach after mattingly - who was so bad it was jaw dropping - so after that LA was just like “thank god it’s not mattingly” and here we are
One of my favorite baseball memories was in little league. All the teams practiced/played at the same time/complex by age group, so one set of parents decided to force the younger of their two kids by two or three years into the higher age group to make it more convenient for them. Of course this made him the worst player in the league by far. He was on our team. His brother was one of the better players in the league, cocky as fuck, and relentless in talking shit to his little brother, making him cry, then rubbing it in.
So we’re playing his team, his brother is like 0-2 or whatever and he won’t let up on him. This kid comes up to bat in a big spot with runners in scoring position and 2 outs, as a result of his little brother dropping a fly ball. He’s pointing at him that he’s going to hit it to him in right field.
I’m playing center field. The asshole kid hits a line drive to right center and thinks he has himself a double. I make a sliding catch to end the inning, and he runs off into the woods and cries. His little brother is LOVING IT.
I don’t even remember if we won or lost the game, but as the saying goes, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you make the asshole cry!”
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My other fun baseball story was on the middle school team. Everyone else had a growth spurt and I didn’t, and I had been an All-Star in the regular little league but not good enough for the travel league. So I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond on the school team, and I was basically the bottom of the lineup kid who ran everything out, had good fundamentals, and busted his ass.
One day, there were two runners on and the pitcher was all over the place, and I was on deck. I jokingly said something to the kid ahead of me in the order about just walking to load them up for me. That’s exactly what happened.
So I get up, and I hit a shot to left, I knew as soon as I hit it that it was the farthest I’d ever hit a ball, and I was trotting and watching the ball for the first time ever. Well, it hits three quarters of the way up the wall and I end up with a base-clearing double. Our dugout is thrilled, but I’m pissed at myself that the one time I didn’t hustle it out, it hurt me.
So I’m back to being Johnny Tryhard, taking my secondary lead and all that, and the pitcher throws one in the dirt that squirts a few feet away from the catcher and I steal third just barely beating the throw.
Our manager is coaching third and just non-chalantly says, “So, you were watching that one, huh?”
I hang my head and say, “Yeah, sorry about that.”
He smiles and says, “Ahh don’t worry about it, the wind was blowing in and you caught a gust, that thing should have been out easily.”
He was full of shit, but he knew he didn’t need to ride me to hustle, and it was nice of him to say.
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Best baseball memory was I was umpiring with my dad who was behind the plate and some goofy 10-year-old kept farting so loud you could hear it in the outfield, the kids were all laughing it up but me and my dad were trying to keep a straight face, couldn’t do it after a while and we actually had to stop the game for 10 minutes so people could regain their composure
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I don’t have a good baseball memory cause I sucked and my team was so bad I had to play one of 2B/SS/CF on it tried pitcher a few times but was bad at that too I cant run hit or field but hey that was still better than most on that team at least I guess
one year we had a kid that moved who was pretty good and they immediately made sure nobody good was on that team ever again cause they stack little league teams intentionally here probably like most places
we still won a few games every year no idea how
Haha that reminds me of one with my dad coaching. It was after tee ball and before kids could pitch, so the coach would pitch to his own team. There were no called strikes, a 10-pitch limit, and foul balls or swing and a miss strikes counted. If you didn’t put it in play within 10 pitches, you were out. Well, my Dad couldn’t give me a good pitch to hit, so we were down to number 10. He bounced it in front of home plate and I somehow looped it into right field for a base hit.
I still give him shit about it now and then.
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i used to fucking hate batting when my dad was behind the plate, he didn’t want to appear biased so he would call strikes like 3 feet outside the plate and we would argue about it
being on a good team as a kid sucks, throughout junior high and high school I would end up on travel ball team so you play the entire off-season and basically never stop playing baseball, I always loved the game but sometimes you want to take a few months off. i never wanted to take it as seriously as the coaches and other kids seemed to, sucked the fun out of it imo.
when I am fully recovered I am going to try to make it into an amateur league
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+1
I think my best baseball memory is making contact against the best pitcher in the league. I got thrown out, but since I struck out like 90% of the time against normal pitchers, putting the ball in play against that guy was a major accomplishment.
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Heh, one of my best memories is as a ten year old fouling off a pitch into the parking lot against a 12 year old who threw like 60+. I still struck out but making contact was a huge win
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Baseball memory: I was on the sixth grade double A team, as a skinny little kid who played catcher. Was quick and contact hitter, but no power at all, batted second and was probably one of three best players on team (though we all sucked).
I was on deck with two outs, and in order to save time, I used to l leave my shin guards on while waiting in the circle in case the inning ends before me. Regardless the kid in front of me gets on base, and I walk up to the plate. As I head up there, the two most popular girls in our class start yelling out my name, and I’m like ‘hell yea, that’s right’ waving back to them and starting to strut. Of course they start laughing, point down to the ground near me, and yell out “forgot something!” That results in several more laughs in the crowd, me doing an embarrassed jog of shame back to the coach with my shin guards, and losing any mojo I might have had as a kid. I nevertheless struck out, had an ok rest of the season and from that year stuck to tennis instead…
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