Wednesday, December 21, 2022

REVISITING AN OLD POST FROM 2015: 1970 NICKNAME CARDS FOR FRANK HOWARD

Today we go and revisit a blog post from almost eight years ago, my TWO nickname cards for Frank Howard, so good he needed more than one nickname:



"The Capital Punisher" or "Hondo", take your pick!
Here's the original write-up for the post, which first appeared here on February 18th of 2015:
I used the 1970 template since Howard was just mashing the ball at the turn of the new decade.
Between 1968 and 1970 he'd top 40+ home runs each year (becoming the last player to do so until Jay Buhner came along during the 1995-1997 seasons).
Howard led the American League in 1968 and 1970 with 44 taters, but fell one short of the league lead with 48 in 1969 thanks to another masher, Harmon Killebrew and his 49 blasts.
Howard was also one of the first players to top 30 home runs in both leagues, as he hit 31 home runs for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1962.
A National League Rookie of the Year in 1960, he'd finish in the top-10 for an M.V.P. Award four times during his 16-year career.
The man was a flat-out beast at the plate, hitting 382 home runs in only 6488 at-bats!
He also topped 100 runs batted in four times, leading the league once, and also topped a .500 slugging percentage seven times during the modern "dead-ball" era, leading the league once in that category as well.
He finally retired after the 1973 season, which saw him play in 85 games for the Detroit Tigers.
Now I'm not saying he's a Hall of Fame player, but I was surprised to see that he only garnered 1.4% of the vote when he became eligible in 1979, thus getting dropped immediately.

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