Did Thomas Edison Have Anything To Do With This?

There are arguments about what the greatest invention has been. The airplane. The telephone. The seedless watermelon. Ziplock sandwich bags. If I were to cast a vote I would have to say it’s baseball-reference.com. This is by far the most addictive, most amazing thing in the world. Recently I logged in and was stunned at the journey I took.

Always start on the Cubs Franchise page. Click on top player, 1991, Jody Davis (Davis’ stat page opens). Interesting . . . middle name is Richard and he was originally drafted by the Mets. Yep, batted .389 in ’84 NLCS. Click on hyperlink to 1984 NLCS.

Cubs had a 3-2 lead going into the bottom of the seventh in Game 5. Ugh. Ooh! Tim Lollar – he was a Rebel! Click on Lollar’s hyperlink.

Hmm, not much here. Five games under .500 for his career, why in the hell did I draft him? Must move on. He pitched for Boston in 1986. Click on Boston’s ’86 hyperlink.

Baylor at 37 was the DH with 31 homers and 94 RBI. Buckner had 102 RBI. Click on his hyperlink.

Twenty-two seasons. Three straight years (’80-’82) he finished in the top 15 in MVP voting. He actually had 31 and 28 steals in seasons early in his career and finished with 183. Wait, go back. 1982 finished 10th in MVP voting. Who finished ahead of him? Click on MVP hyperlink.

Dale Murphy was MVP followed by Lonnie Smith (?), Pedro Guerrero, Oliver, Sutter, Schmidt, Jack Clark, Greg Minton, Carlton and Buckner. Schmidt, huh? Click on hyperlink.

Michael Jack. Hall of Famer. Cub Killer. Best thirdbaseman ever. Wore number 22 as well as 20 for the Phillies. Elected to HOF in 1995 with 96.5% of the vote. 15th in career homeruns (548), thirty-third in RBI (1595) and seventh in strikeouts (1883). Who had more? Click hyperlink.

Reggie Jackson, Jim Thome, Sammy Sosa, Andres Galarraga, Jose Canseco and Willie Stargell. I swear Babe Ruth was near the top of the list. Nope he’s 95th. Hank Aaron? He’s 78th. The two top homerun hitters (I don’t acknowledge Bonds) were also amazing contact hitters. Craig Biggio had more strikeouts than Aaron and Ruth. Mike Cameron is 10th for crying out loud.

And so it goes. Every trip to baseball-reference.com is a different journey. And no matter what I went there for, if there were two things I wanted to look up (say Dawson’s career stats and Lou Gehrig’s numbers) I’ll never get to Gehrig because something on Dawson’s page will take me somewhere else and three hours later I have to face real life and haven’t seen a stitch of Gehrig.

Amazing, amazing collection of baseball numbers.