By now you’ve almost certainly heard the news that all-time great, Hank Aaron, has passed away. Aaron’s Baseball Reference page is a favorite of mine to peruse from time to time, as it’s fun to marvel at not only his consistent home run production, but just how good he was at everything else. A fun fact you likely already know: take away his 755 home runs and he still has over 3,000 career hits. Even in the offense-heavy era we’ve been in for awhile now, he remains the record holder in total bases, extra-base hits and runs batted in.
From 1955 (his second year in the league) to 1973 he hit 25+ dingers in every season but one: 1964, when he hit 24. Over that same period of time, White Sox hitters had just six seasons where a player hit at least 25 home runs. In total, there have been 89 instances in franchise history where a White Sox batter logged 25 or more home runs. So, by himself, Aaron would account for 20% of those Sox seasons. (Even adding his total seasons to the Sox total still makes it 17%)
For today’s Sporcle, you’re tasked with naming those 89 White Sox players to hit 25+ home runs in a single season. It starts in 1934 and runs to the present day. How many can you name? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I’ve provided just the year and number of home runs.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- Getting back to total bases for a moment: Aaron has a 722 TB lead over second place, which is Stan Musial’s 6,134.
- Aaron led all of MLB in runs twice, hits twice, home runs once, RBI four times, and total bases four times. (Not to mention a variety of other NL-specific categories: his black ink is prolific)
- His career triple-slash: .305/.374/.555, good for a career 155 OPS+.
All data from stathead.com and baseballreference.com
(Photo credit: Chris Evans, Flickr)
85/89 Missed a couple of the older ones.
As a young kid, my older brothers took me to Wrigley in August 1973. I saw Aaron wallop. number 702 out on to Waveland Avenue as the Braves crushed the Cubs that afternoon. I’ll never forgot walking outside the stadium after the game and a guy walking past us, holding up the baseball in his right arm chanting “702, yeah, 702, yeah . . . “
89/89 with 3:05 left. I got the 1951 guy when guessing someone else.
Somewhere in the blur of Henry Aaron tributes yesterday, I saw the trivia that the Chicago White Sox were the only MLB team Aaron faced that he did not hit a home run against. Granted, this would have only been his final two seasons as Brewers DH, but he still managed to go yard 22 times against teams that were considerably more successful in 1975 and 1976.
Some nice content relevant to this Sporcle.
89/89 with 6:43 left. But I must admit that I’ve taken this same quiz on the Sporcle site many times!!
I too love looking thru the career stats of Henry Aaron. He was just a model of consistent excellence throughout his entire career. And one of the greatest gentlemen to ever play the game.
I have a little Aaron-related story. We live in Georgia now, and our ex-neighbor used to work as a chauffeur and would often take Mr. Aaron. They got to be very good friends, and Henry would give him his tickets to Braves games very often. My son went a few time- they were 4 seats directly behind home plate. It was really nice, because we could watch the game and see our son on every pitch! At least we knew where he was that night.
RIP, Mr. Aaron.
Imagine baseball today if Barry had hit just 8 fewer homers.
It would be easier to vote him into the HOF (which he deserves for his body of work outside the PED era).
And baseball would have this wonderful story to tell every time someone asks, “Tell me about the guy who holds the home run record?”
Yeah, it’s sad when an article about Henry Aaron says, “The person many believed to be the home run king.”
73 … one of my better showings. Did not know anyone before 1970, but there is one guy from back then on every list some announcers bring up
I did pretty good for me (81/89) mostly because I’m old enough to easily remember all the players from 1970 on (even though I missed a couple of them). The 1940 guy
(Thanks again to Right Size Wrong Shape for showing me how to do the spoiler a couple weeks ago.)
I’m resigned to the fact that I will never commit Daniel Palka to my memory.
That’s a blessing, not a curse.
87/89 missed the 1940 and 1950 guys.
I gotta admit I was a bit surprised Minoso didn’t make this list.