Click here to listen to John Dewan on WSCR Chicago In a game against the Kansas City Royals a couple of weeks ago (August 21, 2007), Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen "accomplished" something that appears to have never been done before. Starting with the last batter in the seventh inning and ending with the first batter in the ninth, six different White Sox pitchers faced six consecutive Royals batters. Here's the sequence:
| 7th inning |
| Logan pitches to DeJesus | |
| 8th inning |
| Wassermann pitches to Butler | |
| Myers pitches to Gload | |
| Bukvich pitches to Brown | |
| Thornton pitches to Gordon | |
| 9th inning |
| Jenks pitches to German | |
Using the Baseball Info Solutions and Retrosheet databases, we researched the last 33 years, all the way back to 1974. We found quite a few times (60) when five different pitchers faced five consecutive hitters. But never six pitchers and six batters. Combine that with the fact that relief pitchers were far less frequently used prior to 1974 than they are today, it's probably safe to say that Ozzie's feat is the only time it's ever happened in the history of Major League Baseball.
Oh, and by the way, it worked. The White Sox won the game.