To be the best you’ve got to beat the best, they say, and any time you find you name ahead of legends on a leaderboard you deserve the biggest smile you can muster.
In the long and storied history of the Cincinnati Reds, there have been gargantuan, inimitable tallies tallied, and the one that caught my eye in particular this Friday was triples. Perhaps that’s got to do with the Reds having most recently played in San Francisco, whose park and bay-weather conspire to create a classic triples alley not seen in many other modern ball parks. Great American Ball Park, for instance, suppresses triples like Mucinex against the snifflies, meaning the team’s career leaderboard for triples features handfuls of players from a bygone era.
Rest assured, there have been some serious triplers to wear the Reds uniform over the years. Hall of Famers like Jake Beckley, Bid McPhee, and Barry Larkin paint the leaderboard, with other luminaries like Skip Schumaker, Vada Pinson, and Ken Griffey, Sr. on there, too.
Skip, though, is the most recent reference point for us Reds fans, so today we’ll highlight an incomplete list of players who managed to hit more triples than he did while reppin’ a Reds uniform, listed in absolutely no particular order:
Travis Wood
Dontrelle Willis
Johnny Vander Meer
Piggy Ward
Mario Soto
Josh A. Smith
Socks Seybold
Bob Purkey
Pinky Pittenger
Brayan Pena
Jim O’Toole
Dioner Navarro
Eric Milton
Kent Mercker
Charlie Leibrandt
King Lear (!)
Bumpus Jones
Danny Jackson
Raisel Iglesias
Sonny Gray
Bo Diaz
Tom Browning
Eppa Rixey
Old Hoss Radbourn
Joe Nuxhall