New Milestones Sound Like Broken Records

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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Sometimes I wonder if people realize just how good Hank Aaron was. Did you know he’s the all-time leader in runs batted in, total bases, and extra-base hits? That he’s second in at-bats and intentional walks, third in hits, and games played, fourth in runs scored? He had Vladimir Guerrero’s best season, every year, for 20 years. Unsurprisingly, he’s on a lot of all-time leader boards, and his home run mark isn’t the only one to reach for.

I mention this because sometime very soon, perhaps as soon as tonight, Houston second baseman Craig Biggio, owner of the most disgusting helmet and the most leathery skin in baseball, is going to hit his 625th double, which will move him past Aaron into ninth place on the all-time list. It’s understandable that ESPN doesn’t cut away from games to cover Biggio’s quest to move up the list of the best doubles hitters of all time, as they’ve been known to do for home run hitters moving up the all-time charts. But as one of just 13 men to hit as many as 600 doubles, he’s actually in a group more select than the 500 home run club. The least impressive player among the others is probably Paul Molitor, and any group of 13 players that lists Molitor as its worst is quite a group, indeed.

It’s fitting that Biggio would excel in the hardly glamorous art of doubles hitting. Despite his accomplishments, he’s only been accepted as a certain Hall of Famer as it’s become near-certain that he’ll reach 3,000 hits. (He’s about 150 away, and will probably reach the milestone next year.) He’s exactly the kind of player most likely to be underappreciated.

Biggio has played his whole career in a small broadcast market, most of it in the Astrodome. He’s excelled at scoring runs rather than driving them in, at hitting doubles rather than home runs, and a tremendous amount of his value is tied up in secondary skills like drawing walks, stealing bases, avoiding double plays, and playing fine defense at a key position. Add it all up and he’s been, save for Barry Bonds, the best player of his generation.

Oddly, Biggio’s not even the most underrated member of the 1990 Houston Astros, nor the most underrated player wreaking havoc with the list of all-time leaders in two-baggers. That would be Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez, who passed Babe Ruth for 38th place all-time with his 507th double this year. Gonzalez will likely move up into the top 30 by the end of the year, and has an excellent chance at breaking into the top 20 by the end of next year. In fact, with two more solid seasons after this one, he could well join Biggio in the 600-double club.

Is Gonzalez a Hall of Famer? Of course not; he’s … well, he’s Luis Gonzalez. He’s had one year for the ages (2001, when he had the least-noted 57-home run season in baseball history and led Arizona to a World Series victory), another four or five All Star-type campaigns, and another 10 seasons in which he was a solid regular.

On the whole, he’s comparable to Tony Perez, Dave Parker, or Jim Rice. It wouldn’t be the worst atrocity in the history of Cooperstown if the voters went all daft 10 years after his retirement and elected him, but there’s little difference between him and a few dozen similar players. To even say that much, though, is to point out how underappreciated he’s been. Playing as a solid regular for 16 years, and at or near a star level for a third of those, is rarer than one might think.

Even more so, though, this shows how much inflation has affected our statistical currency. Even past Bonds, there are a lot of milestones being met in baseball these days. Some of them are important, many of them are not, but they are all becoming increasingly meaningless. Every year, it seems, some player is hitting his 500th home run, or setting the all-time record in something like hits or walks, or winning his 300th game, or striking out his 3,000th batter, or becoming the youngest player ever to reach some threshold like 400 home runs.

Only part of this is because we’re lucky enough to be seeing some of the best players of all time. A lot of it is that the oft-cited changes in the game – expansion, better foreign scouting, modern training techniques, new parks, etc. – really have radically altered the game, and thus the record books. There has never before been an era in baseball history in which a player of Gonzalez’s caliber could, at 38, have been said to have a realistic chance at hitting 600 doubles.

Baseball is not coming to an end, and its history and traditions will survive even with a few imposters high up on some lists in the encyclopedias. But we’d all do well to be a little warier than we are of some of the raw numbers that get tossed around.

Albert Pujols is an awesome hitter, but he’s not Ted Williams. (He’s actually not even as good as Frank Thomas or Johnny Mize were through their first five seasons, truthfully.) Craig Biggio is not Hank Aaron. David Wright is not Eddie Mathews. Luis Gonzalez is not Paul Waner. Being the first so-and-so since such-and-such to do this-and-that is just less noteworthy than it’s sometimes made out to be. Enough credit is due to all the great players we watch every day; they don’t need to get more than they deserve.


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