Why I Love Baseball, Part 12

It's been over a year since I wrote a Why I Love Baseball post.  This post was inspired by two things.  First, about three and a half weeks ago, the Effectively Wild podcast had their 500th episode.  For that episode, Ben and Sam had Grant Brisbee and Jeff Sullivan have a draft with them of things they like about baseball.  The draft went three rounds.  The draft order was Sam, Grant, Jeff, and Ben (not a snake draft).  Here's how the draft went:

Sam:  Babe Ruth (Sam made a reference to a great Simpsons episode, it's worth listening to, but I'll explain in a comment why I don't think it holds up), radio commercials during baseball games, and GMs making predictions
Grant:  the other Ryan Braun (not the cheater, this lead to a pretty good conversation), baseball players getting mentioned in rap/hip hop lyrics, and searching for players with dirty words on Baseball-Reference
Jeff:  Petco Park rotating heads (I'm telling you, this episode is worth listening to), Paul O'Neill's anguished reaction to the Mariners eliminating the Yankees in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS, and the John Olerud tree story
Ben:  PITCHf/x, different field dimensions in each stadium, and platoons

Ben had the last pick in each round and he easily had the best draft.  I did a post on different field dimensions.  That would have been very high on my draft board.  PITCHf/x and platoons are also very solid picks.  Sam made a great first pick with Babe Ruth, but the rest of his draft wasn't as good.  But they left out a lot of things that I would have drafted.  If you want to read about them, go back through the blog and look for other Why I Love Baseball posts.

The other thing that inspired this post is that today is the 25th anniversary of the first baseball game I attended.  That was the subject of my first Why I Love Baseball post.

So in honor of the Effectively Wild draft and the anniversary of my first baseball game, here's something that I love about baseball that definitely would have been on my draft board:  hitting streaks.  Three years ago, I went to the 30th and final game of Andre Ethier's hitting streak.  He was one game away from tying the Dodgers' franchise record, held by Willie Davis.  I would love to see somebody make a run at Joe DiMaggio's record of 56.  There have been six hitting streaks of at least 40 games in baseball history, but only two since 1922.  The longest hitting streak of my lifetime is Paul Molitor's 39 game streak in 1987.

There are a couple of things about hitting streaks that make them interesting to me.  First is that it's possible to have a long hitting streak without hitting particularly well.  It's unlikely, but if you're going 1-4 or 1-5 almost every game, you could have a long hitting streak while hitting well under .300 (DiMaggio hit .408 during his streak).  The second thing is that chasing DiMaggio's record is unlike chasing most other records.  Let's say Clayton Kershaw was making a run at Nolan Ryan's modern single season strikeout record.  It's not likely to happen because he'd have to average almost 12 strikeouts per game if he made 33 starts (his career high).  But if he did make a run at the record and had a game with 7 strikeouts, it wouldn't help him, but it wouldn't be the end of the world either.  He strikes out 29 in the next two games (not easy to do, but not out of the question) and he's right back on track.  But if Yasiel Puig made a run at Joe DiMaggio's record, it's all or nothing.  If he gets to 50 games in a row and then goes 0-4 the next game, it's over.  Once that run ends, the record is once again out of reach.  It's just like consecutive scoreless innings record (which Kershaw actually did make a little run at earlier this season).

I know other sports have things like this, but they're not the same as the hitting streak.  Drew Brees recently set the record for consecutive games with a touchdown pass.  What's amazing is that Johnny Unitas held that record for 52 years.  With passing becoming so much easier in football these days, it's not surprising that somebody broke the record.  Kevin Durant had a long streak of games with at least 30 points.  Wilt Chamberlain holds the record at 65, but the game was different back then.  Durant also had a long streak with at least 25 points.  Chamberlain's record for that is 126.  But those streaks seem a little contrived.  You could come up with most consecutive games with at least 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever.  The hitting streak in baseball is so simple.  All you have to do is get at least one hit every game, but it's so hard to do that only 47 players have ever gotten to 30 games.

Baseball is a simple game.  I love the simplicity of the game.  And hitting streaks are about as simple as it gets.