1941 Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians throws the only Opening Day no-hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, beating the Chicago White Sox 1-0.
Now you know the answer to a baseball trivia question: How did a team have a no-hitter thrown against them, but nobody’s batting average went down?
Two minor quibbles:
One, the year was 1940, not 1941.
Two, while it is technically true that no one average went down, that’s a bit misleading. Someone once posed a similar question to me — when did it happen that every player on a team had the same batting average after a game as they did before. The answer I was given was the White Sox on 4/16/1940, after Feller’s no hitter. Before the game, their average was .000 and so it was afterwards.
I argued with the questioner, telling him that his answer was incorrect. Before the game the White Sox batters didn’t have a .000 average — they have no average at all, having never batted yet that season.
By the same token, you can’t say that no one’s average on the White Sox went down (or up) since they didn’t have an average to begin with. You can make the same case for every batter the first time he comes to bat in the season.
The Wolf