The Scintillating ’70s

Tom Seaver had the best season in the major leagues in the 1970s, three of the top 10, and led National League pitchers five times according to a points system that rates players according to how they ranked in 12 categories.

Jim Rice had the best season among major league hitters in the 1970s, ranked in the top 10 twice and led American League hitters twice. 

By Phil Ellenbecker

  My latest look the top seasons and players of the decade in Major League Baseball delves into the 1970s.

  Here’s the drill: The “study” consisted of pulling out a Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia and looking over the listing of league leaders in several categories for each year.  The top five were listed in some instances, the top four in others – don’t ask me how that line was drawn. The major categories almost all included the top five. In a couple instances just the top three were listed. Sometimes less than two. I think a large number of players tied had something to do with less than four, and space limitations came into play. I gave five points for the top ranking, four for second and so on down. Where just four were listed, it went 5-4-3-2. If there was a tie, I divided the total number of points between the rankings by the number of players who were tied. Example: Three players tied for second – 4+3+2=9 divided by 3=3 points for each player.

  The categories: hitting -- batting average, total bases, hits, runs, slugging average, RBIs, walks, doubles, homers, steals, homer-percentage, triples; pitching  – winning percentage, saves, hits/nine innings/, strikeouts/nine innings, ERA, strikeouts, shutouts, innings pitched, wins, complete games, walks/nine innings, games pitched.

  What I came up with I think gives a fairly representative presentation of the top players and seasons. There are enough categories included to give a balance between the counting stats that reward durability and reliability and the rate stats that address pure performance. Offense takes in power, speed, batting eye and contact; pitching -- power, control, durability and dominance (i.e., shutouts). Mind you, the numbers, other than the rankings I assigned, don’t matter here, just how the players ranked in comparison with their peers. Which I think is the best way to rate players, how they rate relative to others. The 48 homers Willie Stargell hit in 1971 and Dave Kingman hit in 1979 to lead the National League don’t matter anymore than the 32 that four different players hit to lead their leagues; they were simply the best over their peers in that particular year in that particular category.

Top 10 pitching seasons

1. Steve Carlton, 1972, 39

2 (tie). Tom Seaver, 1973, and Ron Guidry, 1978, 33

4 Tom Seaver, 1975, 32 1/2

5 (tie). Ferguson Jenkins, 1975, and Jim Palmer, 1975, 31

7 (tie). Tom Seaver, 1971, Andy Messersmith, 1975, and J.R. Richard, 1979, 30

10. Vida Blue, 1971, 29 1/2

Top 10 batting seasons

1. Jim Rice, 1978, 41

2. George Foster, 1977, 35

3. Dick Allen, 1972, 33 1/2

4. Dave Parker, 1978, 32 ½

5. Reggie Jackson, 1973, 31 1/2

6 Rod Carew, 1977, 30 1/2

7. Carl Yastrzemski, 1970, 30

8 (tie). Willie Stargell,  1973, and Mike Schmidt, 1974, 29

10 (tie). Jim Rice, 1979, 28 1/2

     Among my admittedly nonauthoritative observations and conclusions:

n  Tom was indeed Terrific during the 1970s. Tom Seaver posted three of the top 10 pitching seasons – tied for second in 1973, fourth in 1975 and tied for seventh in 1971.

n  Steve Carlton’s stupendous 1972 season, when at the age of 27 with 27 wins he had 46 percent of Philadelphia’s 59 wins, rates as the top season of the decade with 41 points, three points off Sandy Koufax’s 1965 that is the top mark in the three decades I’ve surveyed. Carlton easily outdistanced Seaver’s ’72 and Ron Guidry’s ’78 with 33, and Seaver’s 32 ½ in 1974.

n  While some have doubted Jim Rice’s Hall of Fame bona fides (he was not elected by the writers until his 15^th and final year of eligibility), these lists show he was clearly a premier hitter in the 1970s. He had the best season in the major leagues of the decade with 41 points and also had the 10^th best. George Foster’s 1977 came in second at 35 followed by Dick Allen’s 1972 at 33½. Foster was helped by a 52-homer season in 1977. That was the first 50-homer season in the major leagues since Willie Mays’ 52 in 1965.

n  Rice and Rod Carew had two league-leading seasons apiece to top the American League. Carew, who never hit more than 14 homers in a season,  shows you don’t have to be a power hitter to rate high. He had the seventh-best season in the majors in the ‘70s, in 1977, when he tied his career high in homers while hitting .388, highest in the majors since Ted Williams’ .388 in 1957.

n  Billy Williams and Mike Schmidt had two league-leading seasons each to lead the NL. Williams’ came in 1970 and 1972, years in which Johnny Bench won the NL MVP Award and strong arguments were made for Williams. In fact Williams was named the Sporting News’ Major Player of the Year and NL Player of the Year in ’72. Schmidt’s league-leading ’74 established him as a player to watch for years to come after  a rookie season in which he’d batted .196.

George Foster's 1977 season ranked second in the major leagues in the 1970s, helped by a 52-homer season, the first 50-homer season since Willie Mays' 52 in 1965.

J.R. Richard led National League pitchers in 1978 and 1979, tying for the seventh-best mark in the decade with his '79. His career tragically ended midway through the next season when he suffered a stroke.

n  Seaver led the NL in points five times in the decade, including three straight at one stretch. J.R. Richard was the other multi-NL leader with two seasons back-to-back closing out the decade. His 1979 tied for seventh on the majors' top 10 list. Sadly, Richard suffered a stroke midway through the 1980 season, prematurely ending what looked to be an all-time great career.

n  Nolan Ryan was the AL’s league leader three times. No other AL pitcher led more than once.

Willie and/or The Duke

Willie Mays, a center fielder virtually his entire career, moved over to right field in the 1956 All-Star Game, giving way to Duke Snider in the fifth inning.

Duke Snider, like Willie Mays a center fielder most of his career, moved to right in the 1954 All-Star Game when Mays entered the game in the fourth inning and took over center.

By Phil Ellenbecker
  Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider (Willie, Mickey & the Duke in Terry Cashman's song "Talkin' Baseball"). That was the raging argument facing New York baseball fans in the 1950s, stating their case for which center fielder was the best in the city.

  While that was a tough one to settle orally -- they were about equally dominant over their peers -- it was resolved, in a sense, between the two National League center fielders in the mid-'50s at the ballot box for the All-Star Game, then controlled by the fans. And whom did they pick? The People's Cherce (as Brooklyn fan favorite Dixie Walker was referred to in the '40s) in 1954 and 1955 was the Dodgers' Snider, chosen to start both years over the Giants' Mays. Then in 1956 both gave way to Cincinnati's Gus Bell, as Reds fans set the stage for their next year's ballot-box stuffing by voting in five players. All eight Reds position players were voted in for the '57 game. (Commissioner Ford Frick stepped in and replaced three Reds with Mays, Hank Aaron and Stan Musial).

  NL manager Walter Alston in 1954 and '56 found a way to get around having to decide between Mays and Snider and get both in the game at the same time. In 1954 in Cleveland, Alston played musical chairs by inserting Mays in the game in the bottom of the fourth inning and moving Snider from center to right, Musial right to left. 

   Snider finished the game 3-for-4 with two runs scored, Mays 1-for-2 with a run in a game won by the AL11-9.

    In 1956 in Washington, it was a slightly different form of musical chairs with the same players. Mays pinch hit for Bell in the top of the fourth and belted a two-run homer, then moved into center field. Snider batted for starting left fielder Frank Robinson in the fifth, then took over center, with Mays moving to right and Musial from right to left.

  Mays finished the game 1-for-3 with a run and two RBIs courtesy the homer. Snider was 0-for-3. The NL won 7-3.

  In 1955 in Milwaukee, with Mays' manager Leo Durocher in charge, Snider started and was replaced by Mays in the top of the sixth. Mays ended up with more trips to the plate when the game went into extra innings and finished 2-for-3 with two runs scored, while Snider was 0-for-2.

  The NL ended up winning the game 6-5 on Musial's leadoff homer in the bottom of the 12th, capping an NL comeback from a 5-0 deficit.

   Willie took over center for the NL beginning in '57, as Snider didn't play in another All-Star Game until 1963, his penultimate season in the major leagues. Mays --  who according to baseball-almanac.com holds All-Star career records for at-bats, extra-base hits, hits, runs, stolen bases, total bases and triples --  started 14 straight All-Star Games in center from 1957 to 1962, including the two games each year for the players' pension fund from 1959-1962,

  For the record, Snider, according to retrosheet.org,, played only 24 games off center field in his first 12 seasons of an 18-year career, but beginning in 1959 he began to see more time in right and left than in center.

  Mays, meanwhile, didn't play an outfield position other than center field until 1965 (he did have five infield stints in '62 and '63). He finished his 22-year career with only 28 games total at the other two outfield positions, according to retrosheet.org, although he did play 78 games at first base over his final six seasons.
  

Koufax KOs Yanks

Sandy Koufax set a World Series record with 15 strikeouts and pitched a six-hitter in leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 5-2 win over the New York Yankees in the opening game of the 1963 World Series.

John Roseboro gave his batterymate a big lift in the third inning of Game 1 with a three-run homer.

By Phil Ellenbecker

   "How the fuck are you supposed to able to hit that shit?"

   Can't pin this quote down for an exact citation, but I seem to recall it coming from the 1963 World Series, when Mickey Mantle turned around to Los Angeles Dodgers catcher John Roseboro and expressed his exasperation at facing Sandy Koufax.

  The left-hander, amid perhaps the greatest five-season stretch for a pitcher in major league history, had the New York Yankees almost completely bamboozled during that Series, going 2-0 with a 1.50 ERA and 23 strikeouts over 18 innings as the Dodgers upended the mighty Yankees in a four-game sweep.

  Koufax was especially bamboozling in Game 1 at Dodger Stadium, setting a World Series record with 15 strikeouts in a 5-2 Dodger win. He struck out the first five batters he faced, six of the first seven and struck out the side again in the fourth inning as New York went 12 up and 12 down to start the game.

  All but one Yankee position player struck out against Koufax. Only Clete Boyer was able to get bat on ball each time up. Losing pitcher Whitey Ford managed a pop-up, but the three pinch hitters who took his spot in the batting order each struck out, including Harry Bright to end the game.

  Bobby Richadson also struck out three times. That's the Bobby Richardson who struck out only 22 times during the regular season, finishing second in the American League in at-bats per strikeout. He led the league in that stat the following three years.

  Besides all the K's, Koufax coaxed six pop outs out of the Yanks, three in foul territory. That's a clear indication that the Bronx Bombers weren't getting around on Sandy this day, even when their bats grazed Sandy's pitches.

  Koufax did encounter some trouble. With two out in the fifth, back-to-back singles by Elston Howard and Joe Joe Pepiton broke up the perfect game. Boyer then hit a hot shot up the middle, but a diving stab by second baseman Dick Tracewski saved a run, limiting Boyer to a single and leaving the Yankees with the bases loaded when Koufax struck out pinch hitter Hector Lopez.

  Tom Tresh broke up the shutout by unloading a two-run homer in the eighth.

  But regardless of what threats the Yankees made, they were largely moot after the Dodgers built a 5-0 lead through three innings.

  Bill "Moose" Skowron, in his first year with the Dodgers after coming over from the Yankees, whom he helped win seven AL pennants and four World Series titles, got Los Angeles on the scoreboard with one out in the second when he singled in Frank Howard, who'd doubled. After a single by Tracewski, Roseboro bumped the margin to 4-0 with a three-run homer.

  Moose, who'd been traded by the Yankees for Stan Williams, was loose again in the third with a two-out single that plated Willie Davis, making it 5-0.

  More than enough for Koufax, who threw a six-hitter with three walks.

  Sandy came back four days later at Yankee Stadium with another six-hitter, with eight strikeouts and no walks, in a 2-1 Dodgers win that closed out the sweep. 

  P.S. Bob Gibson broke Koufax's record with 17 strikeouts for St. Louis in the 1968 World Series opener. That record still stands.

The Fabulous ’50s

Robin Roberts had three seasons in the top 10, including the top two, to lead major league pitchers in the 1950s, and for four straight seasons he led the National League.

Duke Snider led major league hitters in the 1950s with three seasons in the top 10 in the author's point system that rewards top-five finishes in 12 categories.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Looking for something to do amid the idleness of my unemployment, I decided to undertake an unscientific “study” of Major League Baseball in the 1950s to determine the best players of the decade and the best individual seasons by those players.

  The “study” conducted of pulling out a Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia and looking over the listing of league leaders in several categories for each year.  The top five were listed in some instances, the top four in others – don’t ask me how that line was drawn. The major categories almost all included the top five. In a couple instances just the top three were listed. I think large number of players tied had something to do with less than four, and space limitations came into play. I gave five points for the top ranking, four for second and so on down. Where just four were listed, it went 5-4-3-2. If there was a tie, I divided the total number of points between the rankings by the number of players who were tied. Example: Three players tied for second – 4+3+2=9 divided by 3=3 points for each player.

  The categories: offense -- batting average, total bases, hits, runs, slugging average, RBIs, walks, doubles, homers, steals, homer-percentage, triples; defense – winning percentage, saves, hits/nine innings/, strikeouts/nine innings, ERA, strikeouts, shutouts, innings pitched, wins, complete games, walks/nine innings, games pitched.

  What I came up with I think gives a fairly representative presentation of the top players and seasons. There are enough categories included to give a balance between the counting stats that reward durability and reliability, and the rate stats that address pure performance. Offense takes in power, speed, batting eye and contact; pitching -- power, control, durability and dominance (i.e., shutouts).   Mind you, the numbers, other than the rankings I assigned, don’t matter here, just how the players ranked in comparison with their peers. Which I think is the best way to rate players, how they rate relative to others. The 56 homers Mickey Mantle hit in 1956 don’t matter any more than the 32 Larry Doby hit  in 1952 and ’54; they were simply the best over their peers in that particular year in that particular category.

  This was a fun project to do, as I delved year by year into players legendary, familiar, surprising and unfamiliar; reading history unfold and feeling a true sense of who stood out and who didn’t.

Top 10 pitching seasons

1, Robin Roberts, 1952, 31

2, Robin Roberts, 1954, 30                                                                                                                         3 (tie). Johnny Antonelli, 1954, and Bobby Shantz, 1952, 29 ½

5 (tie). Billy Pierce, 1953, and Robin Roberts, 1953, 28

7 (tie). Warren Spahn, 1952, Allie Reynolds, 1952, Robin Roberts, 1953, and Warren Spahn 1958, 27

Top 10 batting seasons

1, Mickey Mantle, 1956, 44

2. Willie Mays, 1955, 40                                                                                                                                     

3. Al Rosen, 1953, 36

4. Duke Snider, 1954, 33 ½

5 (tie). Ernie Banks, 1958, and Hank Aaron, 1959, 34

7. Duke Snider, 1953, 33 ½

8, Hank Aaron, 1957, 33

9. Ralph Kiner, 1951, 32 ½

10. Duke Snider, 1956, 32
Among my admittedly nonauthoritative observations and conclusions:

n  As much as we make of batting titles, or  used to, batting average among the categories has the least do with overall batting excellence. Oftentimes people who would appear on the batting average list wouldn’t appear elsewhere or rarely elsewhere.

n  Robin Roberts was definitely the most dominant pitcher of the 1950s by these metrics, compiling the most points in the National League in four consecutive seasons,  1952-1955. He also had the top point totals, with 31 in 1952 and 30 in 1954. Warren Spahn was the only other pitcher in either league make the top 10 more than once, tied for seventh in 1952 and 1958. And the pitching was far more dominant in the early ’50s, with only two seasons in the top 10 from 1955 on.

Mickey Mantle had the best season among major league hitters in the 1950s according the author's point system. He also topped American League hitters in four straight seasons.

n  Somewhat surprisingly, Duke Snider had the most top-10 seasons among the batters with three, in 1953, 1954 and 1956. This gives Snider some ballast in the argument that he was in the same class, at least offensively, as Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, the other two New York center fielders of the decade included in the trio (“Willie, Mickey and the Duke,” in song) that Big Apple fans compared and constrasted and argued about during this time. Mays and Mantle had only one top-10 season apiece. However, those were the top seasons of the decade, Mantle topping the list with 44 in his 1956 Triple Crown year and Mays second at 40 in 1955, one year after winning the NL MVP award. (Mays was fourth in ’55 MVP voting although his ’55 was better by this system than his ’54, when he scored 29). Hank Aaron was the only other player in the top 10 more than once, in 1957 and 1958. Which tells you a lot about why the Milwaukee Braves reached the World Series both those years and nearly won both of them.

n  Roberts’ point total led the NL four straight years, 1952-55. Spain had second-most NL-leading seasons among pitchers with three. Snider led the league most among batters with three, followed by Ralph Kiner and Aaron with two apiece.

n  Starting in 1955, Mantle led AL batters for four straights seasons

, tying with Williams for first in 1957. Williams was the other multiple league leader in the AL with two. Among the pitchers, 10 different pitchers topped the standings in the decade.

Holtzman's no-no: Let the batters do the work

  By Phil Ellenbecker
 

Ken Holtzman pitched a no-hitter on Aug. 18, 1969 without striking out a single batter.

Pitch to contact.

  A once-favored pitching philosophy ("let your fielders help you") that's become somewhat passe in this age of power pitching-on-power hitting, hit-or-miss baseball.

  But there's something to be said for everyone -- fielders, fans, pitchers, maybe not hitters -- getting in on the fun with batters being put out by putting the bat on the ball. It's not boring.

  And Ken Holtzman put on a clinic of pitching to contact on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 1969, when he threw a no-hitter without the benefit of one single strikeout. The left-hander, in his fourth year in the major leagues, set the Atlanta Braves down on 12 ground outs, 12 fly outs and three pop-ups as he ran his record to 14-7.

  The only blemish on Holtzman's day before 37,514 at Wrigley Field -- amid the Cubs' ill-fated run at a National League East Division title -- were the three walks he dealt out, to Gil Garrido, Clete Boyer and Rico Carty. But in each case he disposed of the Braves in short order. One-onewalk to Garrido in the second followed by two fly outs. Two-out walk to Boyer in fourth followed by a fly out. One-one walk in the seventh to Carty followed by two more fly outs, then six more straight in the next two frames to close out the no-no.

   Facing the top of the order to finish off the no-hitter in the top of the ninth, Holtzman went around the horn and retired Felipe Alou on a pop to shortstop Don Kessinger, got Felix Millan on a grounder to Ron Santo at third, and Hank Aaron ended it when he grounded out to Glenn Beckert at short.

  Aaron did threaten Holtzman's no-hitter and shutout leading off the seventh. "Holtzman was aided by a wind that blew in from center field and kept a seventh-inning drive by Henry Aaron in the park; left fielder Billy Williams caught it at the wall," Rich Puerzer wrote in his biography of Aaron for the Society for the American Baseball Research. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/453be7e7

  What's impressive about Holtzman's outing, beyond the no-hitter itself and the no strikeouts, is that it came against a pretty potent lineup that included two Hall of Famers in Aaron and Orlando Cepeda. Not to mention Carty with a .299 lifetime batting average and Alou with a .289 lifetime average and  three All-Star selections. The Braves finished third in the NL that year in batting average and fifth in runs scored in the 12-team NL (up from 10 for the first time in that expansion year).

  And the southpaw did it against a lineup that included all but one hitter being right-handed. No platoon advantage here.

  Beckert was the busiest Cub on the day with seven assists, while Jim Hickman had six put-outs in right field. Holtzman kept everybody happy. Kessinger had three assists and Santo two, while in the outfield Williams had three put-outs in left and Don Young three in center.

  A look at retrosheet.org's play-to-play for the game reveals Holtzman, despite facing a right-handed heavy lineup most of the time, got the Braves to hit the ball to his left most of the time, with 13 outs going to second or right, six to third or left, and eight up the middle to short or center. Maybe the wind had something to do with it.

  And it wasn't as if Holtzman couldn't make 'em swing and miss. In fact he had 10 strikeouts in his next start and double-figure K's in two others. He was fifth in the league in strikeouts the next year.

  Holtzman finished 1969 with a 17-13 record and 3.58 ERA.

 Meanwhile the Cubs, who led the New York Mets by 7 1/2 games in the East following Tuesday's win, lost seven of their next nine, beginning a tailspin that saw them lose out to the Miracle Mets by eight games in the end, denying them their first postseason berth since 1945. (Holtzman stopped the beginning of their bleeding by getting the win on Aug. 23 after three straight losses).

   Holtzman came into the major leagues with ballyhoo that he couldn't quite live up to. From Puerzer's bio: "Upon his arrival in the major leagues, Ken Holtzman was promoted as the new Sandy Koufax."

  Perhaps that was just because he was a left-hander rather than a flamethrower. Nevertheless, Holtzman had a distinguished 15-year career with a 174-150 lifetime record with a 3.45 ERA. He was a mainstay on Oakland A's teams that won World Series titles in 1972-74, when Holtzman went 59-41 with a 2.85 ERA.

  Holtzman was the No. 2 man on the A's staff behind Catfish Hunter in Oakland, just he was understudy to Fergie Jenkins in Chicago.

  But on the afternoon of Aug. 19, 1969, Holtzman was front and center by getting the Atlanta Braves to get themselves out.

  Box score and play-by-play: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B08190CHN1969.htm

The Sensational ’60s

Sandy Koufax had the top three pitching seasons in the major leagues in the 1960s.

Frank Robinson's Triple Crown season in 1966, in his first season after being traded from Cincinnati to Baltimore, topped all major league hitters in the 1960s.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  I’m continuing my “study” of the top seasons and players of the decade in Major League Baseball by taking a look at the 1960s.

  The “study” consisted of pulling out a Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia and looking over the listing of league leaders in several categories for each year. The top five were listed in some instances, the top four in others – don’t ask me how that line was drawn. The major categories almost all included the top five. In a couple instances just the top three were listed. Sometimes less than two. I think a large number of players tied had something to do with less than four, and space limitations came into play. I gave five points for the top ranking, four for second and so on down. Where just four were listed, it went 5-4-3-2. If there was a tie, I divided the total number of points between the rankings by the number of players who were tied. Example: Three players tied for second – 4+3+2=9 divided by 3=3 points for each player.

  The categories: hitting -- batting average, total bases, hits, runs, slugging average, RBIs, walks, doubles, homers, steals, homer-percentage, triples; pitching  – winning percentage, saves, hits/nine innings/, strikeouts/nine innings, ERA, strikeouts, shutouts, innings pitched, wins, complete games, walks/nine innings, games pitched.

  What I came up with I think gives a fairly representative presentation of the top players and seasons. There are enough categories included to give a balance between the counting stats that reward durability and reliability and the rate stats that address pure performance. Offense takes in power, speed, batting eye and contact; pitching -- power, control, durability and dominance (i.e., shutouts). Mind you, the numbers, other than the rankings I assigned, don’t matter here, just how the players ranked in comparison with their peers. Which I think is the best way to rate players, how they rate relative to others. The 52 homers Willie Mays hit in 1965 to lead the National League don’t matter any more than the 32 Tony Conigliaro hit, also in ’65, to lead the AL; they were simply the best over their peers in that particular year in that particular category.

Top 10 pitching seasons

1. Sandy Koufax, 1965, 44

2. Sandy Koufax, 1963, 39 1/2

3 (tie).  Sandy  Koufax, 1966, and Bob Gibson, 1968, 38

5. Juan Marichal, 1966, 34

6. Dean Chance, 1964, 32 1/2

7. Luis Tiant, 1968, 31

8. Denny McLain, 1968, 30

9. Sam McDowell, 1965, 29 1/2

10. Jim Kaat, 1965, 28

Top 10 batting seasons

1, Frank Robinson, 1966, 45

2. Carl Yastrzemski, 1967, 40 1/2

3. Hank Aaron, 1963, 41

4 Frank Robinson, 1962, 35 1/2

5. Reggie Jackson, 1969, 32

6 Willie Mays, 1962, 31 1/2

7. Hank Aaron, 1961, 30 1/2

8. Willie Mays, 1965, 30

9 (tie). Mickey Mantle, 1961, and Harmon Killebrew, 1967, 29 ½

 Among my admittedly nonauthoritative observations and conclusions:
n  Boy, does Bill DeWitt look bad. DeWitt was the Cincinnati Reds general manager who traded Frank Robinson for, essentially, Milt Pappas in between the 1965 and 1966 seasons, sensing Robby was headed downhill, “an old 30” as he termed it. All  Robinson did in 1966 was win the American League Triple Crown. He also led the league in slugging average, runs scored, homer percentage and total bases, was second in hits, and third in walks and doubles. That all added up to 45 points under this system, the highest total in the two decades I’ve surveyed so far.
n  It took another AL Triple Crown the next year, by Carl Yastrzemski, for the second-highest total of the decade. The only other back-to-back years for Triple Crowns were 1934 (Lou Gehrig in the AL) and 1933 (Jimmie Foxx in the AL, Chuck Klein in the NL).
n  Robinson pops up again in the No. 4 spot with his 1961 season in Cincinnati.
n  Figuring out the best season for Mr. Consistency and former all-time (some say current) homer champ Hank Aaron is a tough chore.  But 1963, when he tallied 41 points for the No. 3 spot on this list, may be the one. Aaron, 1961, also had the seventh-best season . Robinson, Aaron and Willie Mays (sixth, 1962, and eighth, 1965) had the multiple seasons on this list with two apiece.
n  By looking at the best pitching and hitting seasons, it’s little wonder the National League went 11-1 in All-Star games in the decade (two games apiece for the pension fund in 1960 and 1961). Dominant players make for All-Star dominance.  NL pitchers had the top five seasons, followed by five from the AL. Six of the top 10 batting seasons came from the NL.
n  Not surprisingly, Sandy Koufax dominated the pitching lists as surely as he dominated National League hitters during ’60s, putting together perhaps the best consecutive  six-season stretch on the mound in history – good enough to get him into the  Hall of Fame despite a career that came to an end at the age of 30 because of elbow problems. Koufax had the top three seasons in this survey with 44 points in  1965, followed by 39½ in 1963 and 38 in 1966, tied with Bob Gibson’s 1968. Those seasons dwarfed the top ’50s mark of 31 by Robin Roberts. Juan Marichal was fifth with 34 in 1966. It took Dean Chance’s 32 1/2 in 1964, good for sixth, for an AL pitcher to land a spot in the top 10.
n  I was somewhat surprised to see Reggie Jackson’s 1969, with 32, emerge as the fifth-best hitting season of the decade. Reggie was in just his second full season in the majors. That was the first year I started following baseball and I remember him being on a Babe Ruth homer pace early in the season before leveling off to 47.
n  Sudden Sam McDowell, ninth among pitchers at 29½ in 1965, is an example of a pitcher not having to pile up big win totals to rank high. McDowell was fourth in wins that year with a 17-11 record, but was first in ERA, strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings and least hits per nine innings, and second in innings pitched and complete games (tied). He was a workhorse, and efficient with that workload, and it paid off in points. McDowell was a 20-game winner only once in his career.
n  Getting away from the Top 10, I’m wondering how many players in history have broken in the way Tony Oliva did. He led the AL standings his rookie season and finished second then third the next two seasons. He won the batting title his first two seasons. Alas, continuous injuries and surgeries probably kept him from a sure berth in the Hall of Fame.
n  As seemed to be the case from time to time, players’ top seasons came immediately before or after the seasons they’re known for. In Roger Maris’ case, his best year was 1960 – 27 points. In 1961, when Maris with 61 homers broke Ruth’s record, he finished third with 25½.
n  And has also seemed to be the case, seasons looked on as primo and even historic didn’t rate No. 1 in this survey. Denny McLain, going 31-6 in 1968, became the first 30-game winner since Dizzy Dean in 1934. But Luis Tiant beat him out that year, 31-30.
n  The year 1967 in NL pitching was notable for how little dominance there was. Cy  Young winner Mike McCormick and Jim Bunning tied for No. 1 with 12 apiece. Three other hurlers with 10 or 11 filled out the top five. This is somewhat ironic since the year before and after included three of the top five pitching seasons. But Koufax was gone in ’67, Gibson’s season was cut short by a fractured bone in his right leg courtesy a line drive off the bat of Roberto Clemente (although he came back to win three games in the World Series), and Marichal also struggled with injuries.
n  Chicago reliever Eddie Fisher finished third in the AL in 1965 despite relievers  usually filling only two of the 12 pitching categories. How did this happen? Well, besides finishing first in games pitched and second in saves, he also was second in ERA and hits per nine innings, and fourth in winning percentage with a 15-7 mark. And how did Fisher manage starter-like numbers to rank so high? Well, he pitched 165 innings, three more than the qualifying number of innings. That’s in 82 games, none of them starts. Obviously, way before the day of the one-inning closer.
n  Camilio Pascual, although he didn’t crack the pitching top 10, deserves mention for leading the AL in three straight years, 1961-63, tying with Ralph Terry in 1962. That made it No. 1 in four of five seasons for Pascual, who also led in 1959. McLain was the other multiple league leader among AL pitchers in the decade with back-to-back No. 1s in 1968 and ’69.

Willie Mays had four straight National League-leading seasons in the 1960s, including two seasons among the top 10 for the decade in the major leagues.

Camilio Pascual led American League pitchers in three straight seasons in the early 1960s and four of five seasons extending back to 1959.

n  Speaking of league leaders, Mickey Mantle, by topping the AL lists in 1960 and ’61 (tied with Maris in ’60) made it six No. 1s in seven seasons, with Harvey Kuehnn’s 1959 interrupting that stretch. This gives some strength to the argument that has been advanced by some, including Bill James, that Mantle was the better ballplayer than Mays in their primes. While Mantle, who broke in the same year as Mays (1951), led the AL in six seasons during the ‘50s and ‘60s, Mays led the NL five times.
n   But Mays truly shined in the ’60s with four straight league-leading seasons while Mantle faded away.
n  Such was the reputation Mantle had built up that he won  the MVP award in 1962, despite missing 39 games and hitting 30 homers and 89 RBIs, not quite up to his high standards of the past few years. His five points rated 11^th in the AL, led by Harmon Killebrew’s 24. Mantle had finished second in MVP voting in ’60 and ’61.
n  Yastrzemski joined Mantle as multiple AL league leaders in the ’60s with two seasons. He topped the league in 1963, when he won the first of his three batting titles and also led in hits and doubles.
n  Joining Mays as multiple league leaders among NL batters were Aaron with three, in 1960, ’63 and ’67 (tied with Mays in ’60) and Willie McCovey in 1968 (tied with Pete Rose) and ’69.

Magic Royals Moments, 1976: Leo flips The Bird

Dennis Leonard won more games than any other American League right-hander for the Kansas City Royals between 1975 and 1981. On the night of July 9, 1976, he got the best of Detroit Tigers rookie sensation Mark Fidrych, winning 1-0.

Mark Fidrych, known for his kooky antics, is shown manicuring the mound.

By Phil Ellenbecker
  In the summer of 1976, the 200th birthday of the United States, as the country rolled through Independence Day, rookie Mark ("The Bird") Fidrych was hotter than a firecracker, especially at Tiger Stadium where Detroit was drawing 40,000- and 50,000-plus (capacity 54,400) on the nights he pitched for a downtrodden team that would win only 74 games, whose attendance for the year averaged 18,338.

 But on Friday night, July 9, the Kansas City Royals' Dennis Leonard doused those fireworks somewhat by outdueling Fidrych, 1-0, before 51,041 faithful stuffed inside the venerable old ballyard at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull avenues.

  The battle of bulldog right-handers matched the Tigers' upstart against a third-year Royals' pitcher who was just coming into his own and would emerge from 1975 to 1981, with 130 wins, as the winningest right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball.

   Leonard certainly solidified his status this night, throwing a four-hitter with eight strikeouts and no walks. He retired 18 of the final 19 batters he faced, including five of six by strikeout in the seventh and eighth innings.                                                                                                     Fidrych, who had won eight straight starts and nine of 10 coming in with a 1.87 ERA over that span, was certainly no chump this time out, pitching well enough to win most times. Aided by three double plays, he scattered nine hits, struck out two (he was a pitch-to-contact hurler) and walked one. Only a fourth-inning hiccup cost him, and only because Leonard was so unyielding.

  "My father-in-law, God bless him, flew to Detroit to meet us," Leonard said as reported in "100 Things Royals Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die," by Matt Fulks. "The night before I was to pitch, we were in a little piano bar – I was drinking water – and I told him, 'Fidrych, my ass, I’m going to beat him tomorrow.' ”

  Said longtime Royals announcer Denny Mathews in the book: "You had the feeling at the outset that this game could be something special. And it was. Fans hung on every pitch because it meant something. Not many baseball games give you something compelling like that."  Two Royals in their prime and one on his way out brought K.C. the win. After Amos Otis grounded out leading off the Royals' fourth, George Brett and John Mayberry, in the No. 3 and 4 spots, had back-to-back singles to right field. Hal McRae followed with a single to left that scored Brett.

  And that was enough for Leonard.

  Brett and McRae would finish 1-2, respectively, in the American League batting race that year. Mayberry, coming off a year in which he finished second in the AL MVP voting, plummeted from 34 to 13 homers and hit .232. Although he hit 20-plus homers the next four seasons, he never again approached the '75 form that saw him drive in 106 runs to go with a .291 average and the 34 homers.

  But even as he struggled Big John was still a threat to deliver, as he did on this night.

  Meanwhile, Leonard was lights out from the fourth inning on after allowing three runners into scoring position in the first three frames. None of those Tigers reached farther than second base, and catcher Buck Martinez helped out by nailing would-be base stealer Alex Johnson in the second.

  The Tigers got one more base runner in scoring position after the third when Rusty Staub singled and stole second leading off the seventh. But Leonard bore down to strike out Jason Thompson, Johnson and Aurelio Rodriguez.

  Leonard ran his record to 9-3 on his way to a 17-10 season with a 3.51 ERA, tying for eighth in the league in wins and strikeouts. He reached 20 or more wins in three of next four seasons.

  The Royals ended up reaching the playoffs for the first time with a 90-72 record to win the AL West. That was the first of three straight division titles, each of which ended with losses to the Yankees in the AL Championship Series.

  The always-a-bundle-of nerves Bird, known as much for his on-the-mound antics ("talking to the ball," manicuring the mound) as his stellar pitching, dropped to 9-2. He finished the year 19-9 with a league-leading ERA of 2.34. He was second in the AL Cy Young voting and obviously Rookie of the Year. He also led the league in complete games with 24 and in WAR, was third in hits plus walks per nine innings, fourth in wins, and fifth in walks per nine.

  Alas, knee and arm miseries limited him to 10 wins over the next four years before he was out of baseball. He died on April 13, 2009, at age 54, in an accident as he worked underneath a truck.  What a tragic, sad ending  for a humble, down-earth guy who'd taken Detroit and America by storm in 1976.

  Fortune didn't smile on Leonard, either, although he didn't have nearly the bad luck that Fidrych did. Limited by knee problems after 1981, he won but 24 games over his final four seasons before retiring after the 1986 season.

  But on that magical Friday night of July 9, 1976, Leo and The Bird were about as good as it got.

Ted Williams, always on base: Streaking from sickbed in ’57

Ted Williams hadn’t played in a game since Sept. 1 when he went on a steak in which he reached base 16 consecutive times from Sept. 17-Sept. 23 in 1957. He hit home runs in his first four official at-bats starting off the streak.

By Phil Ellenbecker

  Former Kansas City Royals general manager John Schuerholz once said,  “George Brett could roll out of bed on Christmas morning and hit a line drive.”
  With my limited Googling skills I couldn’t find any other citations, but I’d venture to say similar quotes have been uttered about other outstanding hitters. And in 1957, Ted Williams figuratively rolled out of bed and started hitting home runs, or taking a walk, or throwing in a single here or there. Whatever he did when he took his turn at bat, pitchers weren’t getting him out.
  When Williams stepped up to the plate on Sept. 17, he hadn’t seen action in a game since Sept. 1, having been plagued by a chest cold that kept him in bed until Sept. 9.
  “He went back to the Somerset Hotel and rested and stoked himself with vitamin pills and prescriptions and some potions of his own choosing, and browsed through his baseball and fishing literature, and tied a few fishing lines,” Edwin Pope wrote of Ted’s confinement in “Ted Williams: The Golden Year 1957.”
  Williams returned to workouts Sept. 12 and suffered a slight relapse before recovering enough to pronounce himself ready to pinch hit five days later against the Kansas City A’s at Fenway Park.
  Red Sox manager Pinky Higgins called on Williams to bat for pitcher Murray Wall leading off the eighth inning. Williams slugged his 34th homer of the season.
  Thus began a string in which Williams reached base 16 consecutive times, including homers in his first four official at-bats.
  Among many heroic feats in Williams’ career on and off the baseball diamond  — including crash-landing a fighter jet as a Marine during the Korean War — this has to rank right up there and was a fitting climax to a stupendous season in which Williams became the oldest batting champion of all time — with an average of .388, which is the third-highest to lead a league since Williams became the last player to hit .400 at .406 in 1941. He’s tied with Rod Carew in 1977, behind Brett (.390, 1980) and Tony Gwynn (.394, strike-shortened 1994.)
  The four homers in four straight at-bats ties with several other players for the major league record. His 16 consecutive times on base falls one short of the record set by Earl Averill Jr. in 1962 and Piggy Ward in 1893.
  But we know Averill wasn’t out for a spell before beginning his streak and have to suspect Ward wasn’t, although we have no records to show it. Nevertheless, neither one accomplished their streaks at the ripe old age of 39 as Williams did, having turned that age Aug. 30.
  (And Averill did benefit by reaching on an error and a fielder’s choice, to go with seven hits and eight walks. Ward reached on eight hits, eight walks and one hit by pitch, while Williams’ streak included six hits, nine walks and a hit by pitch.)
  Here’s the rundown on Williams’ streak appearance by appearance:
  Sept. 17: Williams deposited a 2-1 pitch from Tom Morgan into the seats to tie the game at 8-8, and the Red Sox went on to win 9-8.
  Sept. 18: Summoned off the bench again in the eighth, Williams batted for pitcher Frank Sullivan and was intentionally walked with a runner on first, two out and the A’s leading 2-1. Billy Consolo then ran for Williams. Boston didn’t score, and Kansas City’s lead held up as the final.
  (The A’s flip-flopped consonants on pitchers of record this day, as a day after Tom Morgan was the losing pitcher for K.C., Tom Gorman was the winning pitcher this day, throwing a complete game. The pitching firm of Morgan and Gorman was together for this one year in Kansas City, and both were members of the New York Yankees during 1952-54. And according to LinkedIn there’s a nonprofit organization management professional named Morgan Gorman in Evansville, Wisconsin.)
  Sept. 20: After the Red Sox had the day off and then traveled to Yankee Stadium, this time Williams came off the bench leading off the ninth, again batting for Wall, and he homered off Hall of Famer Whitey Ford. Williams sat on a 2-2 high fastball for his second pinch hit homer in three trips to the plate since coming back. It started a four-run inning that was too little, too late in a 7-4 loss.
  “It was the only one he ever gave me,” Williams said of the pitch he received from the 5-feet-10 Ford, who usually kept the ball low and away from Ted. “And the only reason he put that pitch there at all was because he was tired and had lost a good deal of his control.”
It was the only homer Williams had off Ford in 45 at-bats against him over his career, although Ted did have a .378 average.
  Sept. 21: Inserted into the starting lineup in left field for the first time since Aug. 31, Williams reached the seats in right off Bob Turley for a grand slam his second time up, after being intentionally walked in the first. Williams connected in a six-run second on a 2-0 pitch for his 15th career grand slam. Williams had two more grand slams in his career and is tied for seventh all time with 17.
  So that made two homers in two straight at-bats off the Yankees’ prime hurlers. Turley was 34-13 with a 2.86 ERA in 1957 and 1958 and was the major leagues’ Cy Young Award winner (only one winner in both leagues at that time) in 1958.
  Williams walked his next two times up and then left for a pinch runner in Boston’s 8-3 win.
  Sept. 22: After drawing yet another walk in the first, Williams made it four homers in four straight at-bats with a shot off Tom Sturvidant in the fourth that gave the Red Sox a 1-0 lead. But that was it as the Yankees prevailed 5-1.
  Williams finally kept the ball in the park after his fourth-inning homer with a single to right in the sixth, then walked in the eighth.
  Sept. 23: In the opening game of a series in Washington, Williams singled to left field in the first and scored on a Dick Gernert’s single, giving the Red Sox a 2-0 lead on their way to a 9-4 win. He walked his next three times up, scoring twice, and was hit by a pitch before leaving for a pinch runner.
  Sept. 24: The Senators’ Hal Griggs finally got Ted out, retiring him on a grounder to second in a 1-2-3 first inning. But Williams homered his next time up, leading off the fourth inning for his 38th and final homer of the season, to give the Red Sox a 2-0 lead. That proved to be the difference in a 2-1 win. Williams was called out on strikes and walked his final two times up.
  Besides stopping his streak, the fact Griggs was able to get Williams looking in the sixth appears quite notable considering the number of walks Ted had been drawing and the respect he had from umpires on ball and strike calls (or perhaps how much he had said umps bamboozled).
  This was Griggs’ first start of the year after a September call-up. With a final 6-26 four-year record and 5.50 ERA, his face-downs with Williams this day, homer aside, might rank as a career highlight besides a two-hit shutout he had in 1959. (Williams was 5 for 11 off Griggs lifetime for a .455 average.)
  Williams went 2 for 3 the next day and was 3 for 6 over Boston’s next three and final games, giving Ted his final mark of .388. He was 6 for 6 during his streak and 6 for 12 after that, giving him an average of .667 from Sept. 17 on.

With his hot hitting at the end of 1957, Ted Williams (left) overtook Mickey Mantle (right) for the American League batting title and became the oldest player ever, at age 39, to win a batting title. However, Mantle won the MVP award in a controversial vote.

  Williams had been at .376 on Sept. 1, one point behind Mickey Mantle. With his time off and hot hitting once he came back, Ted was able to finish 23 points ahead of Mantle in the batting race. Besides winning his fifth batting title, Williams, who played in 132 games, also won his ninth slugging average crown (.731) and was second in homers,
  It wasn’t enough to win him the MVP, though. Mantle took the honors, his second straight MVP and second of three, with six first-place votes and 233 balloting points to five first-place votes and 209 points for Williams. Two of the voting writers (neither one from Boston) placed Williams ninth and 10th on their ballots.
  The results met with disparagement from Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and others, but this wasn’t the first time Williams might have been robbed of an MVP. He finished second to Joe DiMaggio in his 1941 .406 season and also was runner-up to DiMaggio after winning the Triple Crown in 1947. And he was runner-up to Joe Gordon after winning the Triple Crown in 1942. In 1947 one Boston elector didn’t even include Williams in his top 10.
  The fact was, Williams’ strained relationship with writers probably cost him more than a couple MVPs. Six times he was the league leader in WAR (wins above replacement), the modern metric meant to measure a  player’s overall value (and this includes defensive ability, for which Ted was not noted).
  Williams was named the Sporting News’ player of the year for 1957, and MVP or not, the season was a remarkable one by his or anybody else’s standards, coming at ages 38-39 and just three years removed from the end of his career in 1960.
  And it was more than Ted bargained for.
  “His thoughts centered on making this his last year,” Pope wrote in “Golden Year.” “‘I hope I can just start 100 games,’ Ted was quoted, ‘and maybe play in 125, and hit .325 or a little higher.
  “‘If anybody had even asked me three years ago if I would be in uniform in 1957, I’d have to say no. Sometimes, I guess, when you think you’re beginning to slip, you feel like packing up your bag and saying the hell with it. But when you get older, you think better of the game.”
  Ah, the hell with it Ted, why not just go out and hit .388?
Truly Golden
  As you can see, besides my usual sources — retrosheet.org and baseballreference.com — I relied on Edwin Pope‘s “Ted Williams, The Golden Year 1957” to flesh out this account. I had this sitting around because I was flipping through some early 1970s issues of The Sporting News a couple years ago when I came across an ad for the book. I thought, “That looks like it would be a good book, I wouldn’t mind having it.”
  I remember when I used to look through old issues of magazines and come across stuff I’d like to order and thinking I could actually order it. But of course I couldn’t because THE MAGAZINE WAS 15 OR 20 YEARS OLD.
  But that’s not the case anymore, thanks to the miracle of the internet and Amazon. If I wanted that book, by golly I could have it, right Amazon? Yes, they did have it. And it looks like they still do.
  And for those of you who think you’ve read everything there is worth reading about Ted Williams, you might want to add this to your list. Pope seems to be one of those writers who did have a good relationship with Ted, and this gives the book some insight you might be missing elsewhere. And Pope, a Miami Herald legend who just died in January at age 88, did pick a heck of a season to write about, besides giving you a good overall view of Williams’ career and persona.

Sources

For consecutive times on base streaks: http://www.gammonsdaily.com/earl-averill-jr-the-batter-who-reached-base-17-straight-times/; http://bleacherreport.com/articles/934773-ranking-the-most-unbreakable-mlb-player-streaks-and-consecutive-game-records
For general information: retrosheet.org and baseball reference.com
For information on Ted Williams’ 1957 season: “Ted Williams, The Golden Year 1957,” Edwin Pope, Prentice-Hall, 1970 (available at amazon.com)