This is sort of a companion piece/addendum to Monday's super-long post (sans home run and stolen base leaders for all 152 years of MLB history). Credit to stathead for finding players with the most seasons matching criteria in this post.
In the first post I called Babe Ruth and Rickey Henderson - the Sultan of Swat and the Man of Steal - the superheroes of their respective eras; in this piece I'm calling them champions. I don't know, maybe I'll think of a better name for the player who dominates and personifies his era, but champion works for now.
I'm calling the first 15 years of professional baseball the Dawn of MLB. The first professional league - the National Association - started in 1871 and lasted five years before being cannibalized and replaced by the National League. The game was too primitive and was evolving too rapidly to have any real statistical standards, but if you wanted to you could say that the National Association records were the standards: seven home runs by Lip Pike in 1872 and 43 stolen bases by Ross Barnes in '73.
The home run record was broken three times in the first ten years of the NL: Charley Jones hit nine in 1879, then Harry Stovey hit 14 in 1883 (in the American Association, the NL's first rival league), and then four Chicago White Stockings hit over 20 in 1884, led by Ed Williamson's 27. 25 of Ned's 27 came at home in Lakeshore Park where "the distances were 186 feet in left field, 300 feet in center field, and 190 feet in right field," according to wikipedia. "Balls that were hit over the fence were counted as doubles until 1884, when they became home runs."
The champion of the era is the player with the most seasons achieving the era's standard - the most seasons accomplishing something that no one accomplished once in the previous era. Again, there were no real standards in the Dawn of MLB, because there was no previous era of professional ball. Therefore there's not really a champion for this era, but mention should be made of Harry Stovey for having the most seasons - three (1883-85) - of besting Lip Pike's NA-record seven home runs. (Stovey also had the most career homers for the era with 50.)
Stolen bases weren't recorded during the first ten years of the NL (1876-85), so the First Stolen Base Era began in 1886 when "the stolen base appeared as something to be tracked" (wikipedia again). Seven players that first year, led by Stovey with 68, ran past Barnes's NA record of 43, although I'm sure no one knew or cared what the NA record was, especially since players had been stealing bases all along but hadn't been counting them (and also because my half-assed internet research hasn't turned up how or why NA stolen bases were counted and preserved when stolen bases from the next ten years were not, and therefore I question the accuracy of the NA figures).
The standard of the era is one over the previous era's record, so the standard of the First Stolen Base Era was one plus 43 equals 44 stolen bases. The standard could be 44 or it could be one; either way, there's no record of any player achieving it from 1876 to 1885 (because there are no stolen base records at all), and at least one player achieved it every year for all 33 years of the First Stolen Base Era. Meanwhile, not one player matched Ed Williamson's record 27 home runs; Buck Freeman came closest with 25 in 1899.
From that same wikipedia article on stolen bases: "For a time in the 19th century, stolen bases were credited when a baserunner reached an extra base on a base hit from another player. For example, if a runner on first base reached third base on a single, it counted as a steal. In 1887, Hugh Nicol set a still-standing Major League record with 138 stolen bases, many of which would not have counted under modern rules. Modern steal rules were fully implemented in 1898."
Ty Cobb had nine seasons where he achieved the era's standard of 44 stolen bases. His name is asterisked because Arlie Latham actually had ten such seasons, and 19th Century Billy Hamilton also had nine. But all of Latham's seasons and all but one of Hamilton's came before 1898, when miscellaneous baserunning advances were included in stolen base totals. Therefore I'm declaring Cobb this era's champion for having the most 44-steal seasons in the 1898-1918 years. (Honus Wagner and Eddie Collins are second to Cobb with seven seasons each during this period.) For the same reason, I consider Cobb's 96 stolen bases in 1915 to be the record for this era instead of Nicol's 138 from 1887.
The First Home Run Era began in 1919 when Babe Ruth hit 29 home runs, breaking not only the record for the previous era but Ed Williamson's all-time record of 27. Meanwhile, for the first time since stolen bases were recorded, not one player in 1919 stole more than 40. Ruth shattered his own record the next year with an unthinkable 54 home runs. He broke his own record two more times, and then for 33 years sluggers tried and failed to be the "son of a bitch" that matched his record of 60 until Roger Maris did it with 61 in '61.
The era's standard was 26 home runs, one more than Buck Freeman's 1899 single-season record for the First Stolen Base Era, and just like in that era, the standard was exceeded (and often obliterated) every single year. (Since 1920, only the three World War 2 seasons of 1943-45, the strike-shortened 1981 season, and the pandemic-shortened 2020 season have failed to produce at least one 35-homerun hitter.) Meanwhile, no one came anywhere close to Cobb's modern record of 96 stolen bases. Ruth's mighty 54-homer 1920 season was actually surpassed in six of the next 41 seasons; Sam Rice's 63 stolen bases that same year - a fairly modest total for the MLB leader at the time, considering the previous three decades - remained the record for the era.
Who else but Babe Ruth could be the champion of the First Home Run Era? He had an incredible 14 seasons achieving the standard of 26 home runs. Ted Williams was right behind him with 13 seasons, followed by Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Mel Ott with 12 seasons each.
The Second Stolen Base Era began in 1962 when Maury Wills stole 104 bases, breaking Ty Cobb's modern record. The standard for the era was 64 stolen bases, one more than Sam Rice's 1920 previous-era record. For the first eleven years of this era only three players achieved it (Wills twice, Lou Brock twice, and Tommy Harper once), but by 1973 the era hit its stride. Starting that year, the MLB leader stole at least 70 bases every year for 21 straight seasons. Brock broke Wills's record with 118 stolen bases in 1974, and Rickey Henderson broke that record in 1982 with 130 steals. By the early '90s, meanwhile, no one had made a serious run at Roger Maris's home run record in the 30 years since he set it; the closest anyone had come was 52 (Willie Mays in 1965 and George Foster in 1977).
Rickey is of course the champion of the Second Stolen Base Era with nine seasons achieving the era's standard. (Rickey had as many 64-steal seasons as Cobb had 44-steal seasons.) In a distant second are Tim Raines and Vince Coleman with six seasons each, while Lou Brock had four seasons reaching the standard.
The Second Home Run Era began in 1994; Matt Williams and Ken Griffey Jr. were threatening Maris's record 61 home runs when the strike ended the season. This era's standard is 53 homers (one more than the single-season record for the last era), but strike-shortened seasons in '94 and '95 (as well as injury-shortened seasons for several sluggers in '95 and '96) meant the standard wasn't achieved until '97 when Mark McGwire hit 58 and Griffey hit 56. The next four years were a frenzy of record-breaking: McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Maris's record in '98 and again in '99. Sosa surpassed Maris's old record a third time in 2001, while Barry Bonds broke McGwire's three-year-old record with 73 that same season. In the 21 seasons since 2001, only eight players have reached the standard, and only Alex Rodriguez did it more than once. Meanwhile, 100 stolen bases once again seems impossible; 1988 was the last time anyone stole 80, with Jose Reyes coming closest in this era with 78 in 2007.
It's fitting that the champions of this era be the two men who chased and finally surpassed Maris's record in that magical summer of 1998: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Indeed, no player since has had the gushing adoration from fans and sportswriters alike heaped on him like McGwire did in the late '90s. McGwire and Sosa each had three seasons achieving this era's standard; Griffey and A-Rod are the only other players so far with two.
The Third Stolen Base Era will begin when someone steals at least 79 bases, one more than Jose Reyes's record for the current era.
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