When he finished his Hall of Fame career in 1947, Hank Greenberg had scorched, sailed, soared and smacked 781 baseballs for extra-base hits. That tally represented 47.97% of all the hits he had produced over his 13-year career, a percentage that 78 years after he was done tormenting big league […]
In 1923, while helping guide a Reds pitching staff to the best ERA In the Major Leagues, backstop Bubbles Hargrave also made an immense etching on the offensive side, posting a .333/.419/.521 line. The effort not only gave the 31-year-old a place among the top-10 in the NL in all […]
In 1982, Expos teammates Andre Dawson and Al Oliver each finished the year with 67 extra-base hits. The spotlight hasn’t been swiveled in their direction for any pure, numerical reason, but for where that number stood in relation to all the other extra-base hit figures produced by the NL’s batsmen: […]
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 […]
Sometimes, a player’s line doesn’t need the author’s flourishes – the adjectives, the superlatives, the flow-y and show-y. The numbers, with perhaps just a little context, are all that’s required to … sing. Here’s one such story – just the facts. On June 25, 1987, the visiting Reds lost […]
In 1924, Herb Pennock went 21-9 for the Yankees to become the franchise’s first 20-game winning southpaw. The honorific would be handed off – one Hall of Famer to another – to Lefty Gomez, who rang up a quartet of 20-win seasons in the 1930s (including a pair of Triple […]
Another day, another dinger. Of course, Cal Raleigh hasn’t been that productive, going homerless in 39 games this season. But he has gone yard in 19 of them, 19 contests that have been a little extra elevated by the humming, building consideration of how high, how far the 28-year-old backstop […]
The Dodgers’ top-10 leaderboard for runs scored in a single season is littered with names from long ago: three players from the 1880s, six from the 1890s (including the top Dodger dog, Hub Collins and his 148 runs in 1890) and one from the 1930s. There is one name from […]
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 […]
On August 15, 2015, Boston’s Jackie Bradley, Jr. came to the plate six times. His first essay in the batter’s box resulted in a two-run homer. He then doubled, and then struck out to put a small, but fleeting damper on his afternoon at Fenway. After the whiff, he doubled […]