what are crooked numbers in baseball?

Answer 1

A team puts up a crooked number in an inning when it scores more than one run (the number 1 being a straight number, in the physical form, and numbers like 2,3, etc. being crooked in shape).
A 2 or 3 run inning is obviously this is better than a 1 run inning, but also harder to come by. So when a team puts up a bunch of crooked numbers, in essence, they are scoring lots of runs.

Answer 2

Any number besides zero.

If you look at an inning-by-inning score line, here's what it looks like:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Rabbits 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1--2
Pellets 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 x--3

The rabbits put up crooked numbers in the 7th and 9th innings, while the pellets put up crooked numbers in the 1st and 7th innings.

Usually the phrase is said when a team is not scoring: Their manager or the broadcaster, fans, etc., will say, "Come on, guys, let's put up some crooked numbers!" (Because they've been putting up nothing but "round" zeroes.)

In the above game between the fictional Rabbits and Pellets, their broadcaster said before the start of the seventh inning, "The hares need to start putting up some crooked numbers on the board."

As a note, Lon Simmons, former broadcaster for the Oakland A's, used to say that a team was putting up a "picket fence" whenever they were scoring one run every inning. In one game, I think the A's were about to start the 7th inning; they had scored a "picket fence" while the other team had scored two runs in the second, fourth, and sixth innings. He said, "At this rate, with the A's putting up a picket fence with a single run every inning, and if the (Rangers?) keep scoring two runs every even-numbered inning, the A's will win the game 9-8. (I can't remember what actually happened in that game, but I just remember it didn't quite follow the pattern at the end.

Here's what that theoretical score would have looked like (note they are all crooked numbers except for the top of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and ninth innings:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Rangers 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0--8
A's 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1--9

I wonder if this has ever actually happened in a major-league game?

Hope that answered your question!

Answer 3

When a baseball announcer says that a team has to put up some crooked numbers (Jerry Trupiano for the Red Sox uses that term), he means a number other than one (1), being a straight digit. It is a colloquial way of saying the team needs more than a run to get back into the game.

Answer 4

The Indians scored a crooked number last night. It's when the score looks like a football score. The Giants never have that problem. It sucks.

Answer 5

a crooked number is any number that is not zero or one.

Answer 6

"Crooked numbers" are numbers that are not round, i.e. zero.

So what this means is to score some runs!

Answer 7

what do you mean by "crooked numbers"

Answer 8

RUNS THAT HAS SCORED IN THAT INNING