It's John Blue Moon Odom days until Opening Day.
Blue Moon Odom wore #13 for thirteen seasons, mostly with the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics. He once gave up 13 hits and struck out 13 guys in a game he left after pitching into the thirteenth inning.
He was numerically consistent in other statistically meaningless but quirky ways, too. In both 1968 and in 1969 he pitched exactly 131.1 innings and gave up exactly 179 hits*. Also, over the course of his career his batting average against was .244 in both home games and in away games.
*By the way, regarding those nearly identical 1968-69 seasons: despite facing a mere 15 more batters in 1969 he gave up 12 more earned runs, 6 more homers, and 14 more walks, but had a much better win-loss ratio (15-6) than in 1968 (16-10). So take that, pitcher-win mongers.
Blue Moon was a well-rounded athlete. He was used as a pinch-runner 105 times.
He had a no-hitter broken up with two outs in the ninth by future Nationals godfather Davey Johnson.
Blue Moon was 42-2 and pitched eight no-hitters in high school. As a result, he made his MLB debut at the tender age of 19. The first two home runs he gave up in the majors were to two guys who also made their debuts at 19: Mickey Mantle and Tony Conigliaro (in fact, Conigliaro and Odom were both 19 at the time of that home run in 1964).
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