Ain’t nothing new under the retractable roof

On Thursday, someone related to me that Carlos Beltran will soon become (if he hasn’t already) one of only eight players* in MLB history to amass 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases. Baseball statistics are fun like that: set any arbitrary combination of select parameters and statistics and you could probably find a way to group Miguel Olivo and Ted Williams.

Examples are not hard to find. A quick Google turned up – without much trouble – ‘Record for most hits by a pitcher on opening day’, ‘The only two brothers who ended with the exact same batting average in the same season’, and ‘The first player in All-Star Game history to bat against the same pitcher 10 or more years apart’.

You can hardly swing a bat without hitting some arbitrary statistical achievement. I just checked Twitter for the first time in a month (once upon a time, I tried to keep up – today, I declare Twitter bankruptcy, and will just try to do better from here on out) and this was sitting at the top of my timeline:

https://twitter.com/#!/DCameronFG/statuses/197187534260932611

But I think I’ve found my favorite. Presented without further ado – nor further comment – the following excerpt, which appeared in the The USA Today (presumably from wire reports) on something like, but not necessarily, April 10:

1B Eric Hosmer and 3B Mike Moustakas homered in the same Major League game for the first time in a 6-3 triumph vs. the Angels on Saturday. It was a feat they had accomplished in the minors.

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*The others, in case you’re curious: Barry and Bobby Bonds, Andre Dawson, Steve Finley, Willie Mays, Alex Rodriguez and Reggie Sanders.