I was thinking about the Phillies awesome triple play the other day and I browsing around the SABR website when I came to a section called the Triple Plays Database. In there they had a page that contained every player that has it into a triple play and the number of times that they have done so. Deacon McGuire did it 3 times, but the winner of the most times is Brooks Robinson, who did it 4 times! Dean McGuire played from 1884 - 1912, playing for Philadelphia from 1886-1888. 26 seasons and 6290 at bats, I guess 3 triple plays isn't that bad, maybe they were better at turning them back in those days. He was mostly a catcher and stole only 117 in his career so he must not have been too fast. Brooks Robinson on the other hand is a famous Hall of Fame player. He played 23 seasons, all for Baltimore, from 1955-1977. He only averaged 2 stolen bases a year for his career, so he must not have been too fast. It's not a big deal because well he did still have an amazing career, won a World Series, and made the Hall of Fame, but I can't imagine he's too fond of remembering that he batted into 4 triple plays. I hope some of his HoF buddies give him some crap for that one.Edit: Just now at baseball-almanac.com I found a page of quotes from Brooks Robinson, where he had this to say :"I wouldn't mind seeing someone erase my record of hitting into four triple plays." I guess people have joked with him about it.
No reason at all for this post, just pointing a cool site with some cool statistics and also because I'm thinking of buying their new book, check out and tell me if you like it.
Baseball's Triple Plays - Batted Into
