Joining The 3,000-Hit Club Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This

A special trio resides within an already exclusive club.

There are certain “magic numbers” in baseball that signify elite production and longevity within the game.

More than 20,000 players have suited up for a Major League Baseball game during the sport’s long and storied history. However, only 33 have registered at least 3,000 career hits.

Three hitters found a unique way to enter the club and distinguish themselves even further. You know where I’m going with this.

Among this group of 33 hit machines, only three slugged a home run to officially cross the threshold: Wade Boggs, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

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Wade Boggs, Tampa Bay Rays

Date of 3,000th Hit: August 7, 1999

Wade Boggs is the answer to an amazing trivia question since he’s the first MLB player to enter the 3,000-hit club by going yard. The best part is Boggs wasn’t known as a home-run hitter.

He slugged 118 round-trippers during his 18-year Hall of Fame career. If we do the math, Boggs’ home runs account for just 3.92% of his total hits (3,010). The left-handed hit machine posted just two seasons of 10-plus homers: 24 in 1989 with the Boston Red Sox and 11 in 1994 with the New York Yankees.

Where Boggs did excel is finding the gaps — he collected 578 doubles for his career. He led the league in that category twice (45 in 1988 and 51 in 1989) and hit 40-plus doubles in a season eight times.

Boggs was a 12-time All-Star, five-time batting champ and an eight-time Silver Slugger Award winner. I think one of his best individual accomplishments is the seven straight years he registered 200-plus hits from 1983-89. This includes a league-leading 240 knocks in 1985.

Derek Jeter, New York Yankees

Date of 3,000th Hit: July 9, 2011

I haven’t done the research on this, so while I can’t be certain, I feel like Derek Jeter’s performance on the day he joined the 3,000-hit club must be one of the best of all time.

Like, for real, though — The Captain went 5-for-5 with a double, a homer, two RBI and two runs scored. It’s almost as if this guy always had a flair for the dramatic, right?

Jeter slugged 10-plus dingers 16 times across his 20-year Hall of Fame career. Three of those occasions went for 20-plus: 24 in 1999, 21 in 2001 and 23 in 2004. While Boggs passed the 3,000-hit plateau in his final season, this was just the beginning for Jeets.

He played another three seasons after the 2011 campaign and finished with 3,465 career hits. That ranks sixth on the all-time list.

Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees

Date of 3,000th Hit: June 19, 2015

Ah, yes — another Yankee hitting a homer in the Bronx to join the 3,000-hit club. A-Rod’s 3,115 hits rank 23rd on the all-time list. Among these three, he obviously had the most power.

His 696 homers are the fifth-most all-time and accounted for just over 22% of his total hits. This also included a 13-year (!) run in which Rodriguez surpassed the 30-homer, 100-RBI plateau each season (1998-2010). And from 1998-03, he didn’t finish a season with fewer than 42 homers or 118 RBI.

A normal year for A-Rod between 1998 and 2010 included a .301/.391/578 line with 42 homers, 29 doubles, 123 RBI and 115 runs scored. Pretty insane. Thanks to his involvement with PEDs, though, his legacy within the game is complicated. He’ll be on the outside looking in at the Hall of Fame (at least for quite some time).