Dennis Eckersley: The Last Thousand-Hundred Man

If you pick the baseball milestone carefully enough, you can always reduce the number of players that qualify to one. For example, the only player to hit more than 72 home runs in a season is Barry Bonds. He hit 73 dingers in 2001. Second on the list is Mark McGwire with 70 in 1998. The selection of 72 as a specific cutoff leaves Bonds as the only qualifier. But choosing a cutoff this way is suspect because it’s arbitrary. Sufficiently large round numbers may seem just as arbitrary as qualifying values, but getting 3,000 hits means a batter has had a great career. Three hundred wins is a great career for a pitcher.