20 Years Ago, Canseco Invented 40/40 Club

Twenty years ago today, Jose Canseco, at the peak of his powers, finally cracked baseball’s long-sought 40/40 mark, stealing his 40th base of the 1988 season to go with his 42 home runs and thus becoming the sole member at the time of the vaunted 40/40 club. Canseco often has said that this was the most memorable game of his career, predictable somehow that it would be a personal greatest achievement that topped that list and not the A’s World Series victory over the Giants in ’89.↵↵Canseco is one of those figures from the 80’s that belong almost in a class with Michael Jackson. It’s really hard to fathom what became of both of them, so gigantic and full of promise then, so tawdry and pitiful today. Along with his fellow Bash Brother, Mark McGwire, Jose seemed like a living superhero when he made the baseball scene, with the body of a linebacker, the looks of a Latin salsa idol, and the combination of speed and power that quickly made him the best player in the game.↵

↵↵Still, he was an unlikely figure to be the first to join the 40/40 club, especially in comparison to some of the five-tool luminaries who had knocked on the door before him -- Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis in 1987, Bobby Bonds in 1973 and Willie Mays in 1957.↵

↵↵But as a natural home-run hitter, Canseco also had an uncanny knack for stealing bases in his prime. He certainly wanted that 40/40 mark in ’88, and everybody knew it, but it wasn’t as if he was reckless on the base-paths in pursuit of the mark. On the season, he was only nabbed 16 times. ↵

↵↵He remained the sole 40/40 member for eight years until in 1996 Barry Bonds succeeded where his papa had narrowly failed before him. ARod achieved his membership two years later in ’98, and then Alfonso Soriano became the latest, and to date last, member of the club in 2006 after falling just one home run shy in 2002 (a fate shared that year by Vlad Guerrero). In the bigs this year, no one is coming close to a 40/40 season -- the best results belong to Grady Sizemore (33 HR’s, 38 steals) and Hanley Ramirez (32 HR’s, 33 steals). ↵

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