Hello DIESELS!

It’s not often I break from the routine of strength training and especially grip training posts, but I just wanted to put something up quick right now related to baseball.

I want to send out my Congratulations to Derek Jeter for getting the tremendous milestone of 3000 hits!

In case you don’t follow baseball, this is BIG DEAL. Jeter is only the 28th player in Major League Baseball history to accumulate 3000 hits.

When you consider that all 30+ baseball teams carry at least a 25-man roster, which for a period expands to 40 and they bring people up from the minors and send people back down all throughout the year, AND this kind of things has been happening since like 1901, you have thousands and thousands of people who played the game that never even came close to this mark.

Of the top of my head, Jeter has been playing since 1995, so that is like 17 seasons, counting this year. That is longevity. The Major League Baseball season can be a long grueling affair. You take bumps and get bruises. You dive, you slide, you jam body parts, get hit by balls, play dehydrated on short rest…ALL that stuff adds up to a significant amount of trauma and to accomplish 3000 hits in a career is amazing. You have to be able to stay healthy, avoid the disabled list, maintain your skills, get lots of at bats…There are so many things that have to go right in order to make this kind of thing happen, it is like the deck is stacked against you.

Now, yes – Jeter has struggled for parts of this season and last season, but I tell you what. He has looked damn good the last month, and even better the last few days. At the end of last season and beginning of this one, he seemed to be striking the ball on the handle more than the sweet spot, but now, it’s like he’s knocking it on the sweet spot again. An amazing turn-around.

Other Amazing Shit

As if it weren’t enough to accomplish the 3000 hit feat, Derek also did a few other memorable things. Check it out…

• Derek went 5 for 5! – In case you don’t know what this means, every single time he was up he got a base hit of some sort. This in itself is an awesome day. First off, you have to get up to bat 5 times which isn’t always that common. But he also drove the ball hard each time – it’s not like he legged out infield hits or anything…
• Number 3000 was a home run! – Of all 28 people who have gotten 3000 hits, the only other person to hit a home run on number 3000 was Wade Boggs. Wade played most of his career with the Yankees’ arch enemies, the Boston Red Sox, then played 3 or 4 season with the Yanks before getting traded. He hit number 3000 with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which just happens to be the team that Jeter was playing against today.
• He Won the Game!

Derek not only stole the show today, but he also won the game for his team, knocking in the winning run in the 8th inning. It was incredible. It was as if it was a bad baseball movie script written for Justin Timberlake to play or something. The difference is Derek probably gets just as much tail as Timberlake, and he is a cooler dude that that ex-Backstreet Boy.

• He Beat Pete Rose! – In a Post I wrote like two years ago comparing Derek Jeter with Pete Rose, I talked about what would be required to beat Pete Rose’s number of hits. Rose has mor ehits than anyone in the history of MLB, and I said that it would be possible for Jeter to overtake him. Today, it was pointed out that Jeter actually has reached the 3000 hit milestone before Rose did in his career, so that is just freakin’ crazy!!!

Well, DIESELS, I’ve written far more than I meant to, but it just poured out of me. Derek Jeter plays the game and maintains a professionalism that i highly respect. I am so glad that he has finally accomplished it!

Thanks for bearing with me, if you are not a baseball fan!

All the best in your training!

Jedd

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Tags: 3000 hits, baseball, derek jeter, new york yankees, pete rose, yankees

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 9th, 2011 at 6:17 pm and is filed under baseball strength and conditioning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.