Records and Notable Occurrences
Barry Bonds holds most of the records for intentional walks, including four in a nine-inning game (2004), 120 in a season (2004), and 668 in his career (more than the next two players on the all-time list, Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey, combined).
Bonds, a prolific home run hitter, was a common target for the intentional walk. Nevertheless, many times the decision to walk Bonds was a futile strategy, as the San Francisco Giants still had the National League's second-best offense in 2004, scoring 820 runs. In the first month of the 2004 baseball season, Bonds drew 43 walks, 22 of them intentional. He broke his previous record of 68 intentional walks, set in 2002, on July 10, 2004 in his last appearance before the All-Star break.
There are claims that Mel Ott was also intentionally walked four times in a game against the Phillies in 1929. The claim has not been confirmed (intentional walks have only been an officially tracked statistic since 1955) and the evidence suggests otherwise. Mel Ott was tied with Chuck Klein for the season home run title in 1929 and the Phillies manager told the pitcher to pitch around Ott so he wouldn't pass Klein for the title. When Ott received his bases loaded walk he was facing a 3-2 pitch count suggesting that the walk was not intentional.
Hideki Matsui drew five consecutive intentional walks in a game in Japanese High School Baseball Championship at Koshien Stadium in 1992 and became a nationwide topic of conversation.
Read more about this topic: Intentional Base On Balls
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