[Mick]

I doubt Gwynn's in the top 200. I know that triples used to be a lot more common in the early years of baseball, when the fields were bigger and deeper, so I'd guess most of the top 100 are old-timers, such as Shoeless Joe Jackson and Honus Wagner. That's all I got, though.

I think it was a number of issues.  Take gloves.  Part of the reason was that fielding and throwing was so iffy, was that gloves weren't really ubiquitous or developed until the late 1890s.  And the "pocket" part of a glove wasn't webbed until Bill Doak got a patent for it in 1920.  So in 1894, there were 0.81 triples per team per game.  By 1902, it had fallen to 0.37. It stayed in the .40 to .50 range for most of the time frame until the intro of the lively ball, when it increased marginally (more hard hit balls).  It dropped precipitously after WWII to the high .20s/low .30s.  it dropped again in the mid-1990s to fluctuating between 0.17 and 0.21 triples per team per game...until last year, when it dropped to 0.16.

The difference between old-timers and today's ballplayers was significant.  Rickey Henderson, speedster of speedsters had just 66 triples, Babe Ruth, one of the slowest runners ever had more than twice as many at 136 triples.  


My guess? I would have guessed Willie McCovey.

[Mick]

I doubt Gwynn's in the top 200. I know that triples used to be a lot more common in the early years of baseball, when the fields were bigger and deeper, so I'd guess most of the top 100 are old-timers, such as Shoeless Joe Jackson and Honus Wagner. That's all I got, though.

I think it was a number of issues.  Take gloves.  Part of the reason was that fielding and throwing was so iffy, was that gloves weren't really ubiquitous or developed until the late 1890s.  And the "pocket" part of a glove wasn't webbed until Bill Doak got a patent for it in 1920.  So in 1894, there were 0.81 triples per team per game.  By 1902, it had fallen to 0.37. It stayed in the .40 to .50 range for most of the time frame until the intro of the lively ball, when it increased marginally (more hard hit balls).  It dropped precipitously after WWII to the high .20s/low .30s.  it dropped again in the mid-1990s to fluctuating between 0.17 and 0.21 triples per team per game...until last year, when it dropped to 0.16.

The difference between old-timers and today's ballplayers was significant.  Rickey Henderson, speedster of speedsters had just 66 triples, Babe Ruth, one of the slowest runners ever had more than twice as many at 136 triples.  


My guess? I would have guessed Willie McCovey.