Christian Yelich launched home run number 14 on Saturday, a blistering start to this season that is much like the way he finished last year. After the jump, find out which other power hitters have followed a hot finish to one season with a hot start to the next.
Most of Yelich’s 36 round-trippers last season came after the All-Star Game so, to find players with similar finishes, I looked for the most home runs in a team’s final 60 games of the season. And, with this season closing in on the 30 game mark, that is the benchmark I’ll use for the start of the following campaign. So, here’s the list for the most home runs in those 90 games.
| Home Runs | Players |
| 43 | Albert Belle (1995-96), Sammy Sosa (2001-02) |
| 39 | Babe Ruth (1927-28), Mark McGwire (1999-2000) |
| 38 | Christian Yelich (2018-19) |
| 37 | Willie Mays (1965-66), Ken Griffey Jr. (1997-98) |
| 36 | Mark McGwire (1997-98) |
| 35 | Alex Rodriguez (2002-03) |
| 34 | Rocky Colavito (1958-59), Mike Schmidt (1975-76), Ken Griffey Jr. (1996-97), David Ortiz (2005-06) |
| 33 | Babe Ruth (1929-30), Ted Kluszewski (1954-55), Manny Ramirez (1998-99), Rafael Palmeiro (1999-2000), Barry Bonds (1999-2000) |
| 32 | Babe Ruth (1920-21), Hank Aaron (1969-70), Sammy Sosa (1999-2000) |
The Brewers still have two more games before reaching 30, so Yelich could still move up this list, but probably not all the way to the top to join Belle and Sosa. Yelich’s 24 homers to close out 2018 are the most by any Brewer in the last 60 games of the season.
Few if any players have had as hot a season as Albert Belle in 1995, the year of his unique 50 doubles and 50 home runs, accomplished in a campaign of just 144 games. He was almost as good the next year with 48 HR and 47 doubles. Bell recorded a 31/12 split between the two seasons.
Sammy Sosa‘s shows up twice, in 1999-2000 and 2001-02. His home run totals for those four seasons were 63, 50, 64 and 49. Those first three seasons followed his career best mark of 66 in 1998, making a record four straight 50 HR seasons (tied with rival Mark McGwire), and three 60 home run campaigns (his record alone). Sosa’s splits were 23/9 (1999-2000) and 30/13 (2001-02).
Babe Ruth is the only player with three appearances on our list, in his first two seasons as a Yankee in 1920-21, in his top two seasons for total home runs in 1927-28, and finally in 1929-30. In 1920, Ruth obliterated his own single-season home record by more than doubling it, from 29 to 59, then followed it with 54 to dispel any notion that the prior season was a fluke. 1927 was Ruth’s 60 home run campaign, followed again by a 54 homer season. He didn’t hit 50 in 1929 or 1930, but still led his league with totals of 46 and 49. His splits were 20/12 (1920-21), 27/12 (1927-28) and 21/12 (1929-30).
Mark McGwire appears twice, in 1997-98 (58 and 70 HR, one shy of Sosa’s record 129 HR in consecutive seasons) and in 1990-2000 (65 and 32 HR). McGwire’s splits were 24/12 in 1997-98 and 28/11 in 1999-2000.
Willie Mays shows up with his career best 52 home run season in 1965. He followed that with 37 home runs in 1966, with a 27/10 split between those two campaigns.
Ken Griffey Jr. makes two appearances on the list, and is the only player to do so in consecutive seasons, in 1996-97 and 1997-98. Griffey fell one home run shy of 50 in 1996, but rectified that omission with career best totals of 56 the next two years. His splits were 20/14 followed by 25/12. The 1997-98 seasons were not just equal in home runs; Junior also posted identical totals for BB, SO and 3B, and almost identical marks (one off) for 2B and RBI.
Alex Rodriguez shows up with his career best 57 home runs in 2002, followed by 47 the next year, both league-leading totals. His split was 25/10.
Rocky Colavito is the youngest player on our list, just 24 when he he launched 41 home runs in 1958, followed by 42 the next year (becoming the first Indian to reach 40 twice). His split was 23/11.
Mike Schmidt was almost as young, with identical totals of 38 home runs at age 25-26 (and again at age 27). His split was 19/15.
David Ortiz makes the list in his top two home run seasons, with 47 bombs in 2005 and a league-leading 54 the next year. His split was 23/11.
Ditto for Ted Kluszewski with a league-leading 49 (then the Reds franchise record) in 1954 and 47 the next year. His split was 23/10.
Manny Ramirez had his first two 40 home run seasons in 1997 and 1998, posting a 24/9 split. Those were also his first two of nine consecutive 30 home run campaigns. Quiz: which two players (both on this list) share the record for most consecutive 30 home run seasons?
Rafael Palmeiro shows up in the the first two seasons of his second stint in Texas, but his first time in the Rangers’ new Ballpark (or is it Bandbox) in Arlington Stadium. Palmeiro launched 47 and 39 dingers with a 23/10 split.
Career home run leader Barry Bonds recorded round-trip totals of 34 (in only 102 games) and 49 (in only 143 games) in 1999-2000. His split was 22/11.
Hank Aaron is the oldest player to make the list, at age 35-36 in 1969-70 when he swatted 44 (his fourth season with that total, the first three league-leading) and 38 homers. His split was 18/14.
Quiz answer: Barry Bonds and A-Rod, 13 seasons.
Doug, this list raises the interesting question of who are the leaders in HR if you erase season boundaries and just consider, say, 154 or 162 consecutive team games. For example, Barry Bonds hit 77 HR in 159 team games, dating from April 12, 2001 to April 5, 2002 (he added none in the three additional team games at either end). Poking around among Ruth, McGwire, Sosa, and Maris, I found nothing to exceed that. (I can’t see any way to generate a list via the Play Index.) If you take Belle’s last 81 team games in ’95 and first 81 in ’96, which actually seems pretty optimal, you get 65 HR — well short of Bonds, but still a measure of how amazing Belle was over that stretch (I think Ruth’s best 162-game stretch was also 65, though I haven’t done a full search; I think Maris’s best was 64 — think how Belle’s profile would have been raised if that had been how people thought of him in the mid-’90s, pre-McGwire/Sosa).
However, what struck me first and most forcefully on looking at your list is how deeply PEDs screw up questions like this. So far as I’m aware, Belle was untouched by PEDs, and placing Sosa in his class seems to me a distortion. Belle was a very strange fish, but he was wild-caught; Sosa was lab-raised — essentially a different species. If you purge the list of chemically modified specimens (up to about 40% of the entries, although I don’t know about correlations between performance and steroids in some of these specific years) I think you get a clearer picture, and Yelich appears all the more exceptional — a season and a half ago he was a routine good player for Miami, now, in Milwaukee, he’s shmoozing with Ruth and Mays, and, like them, HRs are just a part of it. Maybe it just shows how much more nourishing beer is than daiquiris.
Ruth’s best 162 game stretch from his game #1441, 7/24/1927, to #1602, 7/30/1928, was 71 HR.
That’s for games Ruth actually played in, not team games.
Yeah. I’m not sure I got Ruth right, but I was considering only team games: the equivalent of a season.
It’s also for team games.
Bob
Based on Albert’s surly behavior, hair trigger temper, and multiple incidents of the bizarre and incomprehendable, is it not more than conceivable and certainly likely that Belle was under the influence of steroids?
Paul, Thanks to the guys who did do steroids, it is always conceivable that anyone who performs exceptionally well is using steroids. That alone says nothing about whether they actually did use PEDs because players have been having extraordinary seasons since baseball began. Is there evidence that Belle took steroids? None that I know of.
On the other hand, let’s look at the evidence that does pertain to Belle’s performance and behavior. Injuries brought Belle’s career to an early close, but prior to his last year the trajectory of his performance did not show any sudden anomalies, other than that he was very good. Seasons show swift but graded improvement, ages 24-26, to his peak, ages 27-32. If there’s a change of gears, it’s in his mid- to late 20s, which is when great players often reach their peaks, unlike the sudden emergence of Sosa at age 29 after years of ordinary play, or the autumnal rejuvenescence we see with McGwire and Bonds. In other words, you could have PEDs involved, but career trajectory doesn’t provide any evidence of them and there is no external evidence.
As for behavior, Belle was suspended from the College World Series because of out of control behavior in 1987, at the age of 21. He spent most of his age 23 season in alcohol detox at the Cleveland Clinic. He was jailed for stalking five years after his retirement, and he was video taped a year ago, standing with his pants down in a stadium parking lot, urinating and giving lip to a family with children that called him out for it, resulting in his arrest. Those incidents, which took place outside the time frame of his greatness on the MLB field, make it evident that bizarre behavior is part of who Belle has always been: a psychologically unstable alcoholic. The behavior may be consistent with PED use, but since a basis for the behavior is fully provided on other grounds, the fact that it resembles ‘roid rage is irrelevant.
Of course, we know that Belle also cheated — the testimony that his bats were corked is confirmed in several ways, and it’s fair to take that into account. But I know of zero evidence tying Belle to steroids, and it’s a fallacy to say that because some “great” players of the era used steroids, therefore every player who was great in that era likely used steroids.
Two thumbs up for this one, Bob.
I dunno…the Vina incident breaking up a double play? UNIQUE on field rage.
Throwing the ball aimed directly at heckling fans? UNIQUE…never heard of this before in MLB
Chasing mischievous kids and hunting them down and threatening them? A little anger beyond good citizenship.
Basically, Belle had the greatest peak of all time in the midst of the steroid era and outhit steroid enhanced McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds during their respective peaks? Without steroids?
Think of any athletic competition at the highest level i.e. Olympic 100 meters or weightlifting….the steroided guys win.
I can’t reduce Belle’s on and off-field behaviour to the fact that he’s merely a mentally ill Jimmy Piersall with Mickey Mantle’s power….I don’t recall the Indians , White Sox, or Orioles rehabbing him for alcoholism after these incidents occurred
Belle was suspended by MLB….a lot. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/sports/baseball-american-league-suspends-belle-for-five-games.html
Paul,
Your point seems to be that unique behavior is best explained by a generic cause. I don’t see the logic in that. Apart from Belle, Piersall, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Sherry Magee were all fine players who exhibited uniquely bizarre on-field behavior; their off-field behavior was bizarre as well, like Belle’s. The reason was not steroids.
In Belle’s case, whatever the cause was, he began by self-medicating with alcohol, and he seems to have returned to alcohol after his career. How many players do you know of who get sent by their teams to alcoholic detox — you seem suspicious because it only happened with Belle once. I have no idea whether he was on the sauce during his peak, but the point is that alcohol is not an underlying problem; it is a misguided treatment for an underlying problem that it does not solve, a problem unique to each alcoholic. PEDs do not address that problem and no one thinks they do. We see Belle’s problem manifesting throughout his adult life, not just during his peak. PEDs have no explanatory force when it comes to his behavior.
I also think you are exaggerating Belle’s “peak” — Doug is measuring a 90-game interval, arbitrarily chosen to match Yelich’s peak, on a single performance measure. (Loosen the 60/30 split to 63/27 and Ruth will come in at 42.) That’s a hot streak, not a career peak.
Your claim that PEDs always prevail simply isn’t true. Not only is the winner in a competition involving steroid-laced and clean athletes not always steroid laced, but lots of steroid-laced athletes lose. (You may be right when it comes to weightlifting, for all I know, since the skill is one-dimensional and that one dimension is uniquely correlated with steroid effects.) The implications of what you are saying is that since steroid use entered athletics no clean athlete has ever won a competition — and if it seems one did it’s because we simply don’t know he or she was using steroids. Nothing can disprove that argument, which is why it’s not valid: you’ve built the conclusion into the premises.
I’ll readily change my mind about Belle if any evidence that he used PEDs emerges.
Paul, wouldn’t that sort of argue in Belle’s favor? Lots of guys used steroids, but almost none acted like Belle. So to call it roid rage seems odd when other juicers weren’t nearly as erratic, tempermental and violent.
And you’re definitely exaggerating Belle’s peak. His absolute peak was 1994-1995, and even in that period, Frank Thomas was outperforming him, and I think most of us believe the Big Hurt was also clean.
His numbers in that peak are fantastic – .334/.417/.700, OPS+ of 184 – but plenty of others have matched or bested that, many of them clean players. He may have one of the highest XBH ratios of all time in his peak two seasons, though – 176 in 249 games is pretty outstanding.
CC, Mike L, Bob,
So Belle’s on and off-field behavior is due to alcoholism, mental illness, or steroids? You have chosen the illness of alcoholism but, does that explain the Vina incident or throwing the ball at fans? Was he drunk on the field? I doubt it. So, at that point, I’ll put it down to mental illness or steroids and, based on his intellectual ability (National Honor Society/accepted into the Air Force Academy), I’ll take it that his brain chemistry was rewired through steroid abuse….but, hey, I’m no psychiatrist.
As far as steroid-enhanced athletes winning competetions, I believe at the highest level of sport, where fractions separate winners from losers, where milliseconds in reaction time determine success, yes, the cheater wins, no kidding. Certainly a 285 pound clean high school offensive tackle with a D-1 scholarship in hand beats the clean 220 pound defensive end every time, but given two players of near equal ability, steroids make a difference. That’s why athletes take them, no?
Regarding the XBH ratio, while that may enhance, in my opinion, the possiblity of steroid use, I would argue Albert got away with an outrageously hard (and awkward) swing at the baseball. Pitchers of the fifties and sixties would have absolutely thrown at him or, at the least, thrown inside so that Albert wouldn’t get away with that ridiculous swing.
Paul, I don’t think you need anything to explain the move on Vina: it was a dirty attempt to knock Vina out of the double play, but so close to being within the rules, since Vina was running towards Belle for a full-body tag, that the umpires didn’t even call it at the time. And Belle immediately trotted away, although Vina was yelling at him. Belle was playing dirty, like Machado, and ruthlessly, like Rose, but he didn’t expect to be called on it, and was in control of himself — there’s no anger visible. Trotting away from a confrontation is completely inconsistent with the symptoms we associate with ‘roid rage. (And, no, of course Belle wasn’t drunk on field; the alcohol is not the problem, it’s the mental state the alcohol addresses that’s the problem.)
As for the fan incident, which occurred in 1991, before Belle’s performance began to excel, you’re aware, I’m sure, that Ty Cobb responded to a heckler by wading deep into the stands to pummel him, and continued to punch and kick him on the ground even after he was aware the man had no hands. No steroids; just a very smart, skilled, sick player. And note this LA Times comment, which I found online: “Belle was suspended from the LSU team for charging a fan who had insulted him. He has been benched, suspended or both at every minor league level and ejected from the Puerto Rican League.”
As for intelligence, I suspect none of us here is a psychiatrist, but I doubt there is any psychiatrist who is unaware that there is an extensive psychological literature that links intelligence and certain forms of mental illness in a strong positive correlation, particularly manic/depressive disorder, which is typically adolescent onset. I’ve seen my share of that as a teacher, including smart young people (all male) who were institutionalized or who ultimately chose not to survive. I once had a student who, late in the term, seemed to blossom to the point where after class one day I remember thinking, “Man, this kid’s on fire.” Twenty-four hours later I’d called his parents to town and they’d hospitalized him. Of course there is a spectrum: I know people who went through this but who learned, through medication therapy combined with coping strategies, how to control their symptoms and live productive lives, and there are naturally millions I don’t know.
Moreover, bipolar disorder is very closely linked to alcoholism: here’s a Mayo Clinic article that I found online discussing this (there are many; I chose it because the Mayo Clinic tends to be recognized as reliable). Alcohol is a drug of choice for young people with these disorders.
And, sure, take two athletes identical in everything relevant and give one a steroid that is effective for his or her body and they will prevail in a competition. But there are no two athletes identical in everything relevant — size, strength, agility, coordination, dedication — and it is not valid to conclude that the athlete who prevails over a similar athlete is on drugs.
Few things upset me more about the PED era than the fact that the users tarnished everybody’s reputation, regardless of whether they were using or not. If a player as disliked by teammates as Belle were using PEDs, you’d expect them to let us know sooner or later that he was cheating — they certainly had no problem letting us know about his corked bats. The main evidence about Belle’s PED use is the fact that there is no evidence of it. If you want to dismiss that in favor of speculative arguments it’s your privilege. As I said before, if I see evidence that Belle used PEDs I’ll change my mind.
Bob,
You’ve convinced me that, for Belle, it’s mental illness. I still don’t know how major league pitchers let him get away with that vicious swing. Maybe they feared reprisal from the mentally ill cleanup hitter? Someday, in a perfect world, right up there with term limits on US Senators, perhaps an anonymous questionaire regarding steroid use can be forwarded to former ML ballplayers whose active years ran 1985 – 2010. Yeah, I must be dreaming
perhaps an anonymous questionnaire regarding steroid use can be forwarded to former ML ballplayers
Nothing wrong with this idea as far as I can see.
I think Bob’s approach would also be interesting looking at this cutest. If we want to properly context Yellich’s tear, doing the last 60 games in one season and the first 30 games of another is still relatively cherry picked. Why not do 90 team games with Bob’s approach of ignoring season lines? It COULD be somebody’s had a better run in a season or it COULD be that the magic number is 17 games in the previous season with 73 games in the next, who knows? I don’t see any particular skill in crossing the season line, at least when referring to a last 60 game plus first 30 game subset. It’s a cool statistical note to be sure (nice job Dug) and there is a unique joy in finding the historically significant stat for basically any situation. I think Yellich’s tear is closer than we may think though to simply hottest consecutive 90-team games? That seems a more historically significant statistic than 60/30.
Though it would be cool to see something more generic. I don’t know last quarter and first quarter? Somebody who showed no offseason slow. Maybe that’s also another relevant cutset? I’m not sure how much skill this represents compared to “first half” or “second half” success but it would be another quirk.
I’ve commented on Belle’s hot streak to end the 1995 season a few times before. The part that always wows me the most is his ratio of extra base hits to singles in September/October – 27 to 4. Given his low BABIP in that peiord, I did an investigation 5 or 6 years ago of all his outs, and concluded that even though it may have seemed like he was getting “hit unlucky” or lining everything right to a fielder, the vast majority of his outs were actually grounders, pop flies and routine fly balls.
The other crazy part is that Belle ended August with two straight walk off homers. His line on August 31st was 2 for 4 with a 2B and a HR. On August 30th, 1 for 6 with a HR. The day before that he took an 0 for 3, and on August 28th he was 1 for 5 with a 2B. His last single had been on August 26th.
All told, over 32 games to end the season, he had a line of .299/.400/.889, a BABIP of .188, 19 HRs, 12 2Bs, and 4 singles. 36 runs and 37 RBIs. I can’t say for sure that a 31 to 4 XBH to single ratio and a disparity of 27 over 32 games is a record, but it has to be up there.
(You can make it even more arbitrary and cut off his last game of the season on October 1st, when he went 1 for 2 with a single and 2 BBs. That would make it a 31 to 3 ratio over 31 games.)
Albert Belle Batting Gamelogs for Career Games 1162 to 1237
Here is Belle for the CWS post All Star game in 1998:
PA……AB….R……H…..2B..3B.HR..RBI…BA/….OBP…/SLG…. OPS
328…282…61…109…26…1…31…86 .387… .451… .816… 1.267
This was done in 76 games. I do recall him being hot in the second half but never realized the extent to which he excelled. I guess everyone was distracted by Sosa and McGwire chasing Roger Maris?
So maybe the longest streak of 10 to 1 XBH to singles ratio? Might be some other much more terrible hitters that only swung for the fences on there. Matt Stairs or somebody? Dunn? I dunno.
Mosc, that’s certianly possible, so I’m wary to call it the highest ratio. But the disparity is probably the record, or darn close to it – +28 XBH over a 31 game period.
So since it’s hard (for me at least) to search the arbitrary periods, keeping it just to month splits, there are two players tied for the most XBH in a month with no singles – Robinson Chirinos in June of 2017 and Ken Griffey Jr in July of 2003 both had 9. HR/2B split was 7/2 for Chriinos, 5/4 for Griffey. Griffey’s season actually ended on July 17th of that year.
The highest calculable ratio is Glenn Davis in June of 1990, with 11 XBH and 1 single. He seems to have gotten injured at the end of June – when he comes back, his next hit was also an XBH, so he has a stretch with a 12 to 1 ratio.
As for disparity, Belle seems to be far and away the leader. Since his disparity is +23 for the Sep/Oct split, I only searched months where players had at least 23 hits. Belle is the only one with more than a 6 to 1 XBH to 1B ratio. Actually, he’s the only one with more than a 5 to 1 XBH to 1B ratio. He’s the only one with more than a 4 to 1 XBH to 1B ratio. You need to go down to 3 to 1 before other players start popping up. The next highest disparity I can find is Albert Pujols in June of 2009, with 24 XBH and 7 1B for a +17 mark.
Belle’s month is not the best hitting month in baseball history. It’s not in the Top 10 – it’s probably one of the Top 50. But as far as someone just being locked in when it comes to extra base hits, and nothing else, I don’t think anybody had a stretch quite like Belle’s end of 1995.
off the beaten path here but, SD RFer Franmil Reyes has 8 home runs in 30 games….and 9 runs scored. That’s pretty tough to do in 30 games….
Tough to do, but Gary Sanchez gave it a good shot this year with 8 HR and 10 R. Of course, Sanchez played only 16 games, compared to 30 for Reyes.
J.P. Arencibia and Anthony Rizzo, both in April 2013, are the only comparables, each with 26 games, 8 HR and 11 runs scored.
What is surprising to me is Sosa and McGwire both showing up twice in the late 90s and early noughts, but not for 1998-99 that was front-loaded with their epic home run duel to close out the season.
Switching gears for a moment, in Toronto’s come-from-behind win today (they spotted Oakland threes runs in the 11th, then won it with four in the bottom half), the winning pitcher was Elvis Luciano, aged 19 years, 2 months (youngest to win since Jose Rijo in 1984), and the starting third baseman was Vlad Guerrero Jr, aged 20 years, 1 month. First time since 1971 a team has fielded two players that young, and first time since 1967 in a game before September.
Doug,
who were the players in the 1967 game? I remember Briggs and Wise being awful young…….turns out Wise’s debut (18 years 2xx days) featured both players (Briggs 20 years 3x days):
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN196404180.shtml
They both went on to have pretty productive careers.
Johnny Bench and Gary Nolan first appeared in the same game on Aug 29, 1967. If you want a game not so close to September, Frank Tepedino and Charlie Sands both pinch-hit for the Yankees on June 21, 1967.
Gary Nolan was certainly a talent – that Bench fellah was OK, too. Tepedino and Sands? Not so much
Seems there’s a little bug in the P-I Batting Game Finder. It’s not picking up pitchers in DH games (probably because they don’t have a batting order position).
So, I will amend (slightly) my earlier claim. Luciano and Guerrero are the youngest teammates to appear in a game since 1974 (not 1971), and the youngest to do so before September since 1967. The 1974 game was the Brewers’ Robin Yount and Roger Miller.
Sad news to pass along to our community.
Birtelcom, who conceived of and originated the Circle of Greats series, passed away in March after a lengthy illness. His widow conveyed to me how much he enjoyed HHS, and how he was looking forward to the new season.
RIP, sir.
That’s horrible. Can we do something? I would like to participate in doing something. This really upset me. The COG was a really great thing he did that it would be nice for his family to know we appreciated going forward.
Really sad to hear that. If the family is comfortable, could we possible know where condolences or donations could be sent?
Maybe we could have something made? Some memorial to his contributions? Some honor or award?
You can share your memories of birtelcom at either or both of these sites.
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/en-ca/obituaries/new-york-ny/bruce-regal-8196967
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/bruce-regal-obituary?pid=191771566
He had a really impressive life. Too bad we were unaware of his accomplishments while he was commenting on HHS. And now we know the derivation of telcom for his HHS tag.
Indeed we do, Richard, and I’d suppose his middle initial was ‘I’.
Really, knowing now who birtelcom was makes me, like Richard, feel melancholy that we did not really know whom we were speaking with when he was with us here.
It is almost two months since birtelcom passed away, but as Doug suggests, I plan to leave a note about how he was appreciated here in the “Guest Book” section of the Legacy.com site (Doug’s second link).
His middle name, apparently, was Israel.
Thank you so much for the link Doug. I’m going to try and put together a few words for that page. It’s probably an appropriate place for us to honor him. It was nice to learn a little more about him as well.
Sorry to hear the news. I remember that a few years ago he disappeared from this website for a while with some strange illness.
Just to add a few more words in appreciation, Birtelcom, in his posts back when he was a prolific contributor, provided a voice of reason and sanity, generosity and moderation.
For a flavor of that sanity, generosity and moderation (and wit and insight), you can pull up his HHS posts at: http://www.highheatstats.com/author/birtelcom/.
Also, check out his old blog at http://metaforian.blogspot.com/. Quirky and entertaining.
Sad news, indeed. Perhaps it was because he used Henry Chadwick’s photo as his avatar, but I always felt birtelcom’s posts carried exceptional authority here. Without him, and his invention of the Circle, HHS’s most popular feature, I think it’s fair to say we probably wouldn’t still have this site to communicate on.
It was very thoughtful of birtlecom’s wife to convey this sad news. I remember that in 2012, when longtime contributor Frank Clingenpeel died, his son let us know online, and Andy followed by posting a new string just to make sure everybody was aware that Frank had passed away. Perhaps that would be appropriate now, since we really owe a great deal to birtelcom.
birtelcom posted under a screen name, of course (and I think he used it on other sites as well), and it may be that his family prefers to honor that anonymity. But if they felt it was appropriate to let us know where we could link to a notice of birtelcom’s passing, so we could learn about the baseball fan to whom we all owe a debt, I, for one, would be very grateful.
Sorry to hear that. I do recall when he took time from that struggle to set the record straight on an issue with the COG format/rules and advised us of the health problems.
We have not heard from Hartvig in quite a while, either? I thought he had indicated he was moving, had a hard time getting online….