My First Cards

That strut.

That stare.

If looks could kill….

If looks could kill, batters would just drop dead in the on-deck circle. Just look again at that confidence of dominance oozing off this card.

He looks like he’s going to beat up anyone who dares step up to the plate next; strutting ’round the mound with all the confidence in the world, ready for more.

This card celebrates a great moment in baseball history, that happened in Anaheim, California, on May 4, 1981—Striking out 8 straight batters in a game, by a relief pitcher.

Ron Davis relieved Gene Nelson to start the 7th, and promptly got Don Baylor to pop out to 2nd. After that, nobody in an Angels uniform was making contact for the rest of the night.

After the game, Ron was kind of baffled as to how he’d done it, “I’m not doing anything different, I’m just throwing it in and they’re missing. …Nobody thinks of me as a strikeout pitcher. Maybe that’s why I’m able to strike them out.”

In an era where most relievers were still washed up starters, Ron Davis just did something no other reliever did before that or since then. At the time, the only other pitchers to ever strikeout more in a row in a single game, were Hall of Famer’s Tom Seaver (10 straight) and Mickey Welch (9 straight; 8/28/1884), both of whom were starters.

No American League pitcher had ever topped 8 straight though. It’s harder when you have to face a DH. Nolan Ryan reached the mark though, about a decade earlier. Anytime you tie Nolan Ryan for a strikeout record, you know you’re doin’ something right!

This story doesn’t stop there though…

The day before all this, in Oakland, Davis struck out the final 5 A’s in the first game of a rare scheduled doubleheader. That meant that by the end of the game against the Angels, Ron had mowed down 13 out of 14 batters faced.

In fact, if we go back to the May 1 game in Oakland, Ron gives up a HR and a single, but then gets a couple outs before coming out of the game. One of them being a strikeout, means that at the end of the Angels game, Davis had just struck out 14 out of his past 16 batters.

His next appearance after the Anaheim game, May 9 in Seattle, he struck out the first hitter he faced before seeming a little more human. Although, that does mean he struck out 9 straight batters he faced. 9.

From his first out on May 1 to the first out of the 9th in the May 9th game, Ron ended up putting down 21 of 22 straight batters he faced, and 16 of them were strikeouts! That is a sick stretch of pitching. You’ve got to see it to believe it. Look at all these K’s—

Narron was the 1st out in the 9th. After him, Ron gave up a couple singles before getting another out, before giving up a 3 run homer by Tom Paciorek.

Before ’81, Ron Davis was already a star reliever for the Yankees, going a combined 23-5 out of the bullpen in ’79-’80 on the strength of a 2.91 ERA (137 ERA+). He’d thrown 131 innings in ’80. He was the setup man for Goose Gossage, but still managed to show star quality on the mound. He wasn’t known for striking batters out though, ’til ’81. He went from having a 4.5 K’s per 9 IP in ’79 & ’80, to 10.2 K’s per 9 in ’81.