List Of Lifetime Major League Baseball Hit Leaders Through History
This list of lifetime MLB hit leaders displays a chronology of the annual top ten leaders in lifetime base hits in Major League Baseball from 1876 through 2011.
The table assists in identifying the most significant players in each era, and helps to understand the importance of many stars of the past. Before Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's record for career hits, for example, Tris Speaker, Stan Musial and Hank Aaron had each reached the number two spot in succession.
It is also quite valuable to identify the leaders during the 19th century, when seasons were shorter (usually from 60 to 130 games); while nearly 250 players have now reached the 2,000-hit plateau, barely a dozen had done so by the end of the 19th century.
In the era before 1893, when the distance between the pitcher and home plate was extended from 45 feet to 60 feet, long-neglected stars Deacon White and Paul Hines were mainstays among the top five, along with Cap Anson and Jim O'Rourke.
This chart uses the hit totals which are officially recognized by Major League Baseball, as maintained and provided by the Elias Sports Bureau; they are derived from the annual official league statistics, even when those totals have been proven by later research to be in error. Particularly with regard to players from before 1920, these totals often differ from those used by ESPN, CNN/Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, the Baseball-Reference website, or by MLB's two longtime official encyclopedias, The Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball. In fact, they are also not the same as the historical totals displayed on MLB's official website.
While the specific totals may vary between sources, and slight variations in the order may result, the leaders would overwhelmingly be the same regardless of which set of numbers is used; with the exception of 1904, in no year does more than one player drop out of the top 10 when a different version of the statistics is employed. Furthermore, this table accurately represents what observers of each era believed to be true.
Read more about List Of Lifetime Major League Baseball Hit Leaders Through History: 1876-1900, 1901-1960, 1961–2012
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, lifetime, major, league, baseball, hit, leaders and/or history:
“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?”
—Allan Bloom (1930–1992)
“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
—Robert Bolt (1924–1995)
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“When Dad can’t get the diaper on straight, we laugh at him as though he were trying to walk around in high-heel shoes. Do we ever assist him by pointing out that all you have to do is lay out the diaper like a baseball diamond, put the kid’s butt on the pitcher’s mound, bring home plate up, then fasten the tapes at first and third base?”
—Michael K. Meyerhoff (20th century)
“Children, randomly at first, hit upon something sooner or later that is their mother’s and/or father’s Achilles’ heel, a kind of behavior that especially upsets, offends, irritates or embarrasses them. One parent dislikes name-calling, another teasing...another bathroom jokes. For the parents, this behavior my have ties back to their childhood, many have been something not allowed, forbidden, and when it appears in the child, it causes high-voltage reaction in the parent.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“In an ideal society, mothers and fathers would produce potty- trained, civilized, responsible new citizens while government and corporate leaders would provide a safe, healthy, economically just community.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)