Jimmy Rollins' Hit Streak

There's a lot being written about Jimmy Rollins, the Philadelphia Phillies shortstop, who got a hit last night in his 37th consecutive game. This of course, brings up the topic of Joe DiMaggio, who managed to hit in 56 consecutive games. DiMaggio had his streak in one season, where Rollins is running his streak from the end of one season to the beginning of the next. Does that make a difference?

I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about. Yes, what Rollins is doing is remarkable and would approach the "most consecutive games" streak in a literal sense. But what DiMaggio did is quite different since it was all in the same season.

I guess it boils down to baseball being a game where everybody loves to talk about records. The DiMaggio record is pretty hallowed ground. One thing I'd like to note is that we don't ever discuss most of these "records" as over more than one season. We never say, who has the most consecutive wins (not necessarily in one season) or HR / RBI in a 162 game period. I guess we might have to make that distinction now. For Rollins, while the winter break between seasons is certainly a big hump to overcome, I think he will certainly benefit from decreased media coverage since he isn't doing this all in a single season.


Tags: baseball, hit streak, MLB