Here are a few bits of trivia inspired by baseball cards from the 1988 Topps set, plus a shameless plug for a new blog of mine (see below.)

• Most of us know that Don Mattingly hit a record 6 grand slams in the 1987 season. But did you know that he didn't hit any other grand slams in his entire career? Check out his home run log for proof.
• Mark McGwire set a record with 49 homers in his rookie season, and that's the 4th highest total for a player within his first 3 seasons.
• Eddie Murray has the most 20-HR seasons among switch-hitters.
• The Niekro brothers have 8 out of 60 seasons since 1901 in which a pitcher at least 40 years old threw 200+ innings.
• Nolan Ryan has the most 200-strikeout seasons, and he might hold onto that record for a long time.
• Sure, Benito Santiago had a 34-game hitting streak as a rookie, but he never topped 13 games after that.

If you like this kind of stuff, check out my new blog 88 Topps Cards, where I'm posting each and every card from the 1988 Topps set. In addition to cool stats like those above, I'm also commenting on the cards themselves. I won't ordinarily double-post the same stats here and there. Keep reading this blog, of course...I'll still be posting here every day.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 9:21 am and is filed under Event Finders, Season Finders, Streak Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.