Not-So-Basic Nightmare Baseball [10] Quiz

Answer: Steve Carlton

The Gold Glove is generally awarded to all nine positions in each league (for eighteen per year) for their excellence in their specific roles and amongst those the pitchers would receive theirs. Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro were the first two pitchers to have done this with over three hundred victories in their career with Steve Carlton having received his Gold Glove in 1981. Phil Niekro's wins were a bit more elaborate-- he took the Gold Glove Award on four separate occasions from 1978 to 1983. Both of them would end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Answer: 364

Mark McGwire would end up leaving the Oakland Athletics after twelve seasons and joining the St. Louis Cardinals for the remainder of his playing career. Home run number 364 was hit in a game against the Philadelphia Phillies on August 8, 1997 (it was Mark Leiter's pitch). McGwire would end up hitting five hundred and eighty three home runs over the course of his sixteen-season career, then the fifth-most in MLB history.

This record was subsequently sullied by this scandal with performance-enhancing drugs.

Answer: Babe Ruth

Amongst Babe Ruth's many records broken, he managed to hit a remarkable 168 Runs-Batted-In (RBIs) in 1921, subsequently topping that again with 173 in 1927. Lou Gehrig would become the first player to surpass that, matching the total in 1930 and then hitting 185 the subsequent year-- a record that would hold into the twenty-first century. Babe Ruth would ultimately lead the career RBI record until he was surpassed by Hank Aaron (and Albert Pujols in the twenty-first century).

Answer: Los Angeles Dodgers

The Cy Young Award is generally given to the players seen as the best pitchers in their respective leagues as voted for by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, and in both of these cases, the winners and the runners-up, at least on the National League side, were from the Dodgers.

In 1974, the winner of the award was Mike Marshall while Andy Messersmith was runner-up. Coincidentally, the Dodgers also won the very first Cy Young Award back in 1956 (it was Don Newcombe) though they were based in Brooklyn at the time.

Answer: Rickey Henderson

Henderson had 326 thefts as a Yankee, playing for the team for five seasons in his extensive twenty-four year career in Major League Baseball. It's partly due to his long career but also due to his skill on the field that he became a runaway leader in stolen bases, managing to rack up more than 1400 over the course of his time in the sport.

The previous record-holder, Lou Brock, had 938 before he retired from the sport in 1979.

Answer: Rod Carew

Both players-- Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew-- excelled in this stat with Gwynn winning eight of these awards over the course of his career and Carew winning six before retiring. Interestingly, both of them also received their awards while playing as part of the same team for the run that they received them. Tony Gwynn was a career player for the San Diego Padres while Rod Carew received all of his on the Minnesota Twins' roster.

When Gwynn transferred over to the California Angels, he failed to win the award any further times.

The closest he got was in 1983, when he was beaten by Wade Boggs.

Answer: Six

He won a total of seven in his career, but six of those were consecutive from 1920 to 1925 (while the last was in 1928). It's not to say that Hornsby wasn't occupied in those interim years though-- he would become a World Series Champion in 1926. All of these accolades would be received when Hornsby played for the St. Louis Cardinals as he would jump around to different teams consistently afterwards, closing out his career in 1937 having played for the Giants, Braves, Cubs, and St. Louis' later iteration, the Browns.

Answer: Lee Smith

Lee Smith capped out at forty-seven saves in one season, doing so for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1991. Smith managed several years with the high record (topping the roster for the American League in 1994 and the National League in 1983, 1991, and 1992), but never cracked fifty like these other options.

A total of fifty-seven was the high watermark in 1990 when Bobby Thigpen of the Chicago White Sox topped out at that total, but he was surpassed in 2008 by Francisco Rodríguez of the Los Angeles Angels. Rodríguez reached sixty-two.

Answer: Shawn Green

There were three players to join the club in this year, specifically Vladimir Guerrero of the Montreal Expos with 34-37, Bobby Abreu of the Philadelphia Phillies with 31-36, and Jose Cruz of the Toronto Blue Jays with 34-32. Guerrero would be a part of the club for a second consecutive year-- a rare feat-- in 2002 when he scored 39-40.

It's one of the likely contributing factors to his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018. He played for sixteen total seasons from 1996 to 2011.

Answer: Arizona Diamondbacks

Williams played for the San Francisco Giants from 1987 to 1996, the Cleveland Indians in 1997 (they became the Cleveland Guardians in 2022), and the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1998 to his retirement as a player in 2003. He would return to the MLB as a coach and a manager over time, staying with the sport through the 2010s and 2020s.

His time with the Diamondbacks was quite noteworthy as he had a World Series win with them in 2001. He would go on to coach them from 2010 to 2013 and again in 2016.