Major League Baseball Triple Crown
In Major League Baseball, a player earns the Triple Crown when he leads a league in three specific statistical categories. When used without a modifier, the Triple Crown generally refers to a batter who has led either the National or American leagues in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in (RBI). The Triple Crown epitomizes three separate attributes of a good hitter: hitting for average, hitting for power, and producing runs. It has been accomplished 17 times, with Miguel Cabrera being the most recent to accomplish the feat in 2012, the first since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
The pitching Triple Crown is accomplished by a pitcher who has led the league in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average (ERA). The pitching Triple Crown has been accomplished 38 times, including 8 since 1997. Generally, the Triple Crown refers to leading a specific league such as the National League (NL) or the American League (AL) in these categories. However, if a player leads all of Major League Baseball in all three categories, he might be said to have captured a "Major League Triple Crown". Furthermore, it is not a requirement for a player to be the sole leader in each category; only a tie of first place in each category is needed in order to be eligible. Yastrzemski tied with Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead in home runs (44) when he won the Triple Crown in 1967.
Read more about Major League Baseball Triple Crown: Batting Triple Crown, Pitching Triple Crown, Records, Triple Crown Winners
Famous quotes containing the words major, league, baseball, triple and/or crown:
“Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semi-tones till I sink to a minor,—yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying a while the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“And DANTE searched the triple spheres,
Moulding nature at his will,
So shaped, so colored, swift or still,
And, sculptor-like, his large design
Etched on Alp and Apennine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”
—Bible: Hebrew Proverbs, 16:31.