Ohtani and Judge, the former Oakland A’s, and the Chicago White Sox made this season memorable.

Before some events of the 2024 MLB regular season become a distant memory, let’s look at several historical achievements that fans will remember for a long time—two players were especially good, one team was exceptionally bad, and one franchise began an ugly chapter in its team’s history.

THE GOOD: Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge had incredible seasons.

Shohei Ohtani

Ohtani showed the sports world why coming to the Dodgers this season was a dream come true for himself and the team. Nearly every baseball fan knows about his achievements in 2024.

Of course, the biggest news was that he became the first player in MLB history to become a member of the 50-50 club, becoming the first to hit at least 50 home runs and steal at least 50 bases in a season. Ohtani didn’t sneak in: He stole 59 bases and slugged 54 homers. At one point, it looked as if he might reach 60-60.

But it was how Ohtani reached 50-50 that set the sports world ablaze:

• On September 19th, Ohtani went into the Dodgers’ game with the Colorado Rockies with 48 home runs and 49 stolen bases.
• Ohtani hit three home runs, reaching 51. He added two doubles and a single for a 6-for-6 day at the plate. Amazingly, he was inches short of hitting a triple, for the cycle.
• On the basepaths, he achieved stolen bases 50 and 51.

Many baseball experts consider it the most outstanding offense performance in a single game by a hitter, considering the goal in front of Ohtani. Yet, that achievement barely overshadowed his performance in the game in which Ohtani became the sixth player ever to join the 40-40 club. He did that in style too that night—not only did he swipe his 40th base, but he also hit a walk-off grand slam to reach the 40 home run mark. And Ohtani just missed winning the triple crown: He led the NL in home runs and RBI (130) but came in second in average, hitting .310.

Ohtani was the media star of the 2024 season because of his 50-50 achievement and also because it was his first season with the L.A. Dodgers. Playing in Los Angeles helped him garner even greater national and international attention.

Aaron Judge

By the numbers, Aaron Judge’s 2024 season was perhaps even better than Shohei Ohtani’s. In 2022, Aaron Judge won his first American League MVP award, partly because he set the American League season record for home runs, passing Roger Maris. Judge also had 131 RBI, hit .311, and led MLB in OBP, SLG, OPS and total bases.

• In 2024, Judge turned in another MVP performance with equally impressive numbers:
• He hit 58 home runs, four more than Ohtani.
• He had 144 RBI, while Ohtani had 130.
• He, too, was chasing the triple crown, but he came in third in batting average in the AL and all of MLB.
• Even more impressive, Judge led all of baseball in OBP, SLG, and OPS. He also helped lead the Yankees to first place in the Eastern Division and the playoffs.

Judge and Ohtani will likely have earned their respective American League and National League MVP awards for 2024.

THE BAD: The Oakland A’s are headed to Las Vegas (by way of Sacramento).

After 56 seasons of baseball in Oakland, California, the A’s are packing up and moving to Las Vegas, Nevada—but not right away.

For the next three seasons, while they are waiting for a stadium to be built in Las Vegas, they’ll be playing at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, California, home to the Sacramento River Cats of the Pacific Coast League. The disappearing Oakland A’s will be referred to as the Athletics or the A’s, but a city name won’t be attached to them. The Oakland A’s are history.

The Athletics like to stay on the go as a franchise:

• The Philadelphia Athletics were established in 1901 as part of the American League. They won three championships there.
• After five decades, the team headed west and moved to Kansas City in 1955, becoming the Kansas City Athletics.
• In 1968, the franchise moved further west to Oakland. There, they captured four World Series titles, winning three in a row in 1972, ’73 and ’74, and one in 1989, known as the “Earthquake Series.”

The Oakland A’s claim some of the most well-known players in baseball history: Reggie Jackson, José Canseco, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Mark McGwire, and more. Charles O. Finley (AKA “Charley O”) was one of baseball’s most colorful and creative owners.

The Oakland A’s were the stuff of Hollywood when the movie Moneyball came out in 2011. It featured Brad Pitt as General Manager Billie Beane. The storyline focused on the team’s early adoption of sabermetrics in the early 2000s and a 21-game winning streak, still the MLB record.

But now that’s all history. The Athletics have joined the NFL’s Raiders and the NBA’s Warriors as teams who have left Oakland for greener pastures. It’s the end of the Oakland Chapter of A’s history and a bad season for Oakland sports fans.

THE UGLY: The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games, the most in MLB history.

A few seasons ago, Hall of Fame Manager Tony La Russa led the Chicago White Sox into the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time in years. That measure of success seems light-years away right now.

The White Sox had the worst season in baseball history, losing the most games ever in the modern era. By the time the season was (mercilessly) over, they’d dropped 121 games and won only 41. They erased the worst-record achievement of the ’62 Mets, who lost 120.

Losing has become a bad habit for the White Sox. They lost 101 games the year before and hoped they’d made the right moves in the off-season to turn things around. They hadn’t, and right from the start, things didn’t go well:

●They started 0-4 and were 3-16 before long.

●The team lost two key players in the season’s first month, which didn’t help. In May, 16 White Sox players struck out in a loss to the Yankees.

●It wasn’t long before they lost 14 straight games, which set a franchise record. Then, in early August, they dropped a game to the Oakland A’s, marking their 21st consecutive loss, tying the Major League record.

●When the White Sox reached 100 losses, it marked the sixth time the franchise had hit that mark. When the losses reached 106, it set the new franchise low.

●The team ended with a .253 winning percentage and finished 51½ games behind the Division-leading Guardians.

But White Sox (and baseball) fans should have hope for next season because the team ended on a high note. In the last six games of their forgettable ’24 season, they swept a three-game series with the L.A. Angels and took two of three from the playoff-bound Detroit Tigers.

White Sox fans can only hope that some of that late-season momentum will carry into next year.

Resources: wsj.com/sports/shohei-ohtani-50-50-club; pinstripealley.com/2024/10/3//yankees-judge-2024-2022; sports.yahoo.com/2024-chicago-white-sox; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Athletics; abc10.com/athletics-sutter-health-park; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Athletics