half of first 4 with 30

this is not a monday morning math quiz.  instead, it's a post that was supposed to go last friday.  now, it's slightly out of date but i don't care.

i have a 'page-a-day' calendar at work.  it's baseball themed, but not a 'this day in baseball' calendar since that would get pretty boring in december and january.  no, this one is a mish-mash of trivia and factoids and stuff like put the hall of famers with the most gidp in order (cal ripken jr, number 1).  i arrived at work on thursday, removed wednesday's offering, and found this gem

i think we all know the answer, so i won't bother to rotate the page.  out of curiousity, i looked up the other teams. 

the 1998 yankees won 114 games plus the world series (mark langston struck tino martinez out with the bases loaded though) yet they didn't have any 30-home run hitters.  their top 4 were tino with 28, bernie williams with 26, and paul o'neill and darryl strawberry with 24 apiece.

i figured the 1995 mariners had griffey jr, jay buhner, edgar martinez and who else?  i was wrong about 2 or the 3.  jr only hit 17 that year, and edgar had 29.  buhner had 40, tino martinez had 31 and mike blowers had 23.

just like the '98 yanks, the 1975 big red machine didn't have any players over 30 home runs.  johnny bench had 28, george foster hit 23, tony perez had 20 and joe morgan was fourth on the team with 17.

interesting that the calendar made no mention of the second team to accomplish the feat, the 1995 colorado rockies.

you might recall that, as part of my 1978 topps burger king dodgers/update project, i created a record breaker to comemmorate the event.  i recently sent a copy of the card out to ron cey for him to sign.  as always, the penguin was a quick and gracious signer.

then, on thursday no less, i received the card back from a steve garvey signing

i'll have to keep my eye out for reggie smith and dusty baker signings, even though i have had ttm successes with each of those guys since i don't want to chance losing this one.

thanks ron and steve!  i'm looking forward to the day when the calendar asks me who the only player to win the rookie of the year, cy young award and mvp is!