Homer-happy folks be sad again, and be it ever so beatific that we have lots of other categories to examine in what our high-falutin' PR department wants us to call the "alpha actuarials"--and we be humoring them while they're still Zooming us, but as soon as that screen goes dark...
...POW!
Actuarially speaking, though, stolen bases by age for the leading guys on the table that will (eventually) make an appearance here would be interesting to look at, fitting in with some of the "speed score" studies Bill James did before his insurance policy lapsed and his dependents lost their shot at that "double indemnity" clause... (and you be wondering just how long I can prolong this pseudo-patois before I have to bite the bullet and fork over the numbers, right?) Right, as is "so right to be left on the doorstep craving taters when the man be giving me three-week old collard greens"...goddam you, Malcolm, I got enough fiber in my diet already... (some unintelligible swear words here: fill in your favorites or pick one from column A, two from column B, three from...)
...OK, OK!
Let's look at the levels of exclusiveness here...168 players have stolen 300 or more bases in their careers over the 151-year span of MLB (1871-2021), but only 18 have stolen 600 or more bases; 75 players have stolen 400 or more bases, but 364 have stolen 200 or more bases.
The alpha leaders are more displaced in time than is usually the case, so we've tracked it in the added column at the right edge of the table (called L's LY to give you the "leader's last year")--where you can see that 11 of the 26 letters have leaders whose careers ended during the years after expansion, while 12 of the teams have leaders whose careers ended in the Deadball Era or earlier.
Rickey Henderson and the original Billy Hamilton (beware of cheap imitations, y'all...) get the H's off to a rousing start, but they peter out rather quickly after that. The M's have the most players with 100+ steals in their careers, but because the C's have a lot of guys with 500+ SBs in their career compared to everyone else, they actually have the most total SBs among their players with 100+ steals, with a total of 20,446 to the M's 19,928.
And as is usually the case with these types of breakouts, X does not mark the spot.
Finally, one really must love a list that has Walt Wilmot on it. Walt appears to have been overpaid by the Chicago White Stockings during a large portion of his career (did he have "daguerreotypes" of the execrable Cap Anson in compromising positions? Did the aging Anson have enough flexibility left to even get into a compromising position?) but he is the holder of three insanely obscure records. Walt is the only player to be hit by a batted ball twice in the same game; he's the only player to steal eight bases over two consecutive games (Rickey H. only managed seven in two games); and he was the first player ever to walk six times in a game (the only other guy to do it: Jimmie Foxx...who was, of course, a compromising position unto himself).
Of course, it's really a shame that he didn't do all these things in the same game, but there are limits to what even a guy named Walt Wilmot is capable doing. (Apparently.)
...and we might never get to those home runs, chillun!
