The year of the Triple Crown

One player lived up to the promise. Just about.

Another reached the Major Leagues, but his stay was brief.

Yet another saw his fairy tale cut short by injury while the fourth player's life ended in tragic fashion.

The year was 1976 and the aforementioned quartet was on top of the Minor Leagues. While the rest of the country was celebrating the Bicentennial, the Minor Leagues were busy basking in the glow of the Triple Crown. And it was these four players who earned the coveted title that summer, each hoping it would propel them to a big-league career.

Pat Putnam (Western Carolinas Leagues), Mark Corey (Appalachian League), John Scoras (Pioneer League) and Danny Thomas (Eastern League) all had one thing in common -- they each led their respective circuits in home runs, RBIs and batting average in 1976. The 1976 season marked only the fourth time in Minor League history, according to The Minor League Encyclopedia, that four different leagues were represented in such a fashion in one season.

There were five Triple Crown winners in 1950, but at the time there were 58 leagues operating under the auspices of the National Association of Professional Leagues as opposed to the 20 that were playing in 1976. There were also four Triple Crown winners in 1940.

The record for most Triple Crown winners in one season remains 1948, when six of the 58 operating leagues saw players take home the prestigious title. But seeing a Triple Crown winner, whether it's one, four or six, has become a rarity in the Minor Leagues. The last time the Minor Leagues saw four Crown winners was 1976, though three players won Crowns in 1989. More often than not, players today aren't in one league long enough to qualify for the Crown if they are having that big of a season.

"That's wild," Scoras, now an insurance agent in New Jersey, said of the '76 season. "I would imagine it would be something like four guys on the same night in Atlantic City pulling royal flushes and beating the house. I knew I had done it. But four people doing it. The chances of that happening are like hitting a Pick Six ticket. It's crazy."

Crazy or not, it happened. But Putnam was the only player of the group to go on and have any real success in baseball, spending nearly a decade in the Major Leagues. He proved what he could do at the plate in 1976, hitting .361 with 24 homers and 142 RBIs for Asheville. Interestingly enough, Asheville also produced a Triple Crown winner the following season when David Rivera hit .346 with 26 homers and 118 RBIs.

Putnam spent eight seasons in the Majors, the majority of which were with Texas. He hit 63 homers and drove in 255 runs in nearly 2,000 games before calling it a career.

Corey, meanwhile, appeared in 59 games over three seasons (1979-81) with the Orioles. He hit .400 in '76 with 17 homers and 59 RBIs in the Class A Short-Season Appy League. He also topped the circuit in hits (114) and runs (62). Corey would also lead the Double-A Southern League in hitting (.310) and hits (152) the following season, but was out of baseball after 1981.

Scoras was the long shot of the group, selected by the Expos in the eighth round in 1976 out of Division III power Montclair State (NJ). He hit .370 for Lethbridge, collecting 13 homers and 63 RBIs. Scoras also led the league in hits (101) and would win the MVP award in 1977 after leading the Florida State League in homers and RBIs.

"1976 was a long time ago, but it was a lot of fun," Scoras said. "Walt Hriniak was my manager and he was a codgy old guy. Walt would question a guy's manhood if he didn't think he was playing hard. [Current Mets batting coach] Rick Down was the assistant coach there.

"I knew I was having a good year, but we didn't have the Internet then or anything like that. We got stats on a weekly basis. I knew I was leading the league in homers, and with about 200 at-bats I was hitting .380 or .390. I was trying to stick around .400 and I think I won the batting title by about 20 points."

Scoras got off to a hot start in 1978 at Double-A Memphis before hurting his back in a traffic accident about a month into the season. Rather than go on the disabled list, he played through the injury but was never the same. He got as high as Triple-A Denver in the following years but never regained the stroke he had in '76-77.

Of the four players to win the Crown in '76, Thomas' story proved to be the saddest. He was known as "The Sundown Kid" during his career because he wouldn't play from sundown to sundown on Fridays and Saturday because of religious convictions. A former first-round pick by the Brewers, Thomas won the Eastern League Triple Crown after hitting .325 with 23 homers and 89 RBIs for Double-A Berkshire.

Thomas spent parts of the next two seasons in Milwaukee but dealt with emotional problems for much of his time with the Brewers. He was eventually arrested on statutory rape charges and hung himself in jail on June 12, 1980.