I know, I know, I'm probably about to jinx him into an 0-for-100 slide, but as I write this, Rafael Palmeiro is sitting on 2,999 career hits.
As we noted here last March, baseball historians, writers, fans -- and to a large extent, players -- are quite obsessed with Chasing the Big Number, and where hitting is concerned, there is none bigger than the one Palmeiro is about to chase down.
And as you no doubt have heard, he is also about to become only the fourth player, after a pretty decent bunch of guys named Aaron, Mays and Murray, to have hit 500 homers, reaching that OTHER hitter's Big Number, while having 3,000 hits. (He's actually just 30-some homers shy of joining Aaron and Mays as the only 3,000/600 guys. Nice.)
Frankly, the statistical oddity of that confluence is just that -- an oddity. So Stan Musial "only" hit 475 homers among his 3,630 hits? Big deal. Musial's in the Hall of Fame. Palmeiro will join him in six or seven years.
Mike Green, from whom this thread's "Hall Watch" logo was hijacked, wrote of Raffy a while back, "Palmeiro's 3000 hits and 550 homers will be impossible to ignore when he becomes eligible [for the Hall]."
Bang on. First ballot guy. No question. Here in the DFW Metroplex, where Raffy has done a couple of notable tours of duty, a sports radio jock recently said "Palmeiro is one of those guys who isn't really going to be appreciated for his greatness until he's gone." (Presumably he meant "retired.")
Let's not wait. Bauxites, you are hereby invited to share your memories of one of the 10 greatest hitters of this era ... Rafael Palmeiro.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050715165744539