You Go LuGo!

[NetShrine]

Top Ten single season marks for TOTAL BASES in MLB history:

1 Babe Ruth 1921 - 457
2 Rogers Hornsby 1922 - 450
3 Lou Gehrig 1927 - 447
4 Chuck Klein 1930 - 445
5 Jimmie Foxx 1932 - 438
6 Stan Musial 1948 - 429
7 Hack Wilson 1930 - 423
8 Chuck Klein 1932 - 420
9 Lou Gehrig 1930 - 419
10 Joe DiMaggio 1937 - 418

Luis Gonzalez is on pace for 460+ TB this season.

How do you feel about LuGo passing the Babe?

[BuzzBuzzard]

Records are meant to be broken. I personally don't think Luis is that great an offensive player, but he is having 'one' of those years. If he breaks the record, he breaks the record.

[NetShrine]

This is why baseball is cool.

A record so great that it's stood for 80 years - close to a century! And, it may be broken by a 33 year old who has been in the bigs for 10 years and pretty much has never been thought of as a star.

[nyy26wc]

Speaking of Gonzalez, he's never finished in the top 10 in HR in any season. There were 23 previous cases of a HR champion who had never previously finished in the top 10.

Gonzalez will need to pick up the pace to get on the chart.

I'm going to run the chart as a stat of the day in the next few days (maybe tomorrow), but I'll let it debut here.

Here's the chart--

Tommy Leach 1902 NL 6
Harry Lumley 1904 NL 9
Fred Odwell 1905 NL 9
Tim Jordan 1906 NL 12
Fred Beck* 1910 NL 10
Braggo Roth 1915 AL 7
Dave Robertson* 1916 NL 12
Hack Wilson 1926 NL 21
Chuck Klein 1929 NL 43
Ralph Kiner 1946 NL 23
Al Rosen 1950 AL 37
Harmon Killebrew* 1959 AL 42
Willie McCovey* 1963 NL 44
Tony Conigliaro 1965 AL 32
Carl Yastrzemski* 1967 AL 44
Johnny Bench 1970 NL 45
Mike Schmidt 1974 NL 36
Dwight Evans* 1981 AL 22
Mark McGwire 1987 AL 49
Kevin Mitchell 1989 NL 47
Cecil Fielder 1990 AL 51
Juan Gonzalez 1992 AL 43
Troy Glaus 2000 AL 47

*--tied for the league lead

[NetShrine]

Lee - thanks for the sneak peek! :cool:

How many on the list ended up leading the league in their 11th season? I think LuGo would be tops on that list, no?

[NetShrine]

Nice story on a super guy. You have to root for him!

Gonzalez eyes Babe's 80-year-old total-bases record

By BOB BAUM
.c The Associated Press


PHOENIX (AP) - Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmie Foxx - Luis Gonzalez.

``Gonzo,'' as he's known to teammates and fans, is having the kind of season at the plate that hasn't been seen since the long-ago days of those giants of the game.

Gonzalez has his eye on one of baseball's most enduring records, Ruth's mark for most total bases in a season - 457 set in 1921.

``It's an 80-year-old record and it's Babe Ruth, the Bambino,'' Gonzalez said. ``You're talking about an all-time legend, an icon in baseball. I think if I can come close to it, it will make it exciting for baseball.''

Gonzalez is slightly behind the pace he would need to break Ruth's record, or Hornsby's National League mark of 450, set in 1922.

Going into the weekend's three-game series with the Chicago Cubs, Gonzalez had 328 total bases. By comparison, Barry Bonds had 299, and Manny Ramirez had 278 to lead the American League.

Gonzalez needs 130 total bases in his last 42 games to break Ruth's record. He's confident he can do it.

``I know I've fallen off the pace a little bit, but I still feel like there's a hot streak or two ahead of me,'' he said. ``If I believe I can do it, I know I can.''

If he fails to reach Ruth or Hornsby, Gonzalez still could be the first player with 50 home runs and 200 hits in a season since Foxx did it in 1932. Entering the weekend, Gonzalez had 45 home runs and 157 hits.

``It's difficult enough to hit 50 homers,'' teammate Matt Williams said. ``If you're going to mix in 200 hits with those 50 homers, you're being pretty consistent for six months.''

Gonzalez is a streak hitter. Two years ago, when he emerged from a so-so career as a .268 batter to lead the National League in hits, he had a 30-game hitting streak. He leads the league in multihit games this season with 53.

To challenge the total-base record, a batter needs to hit for a high average, with plenty of home runs mixed in with other extra-base hits. The combination is rare, which explains why Ruth's record has been unchallenged for so long.

In 1921, Ruth was in his third season as an everyday outfielder. He hit .378 with 59 home runs, 44 doubles and 16 triples. In 1922, Hornsby hit .401 with 42 homers, 42 doubles and 14 triples.

After 120 games this year, Gonzalez was hitting .344 with 45 home runs, 24 doubles and six triples.

Even to mention Gonzalez in the same breath as Ruth is remarkable, considering the Diamondbacks left-fielder came to Arizona in 1999 with a total of 108 home runs in a little over eight big-league seasons.

The Detroit Tigers sent Gonzalez and $500,000 to the Diamondbacks for outfielder Karim Garcia in what turned out to be one of the most one-sided trades in recent baseball history.

Then-manager Buck Showalter intended to platoon Gonzalez in left field with Bernard Gilkey, but injuries changed that plan. Gonzalez went on a 30-game hitting streak and has been a starter ever since.

Last season, he was the only player in the majors to start all 162 games. This year, new manager Bob Brenly planned to give Gonzalez more rest, but that hasn't been the case.

Gonzalez, who turns 34 on Sept. 3, has played in all 120 games, and started 119 of them.

``He has kind of sold me,'' Brenly said. ``We have tried to give him days off several times this year, and every time we do he says that in the past when he's had days off he always felt it took him two or three days to get back into the rhythm that he was in before the off day.

``Until he shows a serious physical or mental need for an off day, I certainly don't want to be the one to interrupt the rhythm that he's in right now.''

Gonzalez is using the Ruth record as motivation as the Diamondbacks battle for the NL West title.

``I know that if I'm staying on that pace, then I'm doing what I need to do to create opportunities for my teammates,'' he said. ``I don't feel like I'm wearing down any. I feel like I'm getting stronger.''

Gonzalez does not consider himself a home-run hitter, even though he's not far off Mark McGwire's record pace.

Power hitters usually are beefed-up, muscle-bound sluggers. Gonzalez is a wiry 6 foot 2 and 195 pounds. His 31 homers last season were a career-high.

This year's long-ball binge surprised him as much as it did anybody. Then he won the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game, and fans around the country suddenly knew him.

Through it all, Gonzalez, considered one of the most likable players in the game, has remained accommodating to interviewers and fans alike. He bought Jeff Motuzas, Arizona's bullpen catcher, an engraved Rolex for pitching to him at the Home Run Derby.

Gonzalez's emergence, he said, is the result of a switch in his battling style to an open stance that results on a picture-perfect swing. He also said the birth of his triplets in 1998 gave him a perspective that has allowed him to relax more and not take the game so seriously.

In this unlikely story of baseball's biggest late-bloomer, why shouldn't Gonzo chase the Bambino? Why shouldn't a player hardly known to fans across the nation just a few months ago pursue the most hallowed name in the game?

``To me, it's not anything far-fetched or unrealistic,'' Gonzalez said. ``I just need to go out there and keep hammering out hits and do what I've been doing all year.''

AP-NY-08-18-01 1123EDT

[BuzzBuzzard]

This guy is getting so much attention lately, that even People had a piece on him in a recent edition. I didn't read it, but the jyst was that all the recent success has to do with his homelife and the joy his triplets bring him. :bigbarf:

[NetShrine]

Why the puker Buzz? Read "People" and it's begging to get your stomach turned.