12 Reasons Why The Triple Is The Most Exciting 12 Seconds In Sports

Bombs and bases on balls: state-of-the-art baseball offense today.� Barry Bonds. If the ball is not where he wants it (as every pitcher prays), he sneers. If it is where he wants it—Lord have mercy—he makes it disappear. Either way, he's the god of get-that-thing-away-from-me. Unlike most things called awesome these days, Barry Bonds batting is. But wouldn't it be nice if, when Bonds steps into the box, you could expect some fielding and running?� And Billy Beane. General manager of the Oakland A's, protagonist of Michael Lewis's cracker-jack best seller Moneyball. Having determined by computer analysis that on-base percentage is the single most significant offensive indicator, Beane devotes himself to the pursuit of men who are fat (so nobody else will want them) and who walk a lot. O.K. But who wants to watch fat men walking?

Isn't there something missing in baseball today? In The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth, the wealthy seductress Angela Whittling Trust tries to make the illiterate slugger Luke Gofannon love her more than anything else. She succeeds in making him love her more than a shoestring catch. Or a stolen base. Or even a home run. But she never....

"Don't get me wrong, Angela, I ain't bad-mouthin' the home run.... But smack a home run, and that's it, it's all over."

"And a triple?"...

"Well.... smackin' it, first off. Off the wall, up the alley, down the line, however it goes, it goes with that there crack. Then runnin' like blazes——Two hunerd and seventy feet of runnin' behind ya, and with all that there momentum.... Over he goes. Legs. Arms. Dust. Hell, ya might be in a tornado, Angela. Then ya hear the ump, 'Safe!' ...Only that ain't all.... The best part, in a way. Standin' up. Dustin' off y'r breeches and standin' up there on that bag."

She never makes him love her more than a triple. The triple has been called the most exciting 12 seconds in sports. Hard to think of any other generic 12 seconds in sports to compare it with, other than a furlong, but never mind that. A triple is absolutely the most exciting 12 seconds in sports, and here's why it still is, though it seems to be fading away.

1. The Triple, Once a Staple, Now Is Rare

It is like an unenhanced breast in Hollywood, service at a service station, a soda fountain in a drugstore, a free-range neighborhood dog. In on-base percentage a triple counts the same as a walk, although only an idiot would love a walk more than Angela Whittling Trust. In slugging percentage a triple counts 25% less than a home run, although it is 560% rarer. That's like valuing all minerals solely by weight. In the early days of baseball, when the game was played almost exclusively on the field as opposed to over the fences, a home run was appropriately the rarest hit, the triple next rarest, and so on. Today triples represent only 2.1% of hits, home runs 11.8%.

Some more numbers:

In 1921, 16 major league teams, each playing a 154-game schedule (a total of 1,229 games), hit 1,364 triples, more than one per game. In 1950 the number of triples was down to 793, or one per 1.56 games. In 1960 it was 658, one per 1.88 games. Last season 30 teams playing a 162-game schedule (2,425 games) hit 921, or one triple for every 2.63 games. Last year one triple was hit for every 202.61 plate appearances. This year there may be a few more; through Sunday, the ratio was one for every 201.69.