3s in Our Society

Did you ever notice how certain numbers always seem to be creeping up on you all the time? Maybe you were reading Harry Potter and there were too many sevens. Maybe you noticed that 50% of the words you uttered were precisely two syllables. Maybe not.

Now that the award voting is in for the 2009 baseball season, I'd like to identify three significant 3s in baseball today. And more than significant, they're rather mind-boggling.

1. Ichiro Suzuki just concluded his ninth year in the major leagues. In only 3 of his seasons did he not lead the Major Leagues (or tie for the lead) in hits. In those three seasons he had (or had a tie for) second place in hits in the Major Leagues.

2. Albert Pujols has just concluded his ninth year in the major leagues. In only 3 of his seasons did he not come in first or second place in the MVP voting.*

3. In the history of the American League, a catcher has only won the batting title 3 times. Joe Mauer, Joe Mauer and Joe Mauer. (2006, 2008, 2009)

* Ichiro and Albert Pujols were both rookies in 2001. They won Rookie of the Year Awards in their respective leagues in 2001.**  2001 may well go down as the best ROY Class of all time. Ichiro and Albert Pujols, not bad. They do have some competition.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson was Rookie of the Year. They only gave out one award for both leagues back then, so it would be pretty hard to count that. In 1951, World Series foes Willie Mays and Gil McDougald won the two awards. Only one Hall of Famer there, but McDougald was a really good infielder, and between the two of them you've got 25 years of All-Star Game appearances.

1956 was the first time that two future Hall-of-Famers would win the award. Frank Robinson and his 38 home runs won the National League ROY, while Luis Aparicio and his league-leading 21 steals won the Junior Circuit's rookie crown.

In 1967, Tom Seaver and Rod Carew, both future first-ballot Hall-of-Famers, won their league's award.

10 year later, in 1977, Montreal's Andre Dawson and Baltimore's Eddie Murray were Rookies of the Year. Dawson is, as of right now, not a Hall-of-Famer (and he may never be), but I think (and I'm not sure here) that these two have more career home runs than any other ROYs.

WIth apologies to Jose Canseco (1986), the steroid class of ROYs was 1987, with Mark McGwire and Benito Santiago.

It's not really fair to try and rate the 2006 (Hanley Ramirez, Justin Verlander) and 2007 (Ryan Braun, Dustin Pedroia) as of yet.

I think that the winning class is....1967. Rod Carew and Tom Seaver are ahead of Pujols and Ichiro. And quite frankly, I don't know if they'll catch them. Ichiro is already 36. We don't know how much he has left (though it'd be hard to say that he's showing his age).

For the more complete answer, check back in ten years.

Parenthetically, that was some serious class of rookies in '01. Besides the winners, Ichiro and Pujols, there were Sabathia, Alfonso Soriano, David Eckstein, Roy Oswalt, Jimmy Rollins, Adam Dunn. Not too shabby.

** I was discussing the ROY with a friend of mine in 2001. He was, as I recall, trying to point out how good a rookie year Soriano had. Sorry, sir. Most irrelevant. Looking it up now, Soriano didn't just not get a first-place vote - he finished third, behind Ichiro and CC Sabathia.