My step-sister and I were sharing a bottle of wine on the balcony of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship this winter when I saw my first shooting star. It was bright green, and it was glorious. I allowed myself to become irrationally excited, for the shooting star is a somewhat common natural phenomena that had somehow avoided my person for nearly two-and-a-half decades. Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, we saw about a dozen more regular shooting stars. I suppose they’re a bit easier to spot when you’re in the middle of the sea, free from the light pollution of civilization, and also the regular old chemical pollution, too. A few weeks back, I saw another shooting star while driving home from work. In the middle of Ohio. Sometimes, that thing you perceive to be special turns out to be not so special after all.

But that’s not the case for this triple play turned by the White Sox last week! No sirree!

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That’s the ol’ 9-3-2-6-2-5 triple play. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s the first of its type in recorded history. And when I say “recorded history,” both now and throughout the rest of this post, I’m talking about since 1974, the furthest date back for which we have complete event data.

And so down I went, into the rabbit hole. With data provided by Jeff Zimmerman and independently verified and updated by yours truly with the help of the Baseball Reference Play Index and SABR’s triple-play database, I found myself with a spreadsheet of all 161 recorded triple plays since 1974 and each putout, in order. The first question I asked myself after “Was that White Sox triple play the first 9-3-2 triple play ever?” (answer: yes) was, “Well then, smarty pants, what’s the frequency of all the different triple-play combinations?”

It’s this:

Most Common Triple-Play Sequences Type Count 5-4-3 54 6-4-3 11 4-6-3 7 4-3-2 5 6-6-3 4 Seven tied with 3 Eight tied with 2 28 tied with 1

One-third of all the triple plays in recorded history have been the of the boring, traditional around-the-horn variety:

Another 11 were variants of that, except with the ball in play being caught on a line, instead of fielded off the ground:

These triple plays suck. A lot of triple plays suck! Most triple plays are like those dozen shooting stars my step-sister and I saw after we’d already seen the first one. Unoriginal. Uninspiring. But every now and then, something new happens, like that first, brilliant, green shooting star, and it reminds you why you’re looking up at the sky in the first place.

These are the triple plays that had me interested. The ones that have only happened once. The ones that will never happen again. The ones that haven’t happened yet, but are bound to in the future. Let’s think about those for a minute.

Not happening again

The first one-time triple play I want to talk about happened in 1979. It’s not even that I want to talk about it — I need to talk about it. Of the 28 unique triple plays that have occurred in the last 40-plus years, it’s the one I’m most confident will never happen again. The line read: 5*-8*-6-8* with the asterisks indicating the fielders who recorded the put-outs. It’s the only triple play in recorded history where an outfielder recorded the final out. The batter, Johnny Grubb, hit a “shallow fly ball” caught by the third baseman, Wayne Gross, for the first out. I’m guessing it was a spectacular play made in shallow left field that the runners on first and second thought would never be made. The center fielder, Tony Armas, had come in from center to cover second base, which leads me to believe the shortstop had left the infield in an effort to go after the ball in play (?), and the second baseman was doing God knows what. In any case, Gross throws to Armas, standing at second, to double off the first runner, who engages in a quick game of pickle with the shortstop (back in the infield now?) before getting the ball back and tagging out the runner from first himself. I don’t know, man.

Probably never happening again

The 9*-4-3*-5*. I will say, I’m surprised at how few recorded triple plays have started with an outfielder — just 19 of 161. Of course, it’s easier for an infielder to start a triple play, but all that needs to happen is for an outfielder to make an amazing catch (probably without going back on the ball) that two base-runners never thought he’d make, and it should be an easy triple play. That being said, I doubt the 9-3-5 ever happens again, and certainly not in the way this one happened. In 1980, Duffy Dyer hit a line drive directly at Harold Baines, who caught the ball but had it fall out of his glove. The umpire still ruled it a catch, however, which made doubling Lou Whitaker off first and tripling Jim Lentine off third exceptionally easy. The 1-6*-2-5-1*-4*. These are more fun when you try and figure out what happened on your own. I had to do it for a couple hours the other night, so now you’ve got to do it, too. Any triple play that involves a pickle skyrockets the improbability of it ever happening again. Not too often a pitcher records the middle out in a triple play. This one:

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What’s never happened, but will

As I previously mentioned, the shortage of triple plays that start with the outfielder was surprising to me, so there’s plenty of outfield-first combinations that haven’t yet happened, like 9-4-5, 7-6-3, 7-5-4 and others that seem bound to happen eventually. Beyond that, I’ve got a couple other ideas of triple plays that stay in the infield that I want to see happen for the first time in recorded history. The one I’ve gotten myself really excited about is the unassisted catcher triple play, although severely tempering my excitement is the realization that I don’t think it can happen without an injury to the batter. So instead of an injury to the batter, let’s say he lets his blood sugar get real low and he passes out as a result. No physical harm, and he’s feeling better within the hour. I’m comfortable with that. So, here’s how it happens: bases loaded, no outs. Batter at the plate hits a real weak tapper in front of home, so weak that the catcher only has to take a couple steps in front of the plate to grab it, turn, and step on home for the force. One out. Meanwhile, that batter with the low blood sugar, he gets a little less than halfway down the line before he passes out. He’s far enough down the line to where the catcher still has to take a few steps to get there, but not far enough to where it requires a throw to the first baseman. The catcher makes his way over to the passed-out batter and tags him for the second out. Meanwhile, because the catcher is so unprepared for this particular situation, he loses track of the runner who started the play at second and has now rounded third with a head of steam toward home. The catcher races him back to home plate, dives, and tags him for the third out. Boom. Unassisted catcher triple play. Get the batter some Gatorade. The 5-5-4. I think the shift makes this one very possible. All it takes is runners on second and third with a right-handed batter at the plate who’s being shifted. Batter hits a line drive right at the third baseman who’s already hugging the bag, he catches it for out number one, steps on third for out number two and doubles off the runner at second for out number three. This could alternatively be 5-5-6. I’m surprised either one hasn’t happened, and if I had to bet on which never-before-seen triple play is the next to go down, this would be my bet.

I’ve had some fun with triple plays. I uploaded the spreadsheet I used for this post to my Google Drive, so you can, too. Find your own shooting star.