Developed by four former Major League Baseball employees, Coffee & Box Scores delivers a unique brand of baseball content, where the present connects to the past in a celebratory, fun and thought-provoking style. Producing daily notes, essays and artwork, Coffee & Box Scores is made for baseball fans seeking creative and stimulating content.
There are six players in baseball history to swat and speed their way to a 60-double campaign – from George H. Burns for Cleveland in 1926 through Charlie Gehringer for the 1936 Tigers, all six flew up the charts over an 11-year span. So maybe it’s just not in the […]
In 1911, when he became the first player with at least 70 steals and 70 extra-base hits in a season, 24-year-old Ty Cobb had 14 of each through his team’s first 26 games of the year. When, in 1984, Juan Samuel joined Cobb as the only players to complete the […]
Over in the NL this season, Chicago’s Kyle Tucker and New York’s Pete Alonso share the league leads in both RBI (with 25) and extra-base hits (17). One of the two is also pacing the league in runs, hits, total bases, times on base (all Tucker), doubles and OPS+ (Alonso). […]
Before he turned 32 years old, Mickey Mantle had 37 career multi-homer games. At the time, here in this jaunt back to 1963, it wouldn’t have taken but a moment to go through all of the others who could make this claim. Righty-swinging Jimmie Foxx had produced 53 multi-homer efforts […]
With the cold weather still lingering in many parts of the country, winter-weary baseball fans can take comfort in knowing that the action ramping up across ballparks in Florida and Arizona heralds the arrival of spring. But while the Grapefruit and Cactus League games have been an annual component […]
There’s a wonderful old commercial for Starting Lineup sports figures that features an unseen singer waxing about his childhood dream of becoming a big league baseball player, ending with the line, “And summer would go on forever.” Coincidentally, around that time summer did linger past its usual expiration date – […]
On January 21, members of the BBWAA will reveal the results of the 2025 Hall of Fame balloting. Because we here at Coffee & Box Scores didn’t receive official ballots (surely they got lost in the mail), I will reveal my own personal choices in this space, with Roger to […]
In his recent article about Carlos González, my colleague Roger highlighted Car-Go’s 2010 numbers as an example of a Hall-of-Fame-type campaign from a player who stands little to no chance of earning a plaque of his own. He also took the fun step of revealing an all-time starting nine of […]
Almost exactly one year ago, 27-year-old Tarik Skubal opened the Tigers’ season with six innings of three-hit, no-run ball. The 1-0 final in Detroit’s favor was, in a way, the initial abracadabra in what turned out to be a magical, fantastical year for both pitcher and team. Now, Skubal – […]
To anyone equipped with access to Baseball Reference and a healthy combination of curiosity and affection for the numbers, rabbit holes can appear with a time-destroying frequency and head-spinning expansiveness. Recently, one came a-calling in a most – seemingly – benign form: Bernie Williams’ headshot on BR’s homepage. The image […]
Naturally and appropriately, Hideo Nomo carries a banner for introducing a “first” to the magic of season openers. The historic event occurred on April 3, 2000, when the right-hander became the first Japanese-born hurler to make an Opening Day start. Nomo allowed three runs over seven innings that Monday in […]
The very first Opening Day home run in the modern era came from an unlikely source: the bat of pitcher Jack Powell. On April 19, 1901, in front of the home crowd in St. Louis, the hurler helped his cause in what was ultimately an 8-7 loss to Chicago (on […]
