As a kid, I remember flipping to the Kansas City Star’s sport page on Sunday and looking at the baseball statistics. It didn’t have every stat, but it had Royals stats, and it had league leaders in varying categories—strikeouts, innings pitched, home runs, batting average, and the like. I remember seeing Mike Sweeney’s batting average near the top of the list in 2002, and I remember watching Randy Johnson’s strikeout numbers balloon at the top of the leaderboard that same year.
It was, at the time, one of the best and only ways to see statistics for the season.