400th Post

I've reached another milestone here at Nine Pockets:  

400 blog posts!  

Because I add content here each Sunday, 400 posts means this blog has been rolling along for almost eight years now. And that's a lot of content. 

 

I guess if you break it down, some of it has been nostalgia, some of it has been custom cards, some of it has been completed sets, and so on. Ultimately, it shows that trading cards have been a bigger part of my life than I thought. Back when I started this blog in 2018, I couldn't have imagined that I'd find so much to write about. 

In any case, and as usual with these milestone posts, I wanted to tie in some cards using a sports-related milestone of some kind. 

The first thing I thought about was baseball players who batted .400. However, there haven't been many of those—none from our modern time, in fact. So I next thought about a few players who nearly batted .400: Tony Gwynn (.394 in 1994), George Brett (.390 in 1980), and Rod Carew (.388 in 1977). 

 

However, we're celebrating 400 blog posts here, and 394, 390, and 388 just don't do enough of a job to mark the milestone. Thankfully, I found something soon after:

 

Players who've batted .400 across an 80-game stretch.

 

That's essentially half a season. After a little bit of research, here's what I found:

 

 

Name	At-Bats	Hits	Average	Date Range
George Brett	315	137	.435	5/30/1980–10/1/1980
Ichiro Suzuki	349	149	.427	6/30/2004–9/27/2004
Wade Boggs	332	138	.416	6/26/1985–9/22/1985
Tony Gwynn	327	133	.407	4/9/1997–7/15/1997
Larry Walker	302	123	.407	4/9/1997–7/14/1997
Rod Carew	310	126	.406	4/16/1977–7/17/1977

Man, that 1997 season was something else. Larry Walker and Tony Gwynn both took their .400 batting averages well into July. Walker finished the season at .366, while Gwynn ended up at .372.

 

It goes to show you how much harder it is to keep up that .400 pace for another 80 games.

 

Regardless, it's an impressive feat. And because this is a trading card blog, here are examples of what collectors would have been pulling from packs while the guys listed above were swinging such hot bats:

 

 

1980 Topps #450 George Brett, 2004 Bazooka Stand-Ups #18 Ichiro Suzuki, 1985 Topps #350 Wade Boggs

 

1997 Topps #410 Tony Gwynn, 1997 Topps Stars #1 Larry Walker, 1977 Topps #120 Rod Carew

I should note that the table shown above only represents a partial list. Nomar Garciaparra, Todd Helton, and John Olerud also accomplished the feat, as well as other legends like Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente. (The most recent player to do it appears to be Joey Votto, from June to October of 2016.)

 

And I'll leave it there. Milestone achieved.

 

Whether you've been visiting this blog from the start, reading it today for the first time, or anything in between, I'm sending my thanks. I hope you've enjoyed doing the reading as much as I've enjoyed doing the writing.

 

Here's to more great trading card and blogging milestones all around!