Trivia: 200 Hits and 100 Walks in Same Season

[Cliff Bowman]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Clue: The last player played for a team that scored 998 runs on the season, the franchise record for the team, and the 8th most by any team since the start of the 20th century. Amazingly, he was not the only player on his team to achieve the feat that season.

From that clue I'll bet it's a 1930 Cubs teammate of Hack Wilson but it can't be Cuyler, Hornsby, or Hartnett. Riggs Stephenson?

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

From that clue I'll bet it's a 1930 Cubs teammate of Hack Wilson but it can't be Cuyler. Hornsby, or Hartnett. Riggs Stephenson?

You are on the right track! But it isn't Cuyler, Hornsby, Hartnett or Stephenson.

[Seven]

I caved and looked up the answer. All I'm going to say is that it certainly was a statistical outlier of a season

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Seven

I caved and looked up the answer. All I'm going to say is that it certainly was a statistical outlier of a season

Yeah, definitely the player in question's best season, although he had another good year the following year, and was an All Star in '33.

So we have narrowed it down to someone on the 1930's Cubs.
Another clue: the player's last name might be something that you study in school or Major in in college.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Yeah, definitely the player in question's best season, although he had another good year the following year, and was an All Star in '33.

So we have narrowed it down to someone on the 1930's Cubs.
Another clue: the player's last name might be something that you study in school or Major in in college.

Man, the more I think I know about baseball, the less it seems I actually know. I actually guessed the guys last name...and I STILL had to look up his first name.

[etsmith]

I'm really surprised that many people have done it, walking takes away at bats so it's certainly an accomplishment.

[cgjackson222]

Woody English had 214 hits and 100 walks for the 1930 Cubs, who set a franchise record with 998 Runs that still stands today.

English was the leadoff or number-two batter for some of the highest-scoring teams in baseball history, and scored 400 runs from 1929 through 1931 while playing shortstop or third base for the Cubs. Woody scored 152 runs in 1930, and many of those were RBI's delivered by Hack Wilson during his record setting 191-RBI season. That year, English had 755 plate appearances — a single-season major-league record until 1938, a National League record until 1962, and still a Cubs record.

English finished 11th in MVP for the 1930 season.

Teammates Hack Wilson (208 hits, 105 walks, 56 HRs, 191 RBIs) won MVP, Kiki Cuyler finished 8th, Gabby Hartnett finished 14th, and pitcher Pat Malone finished 20th.

English would finish 4th in MVP in 1931 despite hitting only 2 HRs. That season, English had 202 hits, but his walk total dropped to 68.

English got his only All Star nod in 1933, but ended up with less 400 at bats and just a .261 Batting Average on the season.

Per SABR, English was "not a large man, English had large hands. Their size was an asset to an infielder but a source of embarrassment as a child (he would hide them in class by sitting on them). English was also known for getting along with the notoriously prickly Rogers Hornsby, with whom he roomed during the second baseman’s stint with the Cubs. Said Bill James, “If you can get along with Rogers Hornsby you can probably get along with anybody, and that was English. He was a likeable, upbeat person who always had something good to say about everybody.”

But he also had an impish side: English “was like ‘Peck’s bad boy’ in the grade-school books of the day. He looked innocent but wasn’t. English’s favorite prank was to crawl across the floor of a hotel lobby and sneak up on an unsuspecting businessman reading the newspaper. English would light the bottom of the paper and slip away as the newspaper caught fire.""

He retired at age 32 in 1938, after having played his second season with Brooklyn. The epitaph on his tombstone in Fredonia Cemetery in Ohio simply reads “A Great Baseball Player.”