The No. 4 employer in the county, Verizon Communications Inc., with regional headquarters in Valhalla and 2,200 workers within Westchester”™s borders, is playing a shrewd game of baseball numbers, rolling the dice every Yankee game on a curious 41-year streak and so far winning.
On Aug. 2, WCBS radio and Lexus of Greenwich and Mount Kisco came to owe a 2009 Lexus to Jean Murdoch of Westport, Conn., after Yankee outfielder Melky Cabrera hit for the cycle versus the White Sox: single, double, triple and homer in the same game.
The Lexus promotion came up snake-eyes (or boxcars depending on your end of the deal) in the fickle world of baseball statistics. No Yankee had hit for the cycle since Tony Fernandez did it in September 1995, so the odds were excellent the Lexus should have remained somewhere other than in Murdoch”™s garage.
Verizon is playing it a bit safer in its $10,000 triple-play promotion, also in partnership with WCBS radio.
The communications giant will give $10,000 and a year of free Internet, phone and TV service (its triple-play link) to the person whose name is drawn from the fishbowl on a magical night when all three outs are recorded on a single play. The last time the Yankees turned a triple play was June 1968.
Those who are leery of the fickle world of baseball statistics as practiced by the company in which they own stock ”“ or who are hoping to snag the top prize ”“ should know that, while relatively rare (672 since 1876), a triple play by the Texas Rangers shut down the Detroit Tigers in the bottom of the fourth in May.
