So the only comp I have for Alvarez's season is Honus Wagner in 1908.
WAR: 1st in NL (11.5)
Runs: 2nd in NL (100, 1st was Fred Tenney with 101)
Hits: 1st (201)
2B: 1st (39)
3B: 1st (19)
HR: 2nd (10, 1st was Tim Jordan with 12)
RBI: 1st (109)
SB: 1st (53)
BA: 1st (.354)
OBP: 1st (.415)
SLG: 1st (.542)
OPS: 1st, of course, (.957)
OPS+: 1st (205)
rOBA: 1st (.474)
Rbat+: 1st (.210)
TB: 1st (308)
WAA: 1st
All while striking out 22 times all year, which if you put the PAs at 500 or more, is 4th best in the league (actually the three better than him had between 90 and 140 less plate appearances than him)
And maybe the best defensive SS in the league (although Joe Tinker is better according to dWAR, but honestly who knows)
The Bad News Bears is my all time favorite baseball movie. Plus it very accurately depicts what my childhood was like in the 70’s. That, and Dazed and Confused (which also has a bit of baseball), are more like documentaries of my middle school and high school, rather than fiction.
There's another existential League of Their Own question you might consider: Is it true that there is no crying in baseball? If so, is there an exemption for Los Angeles Angels fans?
I love the Orioles Hall of Fame but find it so odd that neither Hank Bauer or Joe Altobelli their World Series Winning skippers are allowed in because they didn’t have enough games in a O’s uniform.
I could talk for hours about Terry Crowley who was part of 4 of my favorite teams of all time.
Not the best baseball movie and I haven’t seen it in decades, but I loved “It happens every spring”. 1949 movie that was especially created for fairly new 10-year-old baseball fans. I’m guessing I was around that age when I first saw it. Just delightful. One of my favorite parts of the movie is that they had a catcher that they had to have used Yogi Barra as the model, because they had him say some outrageous things. Very very feel good movie. He knows that me watch it soon.
Late chiming in here, so probably nobody will read this, but my favorite baseball movie is one few people remember or maybe have even seen: Long Gone. It was made for HBO in the late 80s and never got a DVD release, only VHS. Based on a Paul Hemphill novel, it's a comedy/drama about a low minor league team in the deep South in the 1950s.
Kind of a grittier, funnier, less-Hollywood-glossy Bull Durham. Stars William Petersen, Virginia Madsen, and Dermot Mulroney. You can see it for free on youtube, although the video quality is poor -- uploaded from someone's VHS tape, I think.
I'm a lifelong Orioles fan. People like to rip Brady for his 50 home run season, but man, I was 11, and I thought that broad shouldered lefty golfin' bombs over the fences was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, and that was as an already devoted my-life-for-you Cal Ripken Jr. fanatic. If that's not baseball, I don't know what is.
I also bring up 2005 Derrek Lee to baseball and Cub fans as often as I can, cause he was ONE extra base hit away from the extremely exclusive 100 XBH Club, and ran up against prime Pujols and priiiime Andruw Jones to finish 3rd in MVP, with a single 1st place vote.
I was in NYC on a business trip in the early 20-teens and took my daughter to a Orioles-Yankees game. We sat in the right field lower stands. In front of us were two guys who relentlessly taunted Davis all game. "Daaaaviss! Hey Davissss! YOU SUCK DAVISSSS! I mean, all game long. They never let up. Dozens and dozens of taunts aimed at him. It was the most relentless verbal assault I've witnessed. My daughter and I still crack up about it, and we will randomly taunt each other with a "Hey Davis!" They two guys also had a running conversation with Nick Swisher throughout the game "Ya Swish, I thought he was out too!" Why We Love Baseball indeed!
I always liked Eight Men Out. The nuanced story of what went down with that team has always captivated me, and I was happy to see the great Eliot Asinof book come to life. I'm a big John Sayles fan and thought he was great as Ring Lardner. Great cast, John Cusack as Buck, etc.
I'll withold judgment on Joe's list of best baseball movies (an endless debate that I find tiresome) and say how much I would like to see his list of best baseball books.
Your post on Chris Davis brought on a near anxiety attack about another Orioles 1B named Davis, who will not make the Orioles Hall of Fame. After letting Eddie Murray get away, the Orioles were desperate for a new 1B and the subsequent trade of Curt Schilling (should be in the big Hall of Fame), Pete Harnisch (AS) and Steve Finley (19 years in the bigs) for Glen Davis is considered by many to be the worst trade in baseball history! Ouch!
Chris Davis had, IIRC, an exemption for Ritalin for ADD under the PED policy at the time. I dunno if he only got the exemption when he joined Baltimore or what, but I believe he let it lapse (or perhaps the league just made it harder to get them, because they saw that an inordinate percentage of the players were asking for them?) and his stats immediately went in the toilet.
None of which is to take away from what he did. He had a 5=6 year stretch where he averaged over 40 HR and 100 RBIs and even with all the whiffs, that's still a fun guy to go to the ball park and cheer for. But maybe he shoulda fought harder for that exemption to get extended?
Also, one correction though: "The Orioles paid him $161 million between 2016 and 2023..." isn't quite true because his last two or three seasons' salaries were deferred so that he will still be getting over a million in 2037.
Can I nominate For Love of the Game... but only the baseball parts? There is a story that when they showed Vin Scully the script for his play-by-play in the movie he looked at it and asked, "Can I just watch the baseball parts and do my own play-by-play? It will sound more natural."
For Love of the Game is probably my favorite baseball movie but I never hear it mentioned among the greats. I think it shows the "real life" of pro ball players better than most films and it's got a great cast. JK Simmons! John C Reilly! Vin Scully!!
So the only comp I have for Alvarez's season is Honus Wagner in 1908.
WAR: 1st in NL (11.5)
Runs: 2nd in NL (100, 1st was Fred Tenney with 101)
Hits: 1st (201)
2B: 1st (39)
3B: 1st (19)
HR: 2nd (10, 1st was Tim Jordan with 12)
RBI: 1st (109)
SB: 1st (53)
BA: 1st (.354)
OBP: 1st (.415)
SLG: 1st (.542)
OPS: 1st, of course, (.957)
OPS+: 1st (205)
rOBA: 1st (.474)
Rbat+: 1st (.210)
TB: 1st (308)
WAA: 1st
All while striking out 22 times all year, which if you put the PAs at 500 or more, is 4th best in the league (actually the three better than him had between 90 and 140 less plate appearances than him)
And maybe the best defensive SS in the league (although Joe Tinker is better according to dWAR, but honestly who knows)
The Bad News Bears is my all time favorite baseball movie. Plus it very accurately depicts what my childhood was like in the 70’s. That, and Dazed and Confused (which also has a bit of baseball), are more like documentaries of my middle school and high school, rather than fiction.
There's another existential League of Their Own question you might consider: Is it true that there is no crying in baseball? If so, is there an exemption for Los Angeles Angels fans?
Eight Men Out is the best baseball movie. Bull Durham is 2nd.
I love the Orioles Hall of Fame but find it so odd that neither Hank Bauer or Joe Altobelli their World Series Winning skippers are allowed in because they didn’t have enough games in a O’s uniform.
I could talk for hours about Terry Crowley who was part of 4 of my favorite teams of all time.
1970 Orioles
1971 Rochester Red Wings
1975 Cincinnati Reds
1991 Minnesota Twins
Can't mention him without adding the Earl Weaver manager's corner: "Terry Crowley is lucky he's in f*#&%ing baseball."
Plus good old Alice Sweet and her tomato plants!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWQbN0jFo_k&t=89s
"The Battered Bastards of Baseball" is one of my favorites.
Not the best baseball movie and I haven’t seen it in decades, but I loved “It happens every spring”. 1949 movie that was especially created for fairly new 10-year-old baseball fans. I’m guessing I was around that age when I first saw it. Just delightful. One of my favorite parts of the movie is that they had a catcher that they had to have used Yogi Barra as the model, because they had him say some outrageous things. Very very feel good movie. He knows that me watch it soon.
Late chiming in here, so probably nobody will read this, but my favorite baseball movie is one few people remember or maybe have even seen: Long Gone. It was made for HBO in the late 80s and never got a DVD release, only VHS. Based on a Paul Hemphill novel, it's a comedy/drama about a low minor league team in the deep South in the 1950s.
Kind of a grittier, funnier, less-Hollywood-glossy Bull Durham. Stars William Petersen, Virginia Madsen, and Dermot Mulroney. You can see it for free on youtube, although the video quality is poor -- uploaded from someone's VHS tape, I think.
Ahem.
Bad News Bears, anyone?
I'm a lifelong Orioles fan. People like to rip Brady for his 50 home run season, but man, I was 11, and I thought that broad shouldered lefty golfin' bombs over the fences was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, and that was as an already devoted my-life-for-you Cal Ripken Jr. fanatic. If that's not baseball, I don't know what is.
I also bring up 2005 Derrek Lee to baseball and Cub fans as often as I can, cause he was ONE extra base hit away from the extremely exclusive 100 XBH Club, and ran up against prime Pujols and priiiime Andruw Jones to finish 3rd in MVP, with a single 1st place vote.
I was in NYC on a business trip in the early 20-teens and took my daughter to a Orioles-Yankees game. We sat in the right field lower stands. In front of us were two guys who relentlessly taunted Davis all game. "Daaaaviss! Hey Davissss! YOU SUCK DAVISSSS! I mean, all game long. They never let up. Dozens and dozens of taunts aimed at him. It was the most relentless verbal assault I've witnessed. My daughter and I still crack up about it, and we will randomly taunt each other with a "Hey Davis!" They two guys also had a running conversation with Nick Swisher throughout the game "Ya Swish, I thought he was out too!" Why We Love Baseball indeed!
I always liked Eight Men Out. The nuanced story of what went down with that team has always captivated me, and I was happy to see the great Eliot Asinof book come to life. I'm a big John Sayles fan and thought he was great as Ring Lardner. Great cast, John Cusack as Buck, etc.
I'll withold judgment on Joe's list of best baseball movies (an endless debate that I find tiresome) and say how much I would like to see his list of best baseball books.
Your post on Chris Davis brought on a near anxiety attack about another Orioles 1B named Davis, who will not make the Orioles Hall of Fame. After letting Eddie Murray get away, the Orioles were desperate for a new 1B and the subsequent trade of Curt Schilling (should be in the big Hall of Fame), Pete Harnisch (AS) and Steve Finley (19 years in the bigs) for Glen Davis is considered by many to be the worst trade in baseball history! Ouch!
Taking nothing away from Yordan, who is superhuman, but it does help that Judge is hurt and Ohtani moved to the other league.
Chris Davis had, IIRC, an exemption for Ritalin for ADD under the PED policy at the time. I dunno if he only got the exemption when he joined Baltimore or what, but I believe he let it lapse (or perhaps the league just made it harder to get them, because they saw that an inordinate percentage of the players were asking for them?) and his stats immediately went in the toilet.
None of which is to take away from what he did. He had a 5=6 year stretch where he averaged over 40 HR and 100 RBIs and even with all the whiffs, that's still a fun guy to go to the ball park and cheer for. But maybe he shoulda fought harder for that exemption to get extended?
Also, one correction though: "The Orioles paid him $161 million between 2016 and 2023..." isn't quite true because his last two or three seasons' salaries were deferred so that he will still be getting over a million in 2037.
Can I nominate For Love of the Game... but only the baseball parts? There is a story that when they showed Vin Scully the script for his play-by-play in the movie he looked at it and asked, "Can I just watch the baseball parts and do my own play-by-play? It will sound more natural."
For Love of the Game is probably my favorite baseball movie but I never hear it mentioned among the greats. I think it shows the "real life" of pro ball players better than most films and it's got a great cast. JK Simmons! John C Reilly! Vin Scully!!