Time to give Hall of Fame slugger Willie "Stretch" McCovey a nickname card in my "Nicknames of the '70s" thread.
Check out my card:
I gave McCovey a 1970 template since he was smack in the middle of
his prime, coming off of an M.V.P. season which saw him blast 45 home
runs and drive in 126 along with a nice .326 batting average.
He wouldn’t disappoint in 1970 either, as he hit 39 homers with
another 126 runs batted in, along with a league leading 137 walks,
finishing in the top-10 in MVP voting for the fourth time in his career.
McCovey came into the Majors with a bang in 1959, tearing the seams
off the ball by hitting .354 with 13 homers and 38 runs batted in along
with 32 runs scored in only 52 games, copping a Rookie of the Year
Award and setting the tone for his 22-year career.
By the time he retired in 1980, he crushed 521 home runs, collected
over 2000 hits, drove in over 1500, and left his mark as one of the
most feared sluggers of his generation.
In 1986, his first year of eligibility, he was voted into the Hall of Fame with 81.4% of the ballots cast.
Man, what a threesome McCovey, Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda made back in the 1960's for San Francisco, huh?
