Here’s a good brain-buster – name the ten players since World War II to score 140 or more runs in a season (it’s been done 12 times in that period, two guys doing it twice). I guarantee you can keep this one going for a good while in a group of reasonably knowledgeable fans – a ten-man list is the right length for this kind of question and none of these guys is truly obscure, although you may need to think about the ballparks they played in to get two of them.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
Jeff Bagwell (152 in 2000, 143 in 1999)
Ted Williams (150 in 1949, 142 in 1946)
Craig Biggio (146 in 1997)
Rickey Henderson (146 in 1985)
Sammy Sosa (146 in 2001)
Lenny Dykstra (143 in 1993)
Larry Walker (143 in 1997)
Ellis Burks (142 in 1996)
Alex Rodriguez (141 in 1996)
Chuck Knoblauch (140 in 1996)
Rickey, Biggio, Bagwell, Dykstra, Ellis Burks, Teddy, Helton, “for sure. (Not really for sure,” but I’m fairly certain.
Pesky, Larry Walker, Molitor.
All right, I did pretty well there, but not as well as I should have. I’m actually annoyed I missed two of them, because I knew them.
Sometimes I forget just how good Bagwell was before his shoulder injuries.
It’s amazing how many of those names are from the 90’s.