It has been a little bit since I have added a new baseball to my Hall of Fame collection. This ball, my 101st, is of Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski. I got the ball for a steal during the Spring auction at collectauctions.com.
Yastrzemski (b. 1939) played in the majors from 1961 to 1983, all for the Red Sox. He was the 1967 AL MVP when he captured the Triple Crown while batting .326 with 44 home runs and 121 RBIs. He had amazing career numbers as well, collecting 3,419 hits (8th all-time), 452 home runs (35th all-time), 1,844 RBIs (13th all-time) and a lifetime batting average of .285.
Yastrzemski was a 3-time AL Batting champ (1963 - .321; 1967 - .326 and 1968 - .301). His Triple Crown year was the only year that he led the league in RBIs and home runs. Something funny to note, although he had seasons where he hit 40, 40 and 44 home runs, he never had a season where he ended with a home run total in the 30's. Take away those three seasons of 40 or more homers, he only had 5 seasons where he hit 20 or more with totals of 20, 23, 21, 28 and 21 home runs.
Furthermore, in his Triple Crown year, not only did Yastrzemski take top honors in those categories, but he also led the league in runs scored, hits, OBP, slugging, OPS and total bases.
It is common knowledge that Yastrzemski never won a World Series. Though, it is no fault of his own when you look at his stats. In the two World Series in which he played (1967 and 1975) he batted .352 with 3 home runs and 9 RBIs in 14 games (this means both World Series went 7 games).
Yaztrzemski was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1989 (his first ballot) when he was named to 94.6% of the ballot.
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