There are certain players whose names easily come to mind when thinking of the greatest all-around hitters. Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Musial, and Barry Bonds (if you choose to discredit the purported role that juicing played in his achievements) all make the list. Chances are that “Moises Alou” would not be your first choice, or your twentieth. But between injuries, Alou has quietly put together a hitting streak record that deserves honorable mention among the greats.

That is not to say that Alou is a future Hall of Famer. He’s never led the league in a major category or won an important award — he’s finished twice in the top three in the voting for the MVP award, but didn’t receive a first place vote either year. He’s not going to finish his career with 3,000 hits or 500 home runs. Unless the Mets pull out of their current doldrums, he won’t have a second ring to go with the one he got with the 1997 Marlins. He’s a six-time All-Star, but that doesn’t mean anything; Ron Santo played in nine, Bill Freehan in 11, and neither of them have been invited to Cooperstown.

Alou has just been consistently good — sometimes very good — for a long time. Counting from 1901, just 41 players have, or have had, career batting averages of .300 or better, combined with a slugging percentage of .500 or better in 5,000 or more plate appearances. With batting and slugging averages of .303 and .517 (through Sunday) Alou is one of them. With this, he joins more celebrated contemporaries such as Todd Helton, Vlad Guerrero, and Manny Ramirez, as well as eight other active players, not all of whom will go into the books meeting either or both qualifications. Of the 30 retirees on the list, 23 are in the Hall of Fame.

Alou might have been a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate if not for all of his injuries. He missed all of the 1991 season, which delayed his getting established in the majors, and lost the entire 1999 season when he fell off of a treadmill, tearing an ACL. He also has had numerous other seasons truncated by injuries, including the horrifying artificial turf injury he suffered in September 1993, when his cleats caught as he rounded first at Busch Stadium and his leg was literally broken in two. Had Alou had just a little bit more luck staying healthy, he would probably be closer to 2,500 hits and 400 home runs — still probably not enough to earn quick admission to the Hall, but enough to put him in the “maybe someday” group of players that sometimes gain admission through the Veterans Committee.

Injuries have been a problem this year as well, but the Mets had to have expected that going in. Very few 40-year-olds have stayed healthy enough — or, for that matter, been productive enough — to receive a full season of playing time. Just 14 players in the history of the game whose ages began with the number four have had 500 at-bat seasons. With Alou’s injury history, there was zero chance that he’d be number 15. He missed most of May and July and all of June in between. But since returning on July 27, he’s been one of the major props holding up the contracting Mets offense, batting .353 AVG /.404 OBA /.568 SLG in 50 games. If the Mets have seen less of Alou than they might have desired, in the final accounting he’ll play only ten or so fewer games than last year — and last year, he was a younger man.

This is about the most you can expect from a player of Alou’s age, as evidenced by the fact that his 28-game hitting streak qualifies not only as the Mets’ team record, not only as the longest in the majors this season, but as a record for the 41-and-over crowd. Not even T y Cobb, who batted .323/.389/.431 as a 41-year-old for the 1928 Philadelphia A’s, hit in so many consecutive games. Just two players, Cobb and Sam Rice of the old Senators, have hit for higher batting averages than Alou’s current .340 in a season after their 40th birthday. Signing Alou to bridge the gap to Lastings Milledge, Carlos Gomez, and the other Mets prospects was one gamble of Omar Minaya’s that worked out. If his late hot streak helps them into the postseason, so much the better.

That said, it’s questionable how much bridging has really been done, with Milledge and Gomez being young but unspectacular so far. So the Mets may need a stopgap again next year. The club has an option on Alou’s services, and it seems likely they’ll take it. But before they do, they should remember another 40-year-old outfielder, the one who is now the team’s first base coach. In 1999, Rickey Henderson hit .315/.423/.466 for the Mets. It seemed as if Rickey might be immortal, and the Mets brought him back for an encore. The next spring he opened the season hitting .219/.397/.229 and he was released in May. The chances that history will repeat itself are very good — Alou can’t go on forever.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.