single seasOn average
Posted in histOry on July 25th, 2011 by The Wayward OWe’re all used to more than a little half-bakery from Team of Blog.
Kent Mercker? Garrett Atkins? Blog could go on. And Blog thinks it’s pretty clear that Blog isn’t out to bash Team. Team-Bashing is such an uninspiring pastime.
But yesterday, during bottom of fifth inning of nasty little game in which home plate wanabe Major League Umpire Todd Tichenor treated Jeremy Guthrie like red-headed stepchild and Team, you know, lost again, television play-by-play man Jim Hunter busted with daily trivia fact and, well, even Moribund Blog of Team, which barely even blogs anymore, got emails about it…
So Blog went back and checked. Sure enough:
Hunter: “Time here for our AT&T Mobility trivia fact. No Oriole has ever hit .400 in a single season. Hard feat to do. Melvin Mora, who hit .340 in 2004, holds the single season average [record] for the Orioles.”
Color man Mike Flanagan then muses about how Roberto Alomar, recently inducted into Hall of Fame with Blue Jays cap on, was “flirting with .400″ in late May into June of 1996, his first year with Team.
During which Fancy MASN busted with the fancy graphics, even:
Image via MASN
Image via MASN
It’s a hard feat to do, to be sure, but not impossible, as shortstop Hughie Jennings proved in 1896, hitting .401 for year and as right fielder Willie Keeler proved in 1897, hitting .424.
Jennings played in 130 games during his .400 year with 521 at-bats and Keeler played in 129 games during his year with 564 at-bats.
Like Nick Markakis, Keeler typically batted in the two slot.
So — at least two Orioles have hit .400 for a full season. And, at risk of rubbing it in, your AT&T Mobility facts were not, in fact, facts.
Now it’s entirely true that those “Old Orioles” were in National League. But there was no caveat and Hunter’s statement was quite clear. No Oriole had ever done it.
Speaking of which, if you’ve never read Robert W. Creamer’s essay called “The Old Orioles.”
“The Old Oriole mystique faded away, to disappear almost completely in the 1950s when Baltimore returned to the Major Leagues after half a century of exile in the minors. The new Orioles effectively erased the memory of the Old ones,” he writes.
Indeed.
You could almost forgive ‘em for “forgetting” except that both are HoF’ers and Keeler coined one of Game’s most famous phrases: “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.” And Jennings’ nickname, Ee-Yah, is Best Ever, if not most famous.
Well we have our Team. We have our MASN. They are one and same. We have our control over televised Nationals broadcasts. And we have our Mr. Peter Angelos, who clearly loses zero sleep when Team loses.
And we have our losses. Tell you what: Somebody inside organization really ought really to read Creamer’s essay. It’s about a bad Team that found a way.
