Obscure sports trivia

Selanne for sure, that number is just insane.

Bossy.

 

Lemieux, Bossy, Selanne, Gretzky? Though as I type, I’m doubting Lemieux. I know he had 100 points on the nose, but 50-50 doesn’t sound right.

 

Gretzky was never an NHL rookie.

 

I looked this up, so I won't guess, but looking at the list of yearly HR leaders did lead me to a fact that intrigued me.

In 1920, Babe Ruth's first season with the Yankees, he obliterated the season home run record (his own, from the previous year) with an astounding (at the time) 54 HRs.

Who led the National League in home runs that year and how many did he hit?

 

Educated guess that It is either Gavvy Cravath or Cy Williams. They were Philly teammates who used the Baker Bowl to their great advantage. Going to say 20.

 

Strawberry?

 

Well done. It was Cy Williams, who led the NL in HRs four times between 1916 and 1927. In '20, he hit 15 to lead the league -- just a few less than the Babe (though he did hit 41 homers in '23 to tie Ruth for the major league home run crown). In fact, no other player in MLB even reached 20 homers in 1920.

Cravath led the NL in six of the seven seasons from 1913-1919, with a high of 24 in 1915. The only year in that span Cravath didn't win the NL HR title was 1916, when Williams and Dave Robertson tied with 12.

 

thanks. I remember seeing their stats in the Baseball Encyclopedia as a kid and finding it odd that two Phillies dominated for so long, but neither was a Hall of Famer.

 

Not the Straw. He hit 39 when he led the league in 1988.

hint: he hit well over 400 career home runs, but is not in the Hall.

 

And that's a crime.

 

Bossy was the first, followed by Joe Nieuwendyk, Teemu Selanne and Alexander Ovechkin.

 

Totally didn’t think about Nieuwendyk. That made go look up that 88-89 Flames and how loaded they were on offense: Nieuwendyk, Mullen, Gilmour, Hakan Loob, Fleury, Macinnis, Suter, Mark Hunter, Gary Roberts and an aging Lanny McDonald.