As noted a few days ago, when Mike Trout tripled in his first at-bat at the All-Star game, I support the concept that the triple is the most exciting play in baseball.

A guy running full speed from the batter’s box to third base while an outfielder or two chases down a ball in the gap, or one off the wall, and then almost always two throws to get the ball to third, and usually the runner sliding. All sorts of people running around, basically — the batter, a couple of fielders, a relay man, the pitcher backing up the play at third.

Thus, the Dodgers’ 8-1 victory over the Giants in San Francisco must have been great fun tonight.

Not only did the Dodgers have five (!) triples, Yasiel Puig had three (!) of them, as you can see via the second link.

Three triples in one game! By one person. Some guys don’t have three triples in their careers.

This calls for some of those baseball stats fans love.

Only once in Dodgers history had one of their players had three triples in a game, and it was in 1901, by a guy named Jimmy Sheckard — who turns out to have been quite a good player, which you can see if you followed the Baseball Reference link. (He had 19 triples, leading the league, in 1901, when he drove in 104 runs and scored 116.

The five triples by the Dodgers (Dee Gordon and Matt Kemp also smacked three-baggers) were a Los Angeles record and was the first five-triple game by the franchise since … 1921, when it was in Brooklyn and known as the Robins.

So, a couple of things you see, oh, once every century. Each. In one night.

On top of that, Zack Greinke struck out four guys in an inning.

A lot of semi-serious fans do not know how this can be done.

Here’s how:

–If first base is open or if it is occupied, as long as there are two outs, a third strike which is not caught by the catcher turns the batter into a runner who must be tagged before he reaches first, or is forced out there by a throw.

–Thus, the pitcher strikes out the side, as per usual, but the fourth strikeout (and it doesn’t have to be the third in the sequence, though it often is) is one the catcher misses, and the batter gets to first safely. The play is scored “strikeout, wild pitch/pass ball.” And four strikeouts are recorded in one half-inning.

Yeah, kinda weird.

It once was a rarity up there with “three triples in one game”. In fact, according to this handy list of all four-whiff innings ever recorded, it didn’t happen at all for 40 years, from 1916 to 1956.

However, in the modern age of brain-dead hackers who don’t seem to mind striking out, it is becoming semi-common, Not everyday, no, but it happens a few times a year.

Greinke’s four-whiff inning is the first in the 2014 season, and the second in his career — and can be seen on the same clip I linked, above. The four guys he got? Not exactly Murderers’ Row: Hector Sanchez, Tim Lincecum, Hunter Pence (who reached after a ball in the dirt went to the backstop) and Gregor Blanco.

Four strikeouts in an inning happened three times last year, a record eight times in 2012 and four in 2011. The previous occasion that a Dodgers pitcher whiffed four in an inning? Brad Penny in 2006.

What I would like to know is if anyone ever tripled three times in the 67 games in which a pitcher got four whiffs in an inning.

I’m going to guess and say, “No. Never happened.”

If one of you want to open up the boxscores on those 67 games (and a few are missing) … feel free to let me know if you find triples in triplicate.