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 […]
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 […]
When Reggie Jackson hit 37 home runs before the 1969 All-Star break, that explosive first half saw the youngster (he turned 23 that May) wallop in bunches, with eight multi-home run games. Imagine that – before the Midsummer Classic that year, Jackson already had more multi-homer games than any other […]
In 1927, Lou Gehrig produced an 11.4 oWAR (this is bWAR, with the defensive element removed). This explosive display is the showcase of all showcases for first basemen, the unsurpassed mark for the position. And thus, Gehrig gets us started on a fun offensive dream team, one made up by […]
The start of the 2024 postseason got rolling on the same day October did, when eight clubs began marking their routes toward the very same dream destination. After just a few days had passed, four had woken up to a dim reality – end of the road – while four […]
The very first time the Mets faced the wrenching possibility of postseason elimination – Game 5 of the 1973 NLCS against the defending pennant-winners, the Reds – the club received an imposing harmony of contribution. The NL’s ’73 Cy Young Award winner, Tom Seaver, gave the club an ace-like line, […]
In the very first game of the very first World Series, Pittsburgh’s starter, Deacon Phillippe, did something that, to this day, has been replicated only 20 times: he issued no walks while fanning double-digit batters (he had 10 K’s). No one matched Phillippe’s feat for 46 years, until Brooklyn’s […]
If the 2010 postseason wasn’t quite a pitching version of “anything you can do, I can do better,” that’s mainly because Roy Halladay set the bar too high to begin things. In Game 1 of the Phillies’ NLDS tussle with the Reds, the right-hander was nearly perfect, allowing just one […]
Seven years ago, Francisco Lindor walked to the plate in the bottom of the sixth inning, the glare and tension of postseason baseball emanating all around – a reality throttled up by a line score showing the home team losing and running out of outs to make up the difference. […]