baseball

Rose, Cobb, Aaron…and Ichiro?

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Bonus chart!

After yesterday’s chart of hits leaders through time, I wondered how it would look if we counted Ichiro Suzuki’s hits in Japanese baseball and American baseball. The result is below.

Should we do this? No. Japanese baseball is a high-level league, but no respectable analyst would say JPB is the equivalent of MLB. It is still fun to imagine, though, what would’ve happened if Ichiro had signed with the Seattle Mariners in 1992 instead of the Orix Blue Wave.

Rose, Cobb, Aaron

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More baseball charts! I put this one together of major league baseball’s hits leaders over time.

One thing that jumps out at me: even if every one of Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs had been an out, he still would have more than 3000 hits. Truly one of the all time greats.

Home runs

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I made this graphic of baseball’s home run leaders over time. It’s interesting to see how Ruth’s production just soared beyond the rest of the sport.

Tom Brady finds new ways to be the worst

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A combination of professional success, vapid personality, and a caddish past makes Tom Brady pretty damn unlikable to anyone who isn’t a fan of the New England Patriots. But this week, he found a new way to annoy people by filing a trademark application on his alleged nickname, “Tom Terrific”.

Now everybody who cares about sports—as opposed to just Boston sports—knows that the nickname “Tom Terrific” belongs to three-time Cy Young Award winner and Hall of Famer Tom Seaver of the New York Mets. Seaver won 311 games in his twenty-year career, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot with 98.8% of the vote, a record at the time. He was the first player to have his number retired by the Mets and is one of two players in the Hall of Fame as a Met.

It takes a lot for me, a diehard Phillies fan, to side with the Mets. But this nickname-squatting is unacceptable. Brady could not beat New York in the Super Bowl, and he shouldn’t be allowed to steal the moniker of one of the city’s greatest professional athletes.