OK. In honor of this fantastic night of Iowa's cornfield baseball, this was Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Shoeless Joe


First, I had no idea he was 32 when he played his last game. I have always imagined him to be like 25 or 26. He played over 1300 games over 13 years.

He also played for three different teams which I also did not realize. Though he never played in the NL. A's Indians and White Sox.

A career batting average of .356 is absolutely phenomenal no matter what era. He was also a great power hitter for his era, hitting 54 dead ball homeruns and 168 triples. that 168 number is 26th all time, one behind Rogers Hornsby who played 900 more games.

I am not really good with WAR, but 62.2 over 1300 games sounds really good.


Edit to add the S to the man from Fort Worth with two first names



Also the first of the eight to die.

Joe Jackson's rookie year he hit .408 and lost the batting title by 12 points to Ty Cobb.

Found a good one tonight.

Ben Zobrist

Just retire in 2019. Played 1651 MLB baseball games with is a hell of an accomplishment by itself. Went to three WS winning with the KCR and the Cubs. OPB of .357.

But he played

911- 2b
661- OF
236-SS
28-DH
27-1B
8-3b
and 1 inning at pitcher allowing no runs.

The most successful utility player in modern history that I can think of.

McInnis said:

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AggieEP said:

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Depends on what you use to qualify someone as a utility player.

Look at Craig Biggio and you'll see basically 3 full seasons as a catcher, 2.5 seasons as an outfielder and then 10+ seasons as a second baseman.

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This really surprised me because I followed the Astros pretty closely during Biggio's career and did not remember him playing that much outfield. But I looked it up and he spent two full years near the end of his career in the OF before returning to 2B.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/biggicr01.shtml#all_appearances

What was the deal? Who played 2B for the Astros those two years?

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Jeff Kent

One of my favorite stats that I blindly got right on a Bullwinkles' trivia game back in the 1990s

George Brett is the only player in MLB history to have a season where he accumulated:

100 runs scored
200 hits
20+ doubles
20+ triples
20+ home runs
100+ RBI
and hit .300.

Happened in 1979 when he scored 119 runs, collected 212 hits, 42 doubles, 20 triples, 23 HR, 107 RBI and hit .329. That got him 3rd in the MVP vote, so the next year he hit .390 to ensure he won it.

Here's one.

The 2022 Cincinnati Reds lead the majors with only 3 errors.

*they've only won 3 effing games this season.

10 guys in the NL hit at least .350 in 1929. Rogers Hornsby hit .380 and finished third in the batting race.

Hack Wilson led the league in strikeouts with 83, or as Joey Gallo calls it "a good 6 weeks".

When Hack Wilson had 191 RBI in 1930, he had 0 RBI in 64 of the 155 games he played in. In other words, he drove in 191 runs in 91 games. If my figuring is correct, that's pretty good.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bregmal01.shtml#all_leaderboard

under awards, bregman now has "Won Mike Trout's Fantasy Football League"

2 Astros pitchers each had an immaculate inning in the same game recently against the Rangers. First time that has ever happened.

helloimustbegoing said:

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Jamie Quirk was a catcher and third baseman and had played several seasons with the Royals, then was signed and cut by the Cardinals right at the end of spring training in 1984. He wound up signing with the White Sox that May buy only played 3 games behind Carlton Fisk and Vance Law, and wound up having his contract sold to the Indians in the last 2 weeks of the 1984 season.

On September 27, 1984, the Indians, in front of a stunning home crowd of 3,752, put Quirk in to pinch hit with the scored tied at 3 vs Minnesota and 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth. He hit a walk-off home run to win the game 4-3, which propelled his old team, the Royals, past the Twins into first place with 3 games to go in the regular season.

And that was it for Quirk in Cleveland. That 1 at-bat, leaving his stats for the season with the Indians as 1 for 1 with 1 home run, giving him a batting average of 1.000, a slugging percentage of 4.000, and an OPS of 5.000.

The Royals brought him back to KC in 1985 and he won a World Series ring.

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Quirk had a fascinating, long career. He played 18 seasons in the majors debuting at 20. He only played 984 games in those 18 seasons and only played more than 100 games once, playing 109 in 1987 with KC.

But after making the majors at 20 he rarely went down to AAA. Only in '78, '84, '85, and '89, totaling 285 games.

And all of his games were played in the AL. In neither of his WS did he appear in an NL park.

Fascinating career.

Watching the HR derby I had to check out some baseballreference.

Albert Pujos devastated me and my wife in 2005 when he homered off Lidge in the 2005 NLCS. We were sitting at a park in the Heights with some random people near I10 listening on the radio when suddenly the crowd went silent. Ugh.

We were telling that story to my 10 year old baseball playing son the other day and he said 'how far do you think it went'. Wife answered 'It is still up there"


Pujos has been amazing and had a first ballot career, but the stat that surprised me the most was that dude led the league in runs scored five times, and scored over 115 runs seven times in nine seasons, starting with his second year. He scored 112 as a rookie.

Thats crazy. Gehrig led the league four times. Aaron led three times. Boggs led twice. Mays twice. Biggo twice. Gwynn once. Cabrerra zero. Carew once. Bonds once.

Rickey Henderson also had 5. So did Ty Cobb. So did Alex Rodriguez. So did Stan Musial.

For all the other stats that are out there and that we argue and debate about endlessly, scoring runs is the point. That is an amazing stat.

Ruth led eight times.


Edit to correct. Said Ruth twice. It was Gehrig that led four times

Corporal Punishment said:

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Yeah I figured Whitaker would be a HOFer, too. Aren't he and Trammell the longest DP combo to ever play together or am I confusing them with someone else from that era? That 1984 team was legendary.

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I get happy every time I see this thread bumped. It always means people who love baseball history are active.

84 Tigers are the team that started off 35-5.They started the year 9-0, then got to 16-1, then 19-2.


When they hit 35-5, they had an 8-1/2 game lead and it was May 24th. Incredibly the Blue Jays started off the year almost as hot. Through 52 games, Detroit was 39-13 and Toronto was 36-17, just 3-1/2 games back. At that point in the season, Cleveland (18-33) was already 20-1/2 games out of first.

The Tigers went 104-58. The Blue Jays fell off and no other team in the AL won more than 89 games.

Tigers' offense had Lance Parrish at catcher hit 33 HR and drive in 98. Whitaker hit .289 with 90 runs scored. Trammell hit .314 with 85 R, 69 RBI, 14 HR, 19 SB; Their outfield was Larry Herndon (.280), Chet Lemon (.287, 20 HR, 76 RBI) and Kirk Gibson (.282, 27 HR, 91 RBI, 29 SB).

Pitching staff was out of this world: Jack Morris was 19-11, Dan Petry was 18-8, and Milt Wilcox was 17-8. Willie Hernandez was the most unlikely MVP of all time, pitching 80 games with a 1.92 ERA, 112 K, 140.1 innings, and 32 saves. A closer throwing 140 innings! Astro legend Aurelio "Senor Smoke" Lopez threw 137.2 innings in relief at age 35, went 10-1 with a 2.94 ERA and 14 saves.

They swept prime George Brett Kansas City 3-0 in the ALCS, outscoring the Royals 14-5. KC batted .170 as a team for the series. Detroit's pitching team ERA was 1.24 and its WHIP was 0.828.

They beat San Diego 4-1 in the World Series. Aggie legend Mark Thurmond took the L in a close game 1 for San Diego. Trammell hit .450 in the world series with an OPS of 1.300.

And then ... baseball happened.
Tigers fell to third in 1985 at 84-77. Third again in 1986, then 98 wins in 1987 but loss to Minnesota in the ALCS.

In 1988 they went 88-74 and finished second in the East by 1 game behind the Sox. In 1989 their win total dropped by TWENTY NINE and they bottomed out at 59-103. They proceeded to go 20 years (87-06) before they made the playoffs again.

Albert Pujols has played on the same field as Jesse Orsoco (born in 1957) as well as Michael Harris and Wander Franco (born in 2001).

Think of it this way. He played against a guy who was born when Eisenhower was President, and he also played against two guys who weren't born yet when Dale Earnhardt died.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bumgama01.shtml

Madbim's bbref page has his rodeo alter ego and results