Mookie Betts is in some rare company with the start he’s had to his Major League Baseball career.
The Boston Red Sox outfielder cranked a home run and two doubles Friday night in his team’s 7-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. With the performance, the 25-year-old now has 14 games of three-plus extra-base hits in 549 career contests. And, well, let’s just say the only other players to do that in the live-ball era were pretty darn good at their jobs.
Check out this stat from Red Sox Notes:
Mookie Betts hit a HR and 2 doubles last night, his 14th time recording 3+ extra-base hits in 549 career games. In the last 100 years, the only other players to record more than 10 games with 3+ XBH within their first 600 MLB games are Lou Gehrig (12) and Joe DiMaggio (11).
— J.P. Long (@SoxNotes) May 19, 2018
Wow.
To state the obvious: Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio are two of the greatest players not just in New York Yankees history, but also two of the greatest players baseball ever has seen. While Betts has a long, long way to go before he truly deserves to be mentioned alongside “The Iron Horse” and “The Yankee Clipper,” he’s already off to a strong — and historic — start.
