WILLIE MAYS' 93RD RBIs...

IT's Willie Mays' 93rd birthday today, and since we are still bogged down with work on other projects, our look at April 2024 performance will need another day or two to appear; thus we have a little birthday tribute bon-bon featuring the immortal Say Hey Kid...

And, yes, it's whimsical (you were expecting something about the situation in Gaza, maybe?). 

WHAT we did is comb quickly through the records at Forman et soeur to locate all the seasons where Mays drove in at least 93 runs, and we isolated the date, the inning, the event, the location, the opponent and the outcome of the game in which Mays knocked in his 93rd run of the season.

Trivial? To be sure...but fun, (And, let's face it: with things like Gaza hanging over our heads, we need all the fun we can get right now.)

IT turns out Willie had 93+ RBIs in twelve seasons...those would be 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966. Of course, in most of those years he also had more than 100 RBI for the season...but we wanted to pinpoint the exact game and plate appearance in which that 93rd RBI occurred. And you can see all that in the table at left.

What leaps out of the data? First, it's not surprising that Willie's 93rd RBI came during a later month in the season--it happened eight times in September and four times in August. Next, we see that Willie tended to get RBI #93 when the Giants were on the road--nine times out of twelve. And note that Willie's 93rd RBI occurred in games that the Giants won a vast majority of the time--ten wins and two losses, to be exact. 

What about hit types? Willie had at least one of each of the four hit types (no hit-by-pitches to drive in #93: he's just not exotic that way). His 93rd RBI for each of these seasons occurred on four singles, one double, two triples, and five home runs. 

There are two teams in the pre-expansion era that Willie never victimized with his 93rd RBI--the Dodgers and the Braves. He also didn't knock in his 93rd run against the Colts/Astros, and after 1966 he was in a sufficient age-related tailspin that he never had 93+ RBI seasons in or right after the second expansion year (1969), which leaves out the Padres and the Expos. 

SO there you have it: an off-beat look into a magnificent career, built around a celebration of the ongoing survival of a true immortal. Happiest of birthdays to you, Mr. Mays--we are so glad that you are still with us...