I love these kinds of APBA stories. Stray Corrado points out that in his Mid-West Baseball League, Derek Jeter is only 80 hits away from 3000 for his career in league play. That’s pretty amazing if you think about it. It’s a testament to Jeter. To accomplish 2920 hits in APBA league play, he would have to:
- hit well (obvious)
- stay healthy
- have few, if any, down years throughout his MLB career
The last point can’t be understated. Unlike big league managers, APBA managers have the gift of foresight and have a good idea how a player will perform in a certain year in APBA. I’ve had stars on my APBA league team who have had an occasional off-year. Did I play them full time those years? Probably not and that most likely cut into their overall career playing time.
That’s not the case with MWBL’s Derek Jeter. In his 16 year career with the MWBL, he’s played full-time and hit .295 (pretty good considering he’s probably hitting against better pitching) with five 200-hit seasons and seven years hitting .300 or better.
By the way, Stray also hints at some exciting changes to the Mid-West Baseball League website in the near future so keep an eye on it. It’s already a great site so I’m curious what he has in store for it.
In my BPL replay (1969-1983) Rod Carew and Pete Rose both passed 3000 hits. Reggie Jackson passed 500 homers