Editor’s note: This is a Weird and Wild short. To read the main W&W column, click or tap here.
So what’s on your calendar in July 2051? If you were smart, you would already be booking your rooms in Cooperstown, N.Y. … for Kevin McGonigle’s Hall of Fame induction.
Wait. What’s that you just read? That we’re already looking forward to the Hall of Fame speech of a guy who is only 21 years old, who has played nearly 3,000 fewer games for those Detroit Tigers than Al Kaline and who is still (let’s see now) 499 homers short of the 500-Homer Club?
Yes, that’s what we said, all right. Now we bet you’d like to know why. OK, here’s why.
Heading into the Tigers’ game Thursday, their rookie infield wizard was on pace for this:
92 walks
84 strikeouts
Have we mentioned in the last three paragraphs that … he’s 21?
Far be it from us to overreact here at the Weird and Wild Department. But we have our reasons to announce that McGonigle might have Cooperstown in his future. And it has nothing to do with how many refreshing beverages we may or may not have consumed this week. It has to do with this:
History.
History tells us things. So we went back through the live-ball era (since 1920) for a fun little research project. The mission: to find every player in those 106 years who A) drew at least 90 walks in a season, B) had more walks than strikeouts in that season and C) were 21 or younger at the time.
Let’s just say you’ll recognize every name on that list — possibly because they’re all Hall of Famers.
Ted Williams — twice (at 20 and 21)
Mel Ott — twice (at 20 and 21)
Rickey Henderson — in 1980 (117 BB, 54 K)
Jimmie Foxx — in 1929 (103 BB, 70 K)
Eddie Mathews — in 1953 (99 BB, 83 K)
Joe Morgan — in 1965 (97 BB, 77 K)
(Source: Lee Sinins’ Complete Baseball Encyclopedia)
If you’re familiar with baseball, you’re probably aware that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. So our advice to McGonigle is, you should probably go out and get a few thousand more hits. It would make this easier on the voters.
But four weeks into the career of a clearly special player, it’s already apparent we’ve under-appreciated his spectacular knowledge of the strike zone and what that portends. So while it’s possible that nobody in Cooperstown is taking dinner reservations yet for 2051, if you get shut out when McGonigle’s Induction Weekend arrives, well …
Don’t say those of us at the Weird and Wild Dept. didn’t warn you!