Sporticulture

This one is a must read for any baseball fan. Jayson Stark and a "a bunch of baseball people -- players, ex-players, executives, historians, writers and great statistical minds" have made a list of the ten most important non-home run records in baseball. They're not necessarily looking for the toughest records to break, but the most iconic numbers in the game. Among other marks on the list are DiMaggio's streak, Williams' .400, Ripken's streak and Denny McLain's 30-win season. It's a terrific list with interesting commentary on each record and what it would take to break it.

Though I know this record would easily fall in Stark's "old era" of baseball, I've always wondered why almost no one talks about the career triples record. Of course, there are several reasons for this:

1) It's held by an obscure hall-of-famer, Sam Crawford, of whom few casual baseball fans are aware.
2) The record (312, Ty Cobb is second with 298), like so many others, is unbreakable in the contemporary game, and so loses much of its meaning.
3) The triple has gone out of style.

But think about the basis for Stark's list -- a list that excludes the now-steroid-tainted home run -- and the triples record really is the anti-home run record. There's no showboating or admiring for a batter who hits a triple; he has to sprint out of the box or he won't get past second. It thus requires that all too rare (at least in 21st century baseball) combination of speed and power. It takes a confident hitter with a knack for hitting them where they proverbially ain't and a bit of luck as well. It's also not a solo act; to score on a triple a teammate has to knock you in. So read and enjoy the wonderful list linked above, but let's not forget Sam Crawford, the only member of the 300-triple club.