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 High elevation Rockies' Walker aiming for third straight .360 season
Posted: Tuesday August 24, 1999 06:40 PM
By Ryan Hunt, CNN/SI For the last three seasons, no player in baseball has been in the same class as Colorado's Larry Walker when it comes to batting average. Then again, the class Walker is attempting to join is pretty exclusive itself. Walker has a chance to become the eighth player in modern baseball history (since 1900) to hit .360 or better in three consecutive seasons. The Rockies right fielder, who is hitting .358 as of Monday, could become the first to accomplish the feat in 68 years -- Al Simmons did it from 1929-31. Six of the seven are Hall of Famers, the lone exception being "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, who is not eligible for enshrinement.
But even back-to-back .360 seasons are rare. Walker, who hit .366 in 1997 and .363 in '98, is one of only three players to do that since Simmons. Not coincidentally, the other two both reached 3,000 hits this season and are shoo-ins for Cooperstown as well. However, Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs both fell just short. Gwynn hit better than .360 in '94, '95 and '97, but hit .353 in '96. Boggs did it in '85, '87 and '88, but hit .357 in 1986. Ted Williams ('41, '48 and '51) is the only other player to hit above .360 three times in the last 60 years. This century, there have been only 141 seasons of .360 or better accomplished by 63 different players. Nine of those have .360 seasons have come in the '90s by six different players -- Walker, Gwynn, Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Andres Galarraga and John Olerud.
It is the highest number of .360 hitters in six decades. Since 1940, it has happened only 27 times by 16 different players. In the 1930s alone, it happened 28 times by 21 players. In the '20s, it was done 53 different times. And in the 1910s, Ty Cobb did it 10 straight times himself, part of his record 11 straight .360 seasons (1909-19). Cobb, though, never had the advantage of playing in Coors Field. In the last three seasons, Walker hasn't hit better than .346 on the road. In fact, his average is 94 points higher at Coors Field than it is on the road since the start of the '97 season. And it's never been more evident than this year.
Despite his NL-leading .358 average, Walker is hitting a mere .281 away from Coors. He's hitting a whopping .435 at home. No home cooking in the world can be good enough to justify a 154-point difference. But .360 is .360. After all, 11 of the 23 men in the 3,000-hit club never hit .360 in a one season.
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