Seeing triple

Sporting News, The, July 23, 2001 by Michael Knisley

The short fence and the long ball have pushed the triple near extinction. Now several young players are trying to revive the mst exciting play in the game.

We come today to praise the triple, not to bury it, like baseball tries to do in these juiced-ball, small-stadium, home run-happy times.

We come to celebrate Jimmy Rollins, Cristian Guzman, Mike Cameron, Neifi Perez, Ichiro Suzuki and other exciting young players who fight the good fight to keep the triple alive. We come with hope that we won't ever have to administer last rites to baseball's most exciting play.

The sad truth is that this era's emphasis on the long ball is shoving the triple into a corner of the game's dusty archives, next to woolen uniforms, doubleheaders and World Series day games. Triples are on baseball's endangered species list. Over the years, they have been disappearing from box scores like northern spotted owls from Oregon's forests.

What's the talk of the majors this season? Certainly not Guzman's 13 first-half triples, a number that puts the American League single-season record in jeopardy. Instead, the feats on the lips of baseball fans across the continent belong to Barry Bonds and Luis Gonzalez. Can they better Mark McGwire's 70 home runs? Young America wants to know.

Guzman's triples? Outside of Minneapolis, Young America doesn't care. Or might not even be aware.

Even Guzman, who leads the majors in this bygone statistic, acknowledges the anonymity of his specialty. Is the triple, we ask him, still the most exciting play in the game?

"No," the Twins shortstop says with a sad smile. "Home run."

So we ask Rollins, shortstop for the Phillies and, like Guzman, a thinking man's triples hitter, to chronide for us how a triple comes about, which for him occurs somewhere in the middle 30 of the 90 feet between first base and second.

Rollins is a rookie, but he has the makings of a fine caretaker for this art. He is tied for the National League lead in three-base hits with eight.

"Personally, when I hit the ball, I come out of the box, and I'm busting it to second" he says, closing his eyes and seeing a triple spring to life. "I know by then I have a for-sure double. And then about halfway to second base, I know I'm going to third. I just know. If the outfielder has his back turned, even if he already has the ball, I know he's going to have to make a perfect throw to the infielder. And then the infielder is going to have to make another perfect throw to get me out at third.

"As a shortstop, I know how hard it is to make two perfect throws. I know when I'm in the field and I see a guy running, that ball comes in from the outfielder, and it just seems to float. You're trying to hurry up and get it, so you double-dutch it a little or you throw it a little high. A guy with speed on the bases is sliding under that tag all day. That's the beauty of a triple."

Triples still thrill, don't they? Other than the extremely rare inside-the-park home run, what other baseball play provides the extended, adrenaline-pumping action of a three-base hit? We ought not just watch players such as Rollins and Guzman. We ought to exalt them.

In the first 20 years of the 20th century, when balls were deader and outfields were bigger, one out of every 18 hits was a triple. By the mid-1980s, that number was down to one out of every 43 hits.

Last season, a triple happened once every 47.5 hits. Through the All-Star break this season, only every 49th hit, on average, was a triple. What's next? A triple a season?

Here's how much of an anomaly Guzman is. He has 108 hits. Divide his 13 triples into that, and he's standing on third once every 8.3 hits. Until he went on the disabled list last weekend with a sore shoulder, he was in position to make as strong a run at the A.L. triples record as Bonds and Gonzalez are making at the major league home run record.

Breaking the triples mark may be more impressive. That record has been standing so long it makes McGwire's three-year-old home run mark look wet behind the ears. Shoeless Joe Jackson's A.L.-record 26 triples were accumulated in the hit's glory days, back in 1912. Detroit's Sam Crawford tied it two years later. Eighty-seven seasons have passed since then.

Even healthy, Guzman probably wouldn't come close to the major league single-season record of 36 triples, set by Pittsburgh's Owen Wilson in 19 12, the year Shoeless Joe hit 26. Until the injury, Guzman was a good bet to finish the season with more triples than anyone in either league since Dale Mitchell hit 23 in 1949, and maybe Guzman still will. For now, the Twins don't think the injury, a frayed labrum, is serious. Guzman is scheduled to come off the D.L. July 28.

"There's no substitute for the kind of speed he has" Royals manager Tony Muser says of Guzman. "He has the ability to hit doubles just by bouncing them off that (artificial) turf. He can hit a soft single and have it bounce high enough to keep running, and he runs hard out of the box all the time.