Batting triple Crown: HR RBI AVG an elusive achievement: since 1901, only 11 major league players have led their league in homers, runs batted in and hitting average in the same season

Baseball Digest, Nov, 2005 by Jack Etkin

BEFORE THIS SEASON, DERREK LEE had never heard of Hall of Famer Joe Medwick, which is understandable. His heyday was in the 1930s, and he died 30 years ago.

"People brought his name up," Lee said. "Don't they call him 'Ducky' or something?"

Indeed, Medwick's nickname was "Ducky." And the reason Medwick has become a vague historical figure rather than a total unknown to Lee is Medwick was the last National Leaguer to win the Triple Crown. He did it in 1937 with the St. Louis Cardinals. The last major leaguer to lead a league in batting, home runs and RBI--the Triple Crown components--was Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 with the Boston Red Sox.

Lee was asked about the Triple Crown a lot this year, hence the Medwick references. Lee never had hit .300, or topped .282 for that matter. His single-season high in RBI was 98. So before the 2005 season, there seemed to be no plausible statistical link between Lee and the Triple Crown. His defense at first base earned Lee a Gold Glove last year, his first season with the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs acquired Lee for first baseman Hee-Seop Choi and a minor-league pitcher in November 2003. That was one month after Lee helped the Florida Marlins beat the Cubs in the National League Championship Series and win the World Series.

It was also long before Lee started hearing about Medwick and began being asked to assess his Triple Crown chances. And it was well into the 2005 season, when Cubs manager Dusty Baker, having watched Lee perform for the first time in a bright, relentless spotlight, was asked if Lee's low-keyed demeanor was reminiscent of any player, and Baker compared Lee with Hank Aaron.

"They're externally humble but internally very confident," Baker said. "He does everything easy, kind of slow-moving but at a high rate of speed."

Lee was eligible for arbitration a final time in 2003, with free agency looming after 2004. So in late November 2003, the Marlins, in a trade motivated by finances far more than baseball sense, sent Lee to the Cubs, who signed him to a three-year contract before the start of the 2004 season.

Lee hit .278 for the Cubs last year with 32 home runs and 98 RBI. As late as September 19, Lee was hitting .295 before a 7-for-59 tailspin the final two weeks whittled 17 points off his average.

"I was proud of my season last year," Lee said. "I felt like I made a big jump and I felt coining into this season I could get better. I didn't come into the season thinking I was going to be fighting for a Triple Crown or anything like that."

Lee might be going down fighting, which would involve neither surprise nor shame, considering the enormous challenge inherent in winning a Triple Crown. For four months, he seemed to defy probability and the ebbs and flows of baseball before finally hitting an air pocket.

Lee was batting .370 on July 23 and entered August with a .360 average. Through August 28, he was hitting .349 (first in N.L.) with 39 home runs (second in N.L.) and 94 RBI (fourth in N.L).

Driving in runs is dependent on the success of teammates, a handicap for Derrek Lee. He bats third for the Cubs. Their leadoff hitters were next to last in the N.L. with a .305 on-base percentage, and their No. 2 hitters were 14th at .302 through late August.

Lee may no longer be the senior circuit's best Triple Crown candidate. Cardinals first baseman Pujols, as usual, was vying for the lead in each category--through mid-August he was second with a .334 average, tied for third with 35 homers and second with 99 RBI.

Pujols is 25, noteworthy as far as the Triple Crown goes because only two of the 11 players to win it had turned 30 when they won it. Lou Gehrig was 31 in 1934 and Frank Robinson turned 31 toward the end of the 1966 season. Lee turned 30 on September 6.

Pujols won a batting title in 2003, hitting .359 and beating Todd Helton by one point. Now in his fifth phenomenal season, Pujols has finished second in both home runs (2002) and RBI (2004), meaning he has strolled considerably farther down the Triple Crown path than Lee.

"If there's anyone who's going to do it," said Florida batting coach Bill Robinson, who worked with Lee for two seasons, "more so than D-Lee, who I love and respect, it would be Albert Pujols, because he's been at the cusp of doing that every year."

LONG TIME COMING

The Triple Crown, while never commonplace, used to occur reasonably often. Frank Robinson won it in the American League in 1966, just one year before Yastrzemski accomplished the feat. Mickey Mantle did it 10 years before Robinson, and Ted Williams--who along with Rogers Hornsby is the only player in history to win the Triple Crown twice--won his second Triple Crown in 1947, nine years before Mantle.

Gehrig's Triple Crown in 1934 came right after two players in the same city" won it in 1933--Jimmie Foxx with the Philadelphia A's and Chuck Klein with the Philadelphia Phillies.

All 11 Triple Crown winners are in the-Hall of Fame. But some of the game's greatest all-around hitters didn't have a Triple Crown on their resume. Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth led in all three categories but never in the same season. Stan Musial led the N.L. in hitting (.376) and RBI (131) and hit 39 homers in 1948, all career-high figures. But a home run in a game that was rained out cost Musial the Triple Crown, because co-leaders Johnny Mize and Ralph Briner hit 40.