It’s been awhile since I posted here about landing a big interview, though I scored one recently, getting to spend almost an hour on the phone with 87-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers great Maury Wills. It’s my pleasure to share the write-up, which dropped at Sports Illustrated’s website on Monday.
In the lead-up to the interview, I did a bit of research around Wills’ impact on the game, which has been a source of some debate in the baseball community. The conventional wisdom in baseball has been that Wills brought the steal back into the game in the early 1960s, when he led the league one season after another and broke Ty Cobb’s single-season record in 1962 when he swiped 104 bags.
Some researchers have questioned this, though, bringing up that Hall of Famer and Chicago White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio might deserve the real credit, having begun to swipe more bases in the late 1950s. I’ve seen Willie Mays get some of the credit, too.
Honestly, either crediting Wills entirely or dismissing his impact has seemed an oversimplification to me. So I found another way to look at it.
Searching the ever-reliable Baseball-Reference.com, I found that stolen base opportunities are tracked for players from about 1920 on. (For anyone who wants to check it out, it’s in the Advanced Stats section for batting, listed as “Baserunning & Misc. Stats.” Here’s Wills’ section for this.) The importance of analyzing opportunities: I figured if there was a true stolen base revolution, players would be stealing at a higher percentage of their total opportunities.
I wasn’t sure how to get total opportunity numbers for every season, so I found a compromise to create two control groups. I made lists of everyone who stole at least 30 bases from 1947-61 and 1963-77. This way, I figured I’d get the 15 seasons before and the 15 seasons after Wills’ iconic 1962 season, to see how much of a shift occurred.
As a preface to what follows, I’ll note that when Wills stole 104 bases in 1962, he made 117 attempts out of a total of 348 opportunities, giving him an attempt percentage of 33.6 percentage. This might sound inconsequential or wonkish, but it was a markedly higher rate than anyone had done the 15 preceding seasons.
Here are the 20 30-stolen base seasons from 1947 through 1961, organized by attempt percentage:
| Player | Year | SB | CS | iphone上如何使用谷歌 | Opportunities | Attempt % |
| Willie Mays | 1956 | 40 | 10 | 50 | 174 | 28.7 |
| Luis Aparicio | 1959 | 56 | 13 | 69 | 244 | 28.3 |
| Willie Mays | 1957 | 38 | 19 | 57 | 208 | 27.4 |
| iphone上如何使用谷歌 | 1961 | 53 | 13 | 66 | 246 | 26.8 |
| Luis Aparicio | 怎么在苹果上登录谷歌 | 51 | 8 | 59 | 238 | 24.8 |
| 怎么在苹果上登录谷歌 | iphone如何上谷歌 | 37 | 16 | 53 | 245 | 21.6 |
| Maury Wills | 1960 | 50 | 12 | 62 | 297 | 20.9 |
| Sam Jethroe | 1950 | 35 | 9 | 44 | 213 | iphone如何上谷歌 |
| Bob Dillinger | 1947 | 34 | 13 | 47 | 238 | 怎么在苹果上登录谷歌 |
| Richie Ashburn | iphone如何上谷歌 | 32 | 10 | 42 | 223 | 18.8 |
| Sam Jethroe | 1951 | 35 | 5 | 40 | 221 | 怎么在苹果上登录谷歌 |
| Bill Bruton | 1954 | 34 | 13 | 47 | 264 | 17.8 |
| Minnie Minoso | 1951 | 31 | 10 | 41 | 233 | 17.6 |
| Vada Pinson | 1960 | 32 | 12 | 44 | 257 | 17.1 |
| Willie Mays | 1958 | 31 | 6 | 37 | 229 | 16.2 |
| ios用什么上谷歌 | 1961 | 30 | 9 | 39 | 263 | 14.8 |
| Maury Wills | 1961 | 35 | 15 | 50 | 349 | 14.3 |
| Dick Howser | 1961 | 37 | 9 | 46 | 338 | 13.6 |
| Pee Wee Reese | iphone如何上谷歌 | 30 | 5 | 35 | 290 | 12.1 |
| Richie Ashburn | 1958 | 30 | 12 | 42 | 435 | 9.7 |
| Totals | 751 | 219 | 970 | 5205 | 18.64% |
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