The 2011 Major League Baseball Thread

Derek Jeter definitely has a flair for the dramatic. Got his 2,999th hit today in the first inning, a clean single between third and short, then in the third hit a ball deep into the right field stands for a game-tying solo home run. Only the twenty-eighth player in MLB history to reach the 3,000 hit plateau. Wade Boggs is the only other member of that club to get their three thousandth with a home run.

Pretty fu*kin' cool.

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I remember Paul Molitor got his with a triple, for whatever reason.

the sad part was Boggs did it while toiling for the tampa bay devil rays instead of for the Red Sox.

mostly it reminds me that Pete Rose, he with over 4000 hits, isnt in cooperstown.

That's because the rule doesn't make exceptions for gambling if the gambler in question had a whole bunch of hits.

He shoulda spent his spare time beaten the crap outta women stead of gamblin.

if he did, he'd be in the hall.

Yup. Because baseball is not the police nor the judge of society. It's first concern is the integrity of competition, which gambling strikes at the very heart at, and which being a racist or a jerk does not effect.

Kinda like how my job isn't to make sure posters here are nice people, just that they don't violate the rules of the forum. A bigot who keeps their hate off the forums may not be banned, but someone more fair-minded in general who insults others will be.

My first concern is the forum's integrity. Baseball's first concern is the game's integrity.

if that is their stance, and they stickin too it, i wonder how they reconcile that sports gambling is perfectly legal up here. They could have chosen to get an injunction to stop it in Ontario (as the NBA did) but they didn't. So, while Pete Rose isnt in the hall, any and all of the blue jays can fill out a pro-line ticket at a 7-11 and bet.

BTW, Jeter went 5 for 5, and his fifth hit was the game-winner in the bottom of the eighth, an RBI single up the middle.

Unbelievable. If they put it in a screenplay, you'd roll your eyes at how corny and impossible it all was.

So now he has 3,003 hits.

Really? I don't think the players can do that. I know Canada makes gambling rather easy, but I've heard a few different times that the rules prohibiting gambling are posted in every major league clubhouse.

Also, just because something is legal for the general public doesn't mean it's allowed for players in the MLB. No?

And I meant, betting on baseball for baseball players. Dunno if they care if MLB players bet on football.

The biggest problem I had with Pete Rose was he lied about it in interview after interview for fifteen years.

Why didn't he just say he never "knowingly" bet on baseball.

sport select kiosks are in just about every corner store including 7 elevens. Anyone 18 and over can make a ticket, i honestly do not know how MLB would enforce that.

again, what they coulld have done, is appealed to the Government as the NBA did, and wagering on baseball wouldn't have been an option.

they didnt do that.

Sports Gambling is a big business as i'm sure you are aware, the difference being up here, the proceeds of the house winnings goes towards healthcare. Win Win

Well, whether or not they can enforce it is another matter. But it's against the rules for all players.

oh yeah, its bloody incredible. I was startled to learn Jeter bacame the first Yankee to get 3000 hits. Considering the rich history with Mantle Dimaggio et all it kinda blew me away.

verry impressive.

Also heard the guy that caught the homer ball gave it to Jeter stead of going the E-bay route as many assume he would. Yankees rewarded him with 4 luxury suite tix for ever home game the rest of the way, including playoffs and WS. plus a shwack of autographed memorabilia.

Yes, no Yankee had ever amassed 3,000 hits before...though four players who spent parts of their careers in New York, including Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson and Wade Boggs, all eventually reached 3K.

Obviously if not for the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig almost surely would have surpassed 3,000. He finished, abruptly, with 2,721 hits, having averaged 192 hits a year in the previous five full seasons. Ruth didn't become a Yankee (and fulltime hitter) until he was twenty-five. DiMaggio, like many stars of his era, lost three seasons in his prime to WWII, and he also retired when he was only thirty-six. Mantle, of course, had his longevity numbers hampered by knee injuries and alcoholism. Mattingly was surely on pace, and for four or five years in a row was probably the best hitter in the game, but he had his career shortened by recurring back injuries, forcing him to retire at only thirty-four. Though Bernie Williams won a batting title and had some very good years, he wasn't as consistent, and he left at age thirty-eight.

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That's why so few players, Yankees or otherwise, reach that milestone. You have to be very consistent and play for a very long time at that level.

Alex Rodriguez will reach 3,000 in another couple years, and in a Yankee uniform, but obviously he has amassed lots of those for Seattle and Texas. Robinson Cano is on pace, after just six and a half seasons, but who knows if he'll stay healthy and productive for another eleven or twelve years? He's a third of the way there and change, but nobody can say a talented hitter with already 1,000 and nearly 200 hits as a twenty-eight-year-old will make it into his late thirties and beyond putting up those kinds of numbers.

And let's not talk about him like these numbers are done, either. Even after a crappy first couple months and a couple weeks on the DL, you can still project Jeter out to about 150 hits this season. Obviously that's if he stays healthy the rest of the way, but if he does that's also a conservative number. For sake of argument, say he gets 150 this year. That'll put him at 3,075, which gets him past the next eight guys on the list: Kaline, Boggs, Cap Anson, Palmeiro, Brock, Rod Carew, Rickey Henderson and Craig Biggio. Then if you give him a very conservative 150 hits a year for the next three full seasons after 2011, that would put him at 3,525 after 2014. That gets him past everyone except four names: Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and Pete Rose.

And those are pretty conservative numbers. If he averages 175 a year from 2012-2014, that puts him at 2,600, thirty hits shy of Stan Musial.

Could be lots and lots and lots of even more exalted records to come. He's thirty-seven, so if he can play at any decent clip to forty or forty-one, he's gonna make some serious history.


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But, you know, he's been "overrated" since 1996 and his defensive metrics are a joke to Sabermetricians...but he is within legitimate striking distance of becoming only the sixth player in the long history of the game to top 3,500 career hits.

Overrate that.