Every player longs for that dream season. The one where they stay healthy and just produce. I’m going to crunch the numbers and create dream seasons for notable 1980s stars. Next up is George Brett.
March/April 1983
There are quick starts and then there’s the jump George Brett got on the 1983 season. In the first week of the year, Brett hit .440 with a homer and 4 RBI. Then he got hot. He finished April with a .460 batting average, 5 homers and 20 RBI.
May 1979
Compared to April of ’83, Brett’s 1979 May was somewhat pedestrian. For a mortal, though, it was still a helluva month. How about sixteen multi-hit games, including a 5-7 effort against the Orioles on May 28th? Imagine posting 16 multi-hit games in a month and it not being the best month of your career. In May of 1979, Brett hit .388 with 5 homers and 20 RBI.
June 1982
In June of 1982, George Brett played in 27 games. He had at least one hit in 23 of them. He entered the month hitting .278 and finished the month hitting .317. It’s not easy to raise your batting average 39 points in mid-season but for George Brett, it’s no big deal. For the month, he hit .379 with 5 homers and 16 RBI.
July 1985
One of the things that are tougher than raising your batting average by 39 points in June is raising it by 31 points in July. That’s exactly what George Brett did in July of 1985, thanks in part to six different 3-hit games. Brett opened the month by going 8-12 with 2 homers and 8 RBI in a three-game series against Oakland and finished the month going 4-9 against Detroit. The final numbers? A cool .432 batting average with 7 homers and 24 RBI.
August 1980
Brett had his best season in 1980, batting .390 and winning the MVP. On August 17th at home against the Blue Jays, he wrapped up a three-game series by going 4-4 to raise his batting average to .401. He would flirt with the .400 mark for a month before fading at the end of the year but for that month he was on fire, hitting .430 with 6 homers and 30 RBI.
September/October 1981
It’s important to have a strong finish to your season and Brett certainly did that in 1981. Fourteen multi-hit games, five three-hit games and a .362 batting average with 3 homers and 20 RBI is a nice way to wrap up your year.
The Totals:
Add it all up and the totals for George Brett’s dream season look pretty good. He ends up hitting .404 with 31 homers and 130 RBI.
One of the most amazing things I saw when putting this together was the months that DIDN’T make the cut. Over the course of his career, George Brett had 17 different months in which he hit .350 or better.
I also intentionally used only one month from 1980 just to mix things up a bit. If you use his June, July & August numbers from 1980, Brett’s dream season batting average jumps to .423.
