Los Angeles Angels' Mike Trout becomes first rookie with 30 home runs and 40 stolen bases

Los Angeles Angels' Mike Trout becomes first rookie with 30 home runs and 40 stolen bases

He is now at 30-48. Only two players in history have ever achieved 30-50: Barry Bonds and Eric Davis.

Remember Eric Davis? The wiry Gold Glove centerfielder never really got much respect from the fans in all-star balloting (two selections), never finished higher than 9th in the MVP balloting, and is rated only 373rd of all time among the batters rated by the visitors at baseball-reference.com, but he was one helluva player for a few years in the late 80s and early 90s. Many insiders said he was the best in the game then, better than Bonds or Henderson. Paul O'Neil said, "He was the best hitter, best runner, best outfielder, best everything I ever saw." Davis hit as many as 37 dingers in a year, despite carrying only 165 pounds on his reed-thin 6'2" frame. Another year he had 27 dingers and an astronomical 80 steals. The record-setting year mentioned above was 1987, when he added 50 steals to his 37 dingers. His salary that year was $330,000.

Davis was always prone to illness and injury, never having appeared in as many as 140 games in a season, and he faded away when the injuries got more serious. He never seemed able to recover from a painful dive for a ball during game 4 of the 1990 World Series, which caused a lacerated kidney. He required two different surgeries that off-season, having also re-injured a knee. His physical ailments were so serious that he even missed one entire year when he was diagnosed with colon cancer while still in his early 30s.

The story has kind of a happy ending. Davis had so much raw talent that he made a tremendous comeback. After missing that one year, he went back to the Reds and played centerfield again, hitting like his old self with a .917 OPS and even stealing 23 bases. After some more injuries he came back again as a RF-DH with the Orioles at age 36 and had an even better year, with a .970 OPS (.327 28-89) and a 30-game hitting streak.