If you’re the sort of fan who has an appreciation for both the home team and the history of the sport, today’s Twins/Jays finale was a pretty fabulous proposition all around, particularly if you were one of the 31,038 folks in attendance at the Dome to see Frank Thomas’ 500th home run in an 8-5 loss to the home club.
I still get a little thrill out of baseball’s statistical milestones. For those of us who grew up with a Baseball Encyclopedia next to the bed, who lived for the annual arrival of the Bill James’ Baseball Abstract, and who felt that our lives would never be truly complete without a visit to Cooperstown, that short list of individual achievements that, regardless of team success, conferred immediate baseball immortality were firmly cemented in our brains: 3000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 wins.
There is now considerable argument regarding whether 500 homers should still be regarded the benchmark for inclusion in the Hall of Fame. When you really think hard about that number, though, it’s difficult not to dismiss the grousing of those who would pooh-pooh the credentials of the latest members of the club. Granted, the steroid issue has cast a rather large shadow over the game’s relatively recent power explosion, and though Thomas was just the 21st Major Leaguer to reach 500, there are a number of guys –Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriguez– who are likely to join Thomas on that list this season.
Still, shit, 500 home runs. That’s ten fifty-homer seasons, or twenty seasons of twenty-five. I guess when you’re a Twins fan those numbers still seem mind boggling. 600 may be, as some claim, the new 500, but not right now it’s not, and I say 500 remains a mighty impressive feat, even with all the question marks –juice, juiced balls, diluted pitching, smaller parks.
It’s also pretty fabulous that on the same day that Thomas hit number 500, Craig Biggio became the 27th player in history to reach 3000 hits. Again, when you break that number down into single-season benchmarks, it’s pretty impressive: 3000 hits translates into fifteen 200-hit seasons. In other words, a guy has to play a long time, and be pretty damn consistent and pretty damn good to get there. Biggio, of course, has long been a favorite of stat-heads, and there should be no real argument about his Hall of Fame credentials; he’s always played a key defensive position, for one thing, and is the only player in major-league history to have 600 doubles, 250 home runs (286), 3,000 hits, and 400 stolen bases.
Barry Bonds will probably reach 3000 hits as well, but after that we might be waiting a long time for another player to reach 3000. The active career leaders list is filled with old guys –following Biggio and Bonds on the list are Julio Franco, Steve Finley, Omar Vizquel, Ken Griffey, Gary Sheffield, and Luis Gonzalez, and all of those guys are somewhere in the range of 400-600 hits away. Derek Jeter had 2150 hits going into this season, and Alex Rodriquez had 2067.
The most impressive –and likely the most increasingly elusive– number at this point is 300 wins. Tom Glavine will get there this year. Randy Johnson is next on the active list with 284 wins, and after him there’s a huge drop off to Mike Mussina, with 242 wins. Assuming Johnson eventually reaches 300 –and that’s assuming quite a lot right now– I think it’s possible we’ll never see another 300-game winner. Glavine will be the 23rd player to achieve the milestone, and in this era of pitch counts, relief specialists, band boxes, and explosive offense, 300 wins is all the more impressive. Again, to break it down by single-season achievement, that number translates to fifteen twenty-win seasons. How many starters even manage to stay healthy and productive enough to last fifteen seasons in the Major Leagues anymore?
Maybe this will put it in perspective: at the age of 28, Johan Santana has 86 wins. If he pitches another ten years and manages to win 20 games a season that would leave him with 286 victories. How likely do you think that is to happen?
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