Free Republic

1956 was my first season as a baseball fan. That year Mickey Mantle had one of the best seasons ever by a hitter. He won the Triple Crown with a batting average of .353, 52 home runs, and 130 RBIs. His on-base average plus slugging percentage was 1.169. I resisted the temptation to become a New York Yankees fan, opting instead for the hometown Washington Senators. Their star, Roy Sievers, became my favorite player. But I always wondered what it would be like to root for a team with a star having a season like Mantle’s. In 2015, I found...

Roy Sievers, who won the American League’s first Rookie of the Year Award playing for the 1949 St. Louis Browns and became one of baseball’s leading power hitters of the 1950s with the original Washington Senators, died on Monday at his home in Spanish Lake, Mo. He was 90... Playing in the outfield and at first base for 17 major league seasons, Sievers hit 318 home runs. His best season came in 1957, when he had a league-leading 42 homers and 114 runs batted in while hitting .301 for the last-place Senators. The right-handed-batting Sievers also hit home runs in...