Does anyone remember Orel Hershiser's scoreless inning streak in 1988?
59 innings! It's probably my my cherished memory in sports. I was in middle school and a big Dodger fan! I wasn't thinking about sports betting at the time but I want to know:
What were the lines for those games? I could see the Dodgers easily being -300 to -400 favorites when Hershiser was at his peak. He was simply the most amazing pitcher I've ever seen.
HOW LONG IT'S STOOD:
18 years
CLOSEST CALL SINCE:
41, by Orioles reliever Gregg Olson over two seasons (1989-90), or 39 1/3 in a single season, by Greg Maddux (2000).
That ever-modest Hershiser wouldn't vote for his own streak. But so many of our other panelists did, we easily could have bumped this even higher on the list.
Many streaks are overrated, but this one is actually underrated. In fact, the always-incisive Rob Tracy of the Elias Sports Bureau called it "the most underrated occurrence of all time."
Since we give extra points for buzz, almost nothing manufactures that buzz like a cool streak. And in an era when almost nobody averages seven innings a start, we're talking about a record that might take a starter nine consecutive shutout outings to break. So think about the insanity as that wave of zeroes reached six and seven and eight starts.
"Or if the guy who was chasing it turned out to be a reliever, like a Mariano Rivera, it would be almost like a DiMaggio-type streak," Hershiser says, "because it would mostly be an inning a game, a game at a time, over a couple of months."
So we admit it. We love this record.
What were the lines for those games? I could see the Dodgers easily being -300 to -400 favorites when Hershiser was at his peak. He was simply the most amazing pitcher I've ever seen.
HOW LONG IT'S STOOD:
18 years
CLOSEST CALL SINCE:
41, by Orioles reliever Gregg Olson over two seasons (1989-90), or 39 1/3 in a single season, by Greg Maddux (2000).
That ever-modest Hershiser wouldn't vote for his own streak. But so many of our other panelists did, we easily could have bumped this even higher on the list.
Many streaks are overrated, but this one is actually underrated. In fact, the always-incisive Rob Tracy of the Elias Sports Bureau called it "the most underrated occurrence of all time."
Since we give extra points for buzz, almost nothing manufactures that buzz like a cool streak. And in an era when almost nobody averages seven innings a start, we're talking about a record that might take a starter nine consecutive shutout outings to break. So think about the insanity as that wave of zeroes reached six and seven and eight starts.
"Or if the guy who was chasing it turned out to be a reliever, like a Mariano Rivera, it would be almost like a DiMaggio-type streak," Hershiser says, "because it would mostly be an inning a game, a game at a time, over a couple of months."
So we admit it. We love this record.
