270 feet

In case you have noticed, Curtis Granderson is up to 16 triples this year. He's also at 13 HRs, giving him a very good chance to reach 20 2Bs, 20 3Bs and 20 HRs in a single season, joining Mays, Brett, Frank Schulte, and Jim Bottomly.

In this baseball era, 20 triples is rare. Christian Guzman did it in 2000 and Jance Johnson in 1996 and the only 2 in the past 20 years. Granderson is currently on pace for 29 triples, which would be an amazing feat, but not really close to Chief Wilson's record of 36. No one has reached 23 triples since 1930 and no one has gotten to 22 since 1945.

But I've noticed quite a few mentions of him breaking the AL record of 26 set by Sam Crawford and Joe Jackson. There has also been mention of ARod challenging Roger Maris' AL home run record. These records may be broken and they may not, but the it leads me to ask, why bother with AL/NL records? The days of separate leagues are gone and while I think there are still league presidents, they have little authority and the league offices have merged.

So should we even consider these as records? Lets discuss. I'm considering individual records, although most arguments extend to teams.

Is the record meaningful? I vote no since the playing environment is not any different between the leagues. The only possible exception could be the use of a DH in the AL. But this does not effect hitting records and could only effect a few pitching records such as BA against, or ERA. (The AL in recent years scores .25 - .5 more runs per game).

Do the fans care? Off the top of your head, who owns the NL record for doubles? Don't worry if you didn't get it, its Joe Medwick with 64. Who has the NL record in hits? (Lefty O'Doul and Bill Terry). Typically we only know the league records when they were by someone who previously held the major league records, such as Roger Maris.

How do we handle switching leagues? In 1997 (I think), Mark McGwire hit 58 HRs which was not enough for the major league record, but he did it playing 1/2 the season in Oakland and 1/2 in St. Louis. If he had though, he would have set the major league record, but neither league record. This makes very little sense to me, on top of the fact that he was not considered a league leader in 1997.

What about league leaders? Every year there are league leaders that are declared for many categories. But are these really necessary? If I lead the NL in HRs, but finish behind 3 AL hitters, I didn't really lead at all. This also applies to MVP, Cy Young award, etc.

So why keep it this way? Well the obvious reason is tradition. Baseball, like many old organizations, are very slow about change. I'd even suspect that the players association likes having seperate league leaders, which gives twice the number of players that can go into negotiations with these awards.

Baseball is the only league I know of that makes this distinction, and I think its antiquated. When the leagues were really two seperate entities, when most players stayed in one league their entire career, this approach was ok. Now I think we need to change.