Hot starts

Once the regular season begins, keep an eye out for players you've never heard of before who get off to a quick start. It might not last.

I remember looking at the batting leaders after the first week of the 1974 season and seeing New York Mets outfielder Dave Schneck at the top of the list. He'd just come off a four-hit game at the expense of the Phillies - my favorite team at the time - and his batting average was a robust .556.

It was all downhill from there, of course. By the end of April, Schneck's average was .286. At the All-Star break, it was .226. After the last game of the season, also against the Phillies (0 for 3), he finished at .205.

A few months later, the Mets traded Schneck to - you guessed it - the Phillies. But he never played a game for Philadelphia, and in fact, the 1974 season was his last of three in the majors.

If anyone besides scholars of New York Mets minutiae remembers Dave Schneck today, I'd be amazed.

Trivia question 1: What relief pitcher of some renown did the Phillies acquire along with Schneck? (Bonus: Who is the pitcher's son, of even greater renown?)

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An oft-told tale of a hot start that went nowhere occurred in 1994.

Karl Rhodes, a Chicago Cubs outfielder known as "Tuffy," took advantage of the wind blowing out of Wrigley Field to belt three home runs on Opening Day, off onetime Cy Young Award winner Dwight Gooden. Rhodes' feat marked only the second time in history a player homered three times in the first game of the year, following George Bell’s performance for Toronto in 1988.

For Tuffy, the season-opening salvo represented 37.5 percent of his season total, and 23 percent of his major-league career total. After a homerless 41 at-bats in 1995, he decided he'd be better off playing baseball in Japan. There, he lived up to the potential he showed at the start of '94 by blasting a national record-tying 55 home runs in his best season.

Tuffy eventually made his way back to America for a tryout with the Cincinnati Reds last spring, at age 37. He didn’t make the team, but he's still in the record books in two countries!

Trivia question 2: Whose Japanese record did Rhodes tie? (Hint: He’s the career home run leader in Japan, too.)

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The hottest start ever by a major leaguer may have occurred at the tail end of the 1954 season, when the Brooklyn Dodgers used a left-handed pitcher named Karl Spooner for a pair ofhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif starts.

Spooner responded pitching two shutouts, striking out 12 in one start and 15 in the other. He gave up only seven hits and walked six, and the Dodgers thought they had the second coming of Lefty Grove.

Not quite. Spooner put up respectable numbers (8-6, 3.65 ERA) in 1955 and got to start a game in the World Series, the only one ever won by Brooklyn. But that was that. Just 24 years old, he never pitched in the majors again.

Trivia question 3: The Dodgers had another young left-hander (age 19) who debuted in 1955 by striking out 14 in his first game. Who was he?

See trivia answers at right.