February 10, 2011
4 days until pitchers and catchers
48 days until Opening Day
4-dinger trivia: Mike Cameron is mentioned in an item below. On May 5, 2002 Cameron became only the 11th player ever to homer four times in one game. Two players have done it since Cameron. Who are they?
The Kid heads East: on this day in 2000, the Mariners send Ken Griffey Jr. to Cincinnati for Mike Cameron, Antonio Perez, Brett Tomko, and Jake Meyer. Neither team wins a World Series for their trouble.
It’s easy to forget how good Griffey was. He put up terrific numbers with the bat and was a sparkling defender. It’s a shame injuries derailed what is surely a Hall of Fame career but perhaps what could have been an all-time great career. I guess injuries naturally happen when you don’t take steroids or human growth hormone to help you recover from injury. The guy played his first game when he was 19. His average 162-game numbers before he was traded were 185 hits, 43 homers, 123 RBI, 18 SB, .299 BA. He hit 56 home runs in back to back seasons (again, without PEDs). In his career he’s hit 630 home runs. Plus he’s supposedly a good person blah blah blah.
Bonus Griffey factoid: the career centerfielder played first base twice. The first time was during a game he started at DH and had to move to first during a double switch. The second time was a little more bizarre. He started the game at center. Before the fourth inning, Lou Piniella moved Griffey to LF, the starting RF to CF, and the starting LF to RF. In the top of the seventh, Piniella flipped the leftfielder (Griffey) with the rightfielder. In the top of the 9th, Piniella flipped the rightfielder (Griffey) with the first baseman (Raul Ibanez). I have never heard of anything like that.
Also known as Sotos syndrome: on February 20, 1992, while visiting a small town for a softball tournament, Griffey overdosed on nerve tonic and consequently suffered a case of cerebral gigantism. It was later revealed that Griffey was tricked into overdosing by local magnate C. Montgomery Burns.
Griffey has the same birthday and was born in the same town as Stan Musial. They are two of four players born in Pennsylvania with at least 400 home runs (Reggie Jackson and Mike Piazza are the other two).
Non-Griffey stat of the day: comes in the form of a quote from Joe Posnanski, very possibly the best sportswriter I’ve ever read. In admiring that first baseman in St. Louis every has been talking about: “Pujols has averaged a .331 batting average, 43 doubles, 41 home runs, 119 runs and 123 RBIs over his first 10 seasons in Major League Baseball. Only nine players in the game’s history have produced that stat line or better in a given season, and all nine of those players did it just once.”
Since today inadvertently turned into Griffey-a-thon, why not throw in a picture, too.
4 days until pitchers and catchers
48 days until Opening Day
4-dinger trivia: Mike Cameron is mentioned in an item below. On May 5, 2002 Cameron became only the 11th player ever to homer four times in one game. Two players have done it since Cameron. Who are they?
The Kid heads East: on this day in 2000, the Mariners send Ken Griffey Jr. to Cincinnati for Mike Cameron, Antonio Perez, Brett Tomko, and Jake Meyer. Neither team wins a World Series for their trouble.
It’s easy to forget how good Griffey was. He put up terrific numbers with the bat and was a sparkling defender. It’s a shame injuries derailed what is surely a Hall of Fame career but perhaps what could have been an all-time great career. I guess injuries naturally happen when you don’t take steroids or human growth hormone to help you recover from injury. The guy played his first game when he was 19. His average 162-game numbers before he was traded were 185 hits, 43 homers, 123 RBI, 18 SB, .299 BA. He hit 56 home runs in back to back seasons (again, without PEDs). In his career he’s hit 630 home runs. Plus he’s supposedly a good person blah blah blah.
Bonus Griffey factoid: the career centerfielder played first base twice. The first time was during a game he started at DH and had to move to first during a double switch. The second time was a little more bizarre. He started the game at center. Before the fourth inning, Lou Piniella moved Griffey to LF, the starting RF to CF, and the starting LF to RF. In the top of the seventh, Piniella flipped the leftfielder (Griffey) with the rightfielder. In the top of the 9th, Piniella flipped the rightfielder (Griffey) with the first baseman (Raul Ibanez). I have never heard of anything like that.
Also known as Sotos syndrome: on February 20, 1992, while visiting a small town for a softball tournament, Griffey overdosed on nerve tonic and consequently suffered a case of cerebral gigantism. It was later revealed that Griffey was tricked into overdosing by local magnate C. Montgomery Burns.
Griffey has the same birthday and was born in the same town as Stan Musial. They are two of four players born in Pennsylvania with at least 400 home runs (Reggie Jackson and Mike Piazza are the other two).
Non-Griffey stat of the day: comes in the form of a quote from Joe Posnanski, very possibly the best sportswriter I’ve ever read. In admiring that first baseman in St. Louis every has been talking about: “Pujols has averaged a .331 batting average, 43 doubles, 41 home runs, 119 runs and 123 RBIs over his first 10 seasons in Major League Baseball. Only nine players in the game’s history have produced that stat line or better in a given season, and all nine of those players did it just once.”
Since today inadvertently turned into Griffey-a-thon, why not throw in a picture, too.
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| Not Photoshopped. Trivia answer: on May 23, 2002 (just 3 weeks after Cameron), Shawn Green hit four homers for the Dodgers against the Brewers, and on September 25, 2003, Carlos Delgado belted four for Toronto against the Devil Rays. Bonus 4-dinger stats: thirteen players have had four homers a game. No one has ever done it twice. Only one player has hit 4 homers in a game for the losing team (Bob Horner, his four home runs, and the Braves lost to the Expos 8-11 on July 6, 1986). Also, that game was one of only two in which the team with the player who hit four home runs scored fewer than ten runs. |
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