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 […]
In the bottom of the first at Crosley Field on July 6, 1949, Reds cleanup hitter Walker Cooper singled with two outs to move a runner to third. The inning-extending knock turned out to be both a consequential moment for the club and for the 34-year-old who had been acquired […]
The early part of any season is so much fun in so many ways, including the weirdness of early-season statistics. The box scores add up, the individual player lines reflect those accumulations and a couple or a few weeks into things, the numerical revelations can be worth a second glance […]
There are a lot of Major League games every season. There have been a lot of Major League seasons. The spring->summer->fall carnival ride of rises and dips, the sheer volume of numbers and storylines, the numerous ways to organize and contextualize: all of this makes it easy and natural to […]
In 1956, Henry Aaron – playing in his age-22 season – led the NL with 340 total bases. Over in the AL, Mickey Mantle – playing in his age-24 season – paced the Junior Circuit in this same category, with 376. This excerpt from that season is notable not only […]
The 2007 Devil Rays finished the year 30 games below .500 and posted their 10th losing season in as many years of existence (it was also the ninth time in those 10 seasons the club had failed to reach even 70 victories). Pretty bleak, for certain. But on September 5 […]
On May 1, 1966, Cleveland’s Sam McDowell went the distance on a one-hitter to defeat the White Sox, 1-0. The gem lowered the left-hander’s ERA to 1.55 and raised his shutout tally to two. The next time Cleveland played a ballgame, on May 3, the outcome looked familiar, thanks to […]
When Rennie Stennett tied the Major League record for hits in a nine-inning game, his seven came out of the leadoff spot. When he tied the modern era record for triples in a game, Lance Johnson struck his three when batting at the top of the order. When they tied […]
In 1998, Texas cleanup hitter Juan González embodied that descriptive amazingly well and often, with eight different games featuring at least five RBI. No other player in the modern era has produced so many big-RBI games, although a few aren’t too far behind. In 1930, Lou Gehrig had seven such […]