Monster Card Monday: 1936 Luke Appling

From Pastor Rich’s collection, this is Luke Appling’s 1936 APBA card. 

Appling hit over .300 nine times in a row (1933-1941) and with one year break, he did six times in row after that (1943, 1945-1949 and give him some credit for serving his country in 1944, too).  In fact, in his 20 year career, he only missed the .300 mark three times. 

In 1936 though, he really produced.  With the White Sox, he led the AL with a .388 average.  He never flirted with .400.  Rather, he climbed to that mark as the season went on.  By the end of August, he was hitting .370.  With a .477 September, he edged that up to its league leading .388 beating out Cleveland’s Earl Averill’s   .378. 

Appling batted fifth for the Sox and drove in 128 runs as well as scoring 111 runs.  Despite winning the AL batting title, Appling lost out to Lou Gehrig for the league MVP, probably deservedly so (Gehrig hit 49 homers with a .349 average). 

Appling is rated at four positions on this card but only played shortstop.  That’s probably a clue that this is from a GTOP, OFAS, BATS or some sort of “best of” set. 

Nonetheless, Appling’s 51-7 is pretty tasty especially for a shortstop of his caliber.  He has a total of five sevens plus a 15-10 to go along with his 0-0-0 power numbers. 

You know what else is nice?  His four 14s.  I had to do a double take when I saw his 26-14.  Again, pretty nice for a pre-Ripken shortstop. 

Fun numbers:  51-7, 46-31, 35-8

APBA put the 12 at 65 so Appling gets a 63-35.  But if you look, he does have three 31s.  He’s got ‘em at 34, 21 and 46.  Bat him behind some speed guys. 

“Ol’ Aches and Pains” led the AL in batting seven years later in 1943 when he batted .328 in a total of 155 games.  Defensively, Appling still ranks up there historically.  Among shortstops, he is fifth in DP turned, seventh in putouts and sixth in assists.