Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris And Jim Gentile: The Story Of Baseball's Forgotten 1961 Sensation | ThePostGame

Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris And Jim Gentile: The Story Of Baseball's Forgotten 1961 Sensation

Overlooked in the article is that somebody else in baseball actually had a better season than Maris, Mantle, or Gentile in 1961. The Tigers' Norm Cash batted .361 with 41 dingers and 124 walks - and led the league in OPS, beating even Mantle! His adjusted OPS that year was a delirious 201. Cash and his teammate Rocky Colavito also combined for more RBI (272) than Mantle and Maris (269).

Cash's .361 season was one of the great fluke seasons in baseball history, as was Gentile's. Over a 17-year career, Cash's second-best batting average in a full season was .283! He never again scored or batted in 100 runs in a season, although he accumulated 119-132 that year.

Gentile was just as impressive, however, in many ways, especially in the RBI category. He knocked in 141 runs, which we now know to have tied for the league lead, for a weak-hitting team, and did so with fewer than 600 plate appearances. (Maris, for example, with the same number of RBI had nearly 700 plate appearances.) The Tigers scored 841 runs that year, the Yankees 827, but the Orioles scored only 691, making Gentile's 141 RBI seem almost superhuman. Diamond Jim had about 9% of the team's at-bats, but more than 22% of its RBI. If he had knocked in the same proportion for the Yanks or Tigers, he would have topped 170!