Good morning!
If you had Lenyn Sosa on your bingo card as the first guy to hit 20 home runs this season, then I'd also like your lotto picks the next time Powerball reaches a billion dollars. It's a fun story, though, as Sosa is --I believe-- the elder statesmen of the organization having signed back on July 2, 2016. (As a fun aside, when I was looking up his signing date on Baseball Reference, I noticed his two most batter similarity scores are Danny Mendick and Chris Snopek.)
Two other guys also have a shot at 20 home runs on the season with Andrew Benintendi sitting at 19 entering Friday's game against the Guardians and Colson Montgomery at 18. This would be just the second season spanning 2020-2025 where three White Sox batters hit 20 home runs in a season.
Today's Sporcle will test your knowledge of other 20-dinger Sox batter seasons, dating all the way back to the first, in 1930. In all, that's 159 names: how many can you get? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 15 minutes for completion attempts
- For hints, I’ve provided the season and the number of dingers hit.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- No White Sox batter ever got really close to 20 home runs before that first 1930 season: the closest was Happy Felsch in 1920, with 14.
- The first player in baseball’s modern era to log a 20 home run season is Frank Schulte in 1911, while playing for the Chicago Cubs. If your immediate thought was that it would be Babe Ruth, you weren’t far off: he was third in MLB history in 1919 with 29. (Gavvy Cravath is the middle child, hitting 24 for Philadelphia in 1915)
All data from stathead.com
