Baseball's terrible (half) year

Losing Mays and then Rose and now Henderson

In all of baseball’s history, there have been exactly five players who have joined what I have identified as the 3000/3000/2000 club (or 3,000/3,000/2,000 if you prefer to use the commas). It’s a very small, exclusive group of ballplayers who have played in at least 3,000 ballgames, collected at least 3,000 hits, and scored at least 2,000 runs.

Longevity is at the heart of this, because it would take even the greatest of players 20 solid seasons to produce so much. That’s 20 seasons of playing almost every day (and coming back strong from an injury, should one occur) and getting about a hit a game, and scoring a run in a majority of those games. It’s exceedingly difficult to do, and I could list a number of amazing players, from Ruth and Gehrig to Musial and Pujols, who didn’t reach all three of these milestones.

Would Ted Williams have got there, but for his military service? Probably not, because he lost a number of games during the early 1950s. Roberto Clemente may have had a couple more stellar seasons left when he passed at age 38, but he missed the number in two of the three categories. Had ARod not been suspended for an entire season, it’s likely he would have reached the 3,000 games figure that he fell short of. So a number of things have to go right for any player to make all three milestones.

The first to reach these levels was Ty Cobb, who died in 1961. I’m not sure whether the second player to get there was Willie Mays or Henry Aaron (and I’m not nerdy enough to find out on Christmas eve, either) but Aaron was the second of this small group to pass away, in early 2021. And that was it, from a death standpoint, until earlier this year.

Willie Mays, either the second or third member of this super-exclusive group, passed away at age 93 on June 18. Then, on September 30, the fourth member of the group, Pete Rose, passed away at age 83. And then, something that probably nobody saw coming, the fifth and—until further notice—final member of this group, Rickey Henderson, passed away at age 65 on December 20. And, during this six months and two days span of time, baseball also lost Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda on June 28, and Dodger great Fernando Valenzuela on the eve of the World Series in October. And throw in the great James Earl Jones, who will forever be the voice behind the great “Baseball has marked the time” speech in Field of Dreams, and this has been a year that baseball won’t forget anytime soon.

I had great hopes that a Yankees-Dodgers World Series in October could rekindle some of the interest I once had in the game, only to discover that one of the game’s greatest offensive talents couldn’t catch an easy flyball, and a pitcher who should have known enough to cover first base wasn’t interested in doing so. A five-game series is always a disappointment because, at least to me, there’s nothing better than the drama of a Game Seven. But it was not to be, and baseball’s losses have continued unabated since then.

Here’s to better things in 2025, whatever those might be….