30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Awesome Athletics #4: Mark McGwire

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I figured I'd celebrate by blogging about my favorite Irish Oakland Athletic... Mark McGwire.


Now before I receive "hate" comments, let me say that I don't condone his PED usage.  Nor is this post intended to convince you that he deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown.  It's about an Irish American ball player who put a lot of smiles on Oakland Athletics fans during the late 80's through the mid 90's.


And I'm one of those fans.


Actually, I was more of a Canseco guy but, the Bash Brothers wouldn't be complete without McGwire.   And although he's probably more famous for his home run record setting years with the St. Louis Cardinals, he constantly shows up in the A's record books.  

Take a peek for yourself:

Slugging %:  .559 (3rd All-Time)
Runs:  773 (10th All-Time)
Total Bases:  2,451 (7th All-Time)
Home Runs:  363 (Franchise Record Holder)
RBI's:  941 (4th All-Time)
Walks:  847 (4th All-Time)
Strikeouts:  1,043 (3rd All-Time)
Runs Created:  981 (5th All-Time)
Extra Base Hits:  563 (4th All-Time)
Sacrifice Flies: 59 (Franchise Record Holder)
Intentional Walks: 77 (2nd All-Time)
At Bats Per Home Run:  12.3 (Franchise Record Holder)

In addition to those records, he represented the Oakland A's in nine all-star games, won the 1987 AL ROY Award, earned a Gold Glove in 1990, and won two Silver Slugger Awards (1992 and 1996) with them.


And of course, you can't forget the fact that McGwire was part of the 1984 Olympic baseball team that won a silver medal.

So it's your turn...

When you picture McGwire, is he wearing a Cardinals or Athletics uniform?

Happy Sunday, stay green, and sayonara!

14 comments:

Commishbob said...

I think of him as a member of the Cardinals but only because my best friend is a Cardinal fan and even though I wasn't following the game much I heard about him all the time.

FWIW... in my humble opinion, no amount of PEDs can explain the ridiculous home run numbers that he, Sosa, Bonds etc put up in those heady post-strike days. The ball was juiced. Twice in history players had hit 60+ homers and all of a sudden, when baseball desperately needed some pub all these guys were hitting 65/70 dingers? THE.BALL.WAS.JUICED

I'll step down off my soapbox now. LOL

Anonymous said...

always see him as an Athletic.

the one thing i remember with him is that he was always a good signer, at least when i saw him...especially with the kids. i will always remember him for his kindness towards fans.

the PED thing is another story

Fuji said...

You should write a book on the topic... you already have a great title ;-)

Fuji said...

Good times... good times.

Fuji said...

I've lived in the Bay Area my whole life and never grabbed A's autographs. It would have been awesome to meet him in person.

gcrl said...

a's for sure. i can't believe he's wearing dodger blue these days.

Greg Zakwin said...

Cardinals just because of my youth.

But really a Dodgers' uniform because I totally want to meet him and get his autograph this year.

Laurens said...

I remember McGwire in the early 1990's as an A's player who had a bad season in 1991, came back the next year to have a resurgent season in 1992 and then missed big chunks of the 1993 and 1994 seasons with injuries.

Making me have to choose however - I picture him with the Cardinals first because of 1998.

Spiegel83 said...

I picture him as an Oakland A. Him and Canseco were a couple of the first non-Dodgers that I grew to love.

Also, I just saw McGwire today for the first time in person wearing a Dodger uniform. It is going to take me awhile to get used to that.

Zippy Zappy said...

I always see McGwire as a Cardinal.
Mostly because I was only 3 when he played his last game as an Athletic. And a little after I got into baseball I discovered that McGwire broke Yankee legend Roger Maris' single season home run record as a member of the Cardinals. Kinda boggled my mind how anyone could be better than a Yankee (I was like 10 back then) and to this day I still consider Maris the true record holder for the single season home run record.

The Lost Collector said...

I see him as a Cardinal. Not sure why, as I am definitely old enough to see him as an A.

I wanted his RC so badly back in the day!

Fuji said...

I didn't realize he was their hitting coach until this weekend.

Fuji said...

Good luck. One of these days I'd love to add his signature to my collection.

Fuji said...

The polls are in... looks like 2 out of 3 people remember Big Mac as a bird.