Wednesday, July 28, 2010
80 years ago today .. .
Posted by Chris JaffeIt was on this day - July 28 - in 1930, in a doubleheader against the Reds that Cub slugger Hack Wilson belted his 100th, 101st, and 102nd RBIs of the season, en route to his still-existing MLB record of 191 RBIs in a season. For context, Miguel Cabrera currently leads all MLB (by a fairly healthy margin) with 88 RBIs, which is 11 below where Wilson began his July 28.
Actually, given how many runs Wilson batted in his big season, he was actually of to a big of a slow start. He had 102 RBIs after 98 games, brought home 89 more in the last 58 games the Cubs played that year. There's a reason no one's ever seriously challenged this record.
If anyone's curious, the record for earliest to 100 RBIs is held by Hank Greenberg, who clubbed in his 100th RBI of 1935 on July 6, but hit "only" 70 more on the year.
Info from Baseball-Reference.com
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail. Oh, and now he's on twitter.
“...he was actually of to a big of a slow start.”
I think you meant he was actually off to a bit of a slow start.