Over a five-year stretch from 1948-1952, the average Ralph Kiner season looked like this: 109 runs scored, 44 home runs, 112 RBI, 119 walks. Only 10 different players – apart from Kiner – have assembled that line in a season, and that’s what Kiner averaged. And if that perspective is […]
For those within a certain age range, Dwight Gooden’s 1985 season resonates like no other. The alchemy of age, dominance, the fact that his curveball seemed to (to me, at least) hop upward before crashing down, being in New York, the heights and the depths of the numbers, all of […]
The 1895 Baltimore Orioles won more games than any other NL club that year and did so with a young array of talent that shimmers even when looking from a perch more than 125 years removed. By Baseball Reference’s accounting and evaluation, that club had a trio of position players […]
More than a century ago, a 22-year-old right-hander named Eddie Stack signed his name into the Major League register. His debut came in front of the home fans at Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl and had the Cubs as the invited guests. This was the Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance Cubs (although Evers was out of […]
When the day got started at Briggs Stadium in Detroit on July 19, 1955, rookie Babe Birrer was just a witness, two days removed from his last appearance. But when Frank Lary opened the sixth by surrendering a walk and a run-scoring double, Birrer made his entrance. Inheriting the tying […]