Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 21, 2002
1-7, Triple:

When I was in college, I caught the Strat-O-Matic Baseball bug. It's a simulation game, and a lot of fun to play. One year we played with the 1979 cards. I had Bob Watson have a tremendous season for me that year. You would roll three dice, two red and one white. The white die would choose one of 6 columns; the combination of the red die would choose a result in the column. Sometimes, the results would be broken up into two events, and you would pick a card between 1 and 20 to decide. For example, Bob Watson had a 1-6 (column 1, entry 6) with a HR 1-18, double 19-20. When you'd roll this, you'd say, HR 1-18, double the rest. Since triples are rare events, you almost never saw a triple on a straight roll, it was almost always split, and it was almost always on an unlikely roll, like 2 or 3 or 11 or 12. In 1979, my friend Jim Storer had George Brett. George had a 1-7 triple. No split. A straight triple on a probablisticly high roll. When Jim would roll the 1-7 on Brett's card, he'd say, "1-7, triple," and his opponent would ask, "Triple what?" and Jim would reply, "Just a triple. It's like a triple 1-20, but you don't pick a split card!" It was scary facing Brett that year.

Well, Furcal may end up with one this year. He had three triples in one game today, tying an MLB record. As a point of comparison, Willie Mays Aikens had 2 triples for his entire career! Triples have shown a steady decline throughout the 20th century. Every decade, triples were less abundant than the previous 10 year span. My guess is that the more prominent the HR became, the more risky it was to try to take the extra base, stretching a double into a triple. Also, defense has gotten better every decade, and as throwing arms got stronger, the chance of being thrown out at third went up. Triples are one of my favorite hits, so I hope we see a few more from Furcal this year.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:39 PM | Baseball