Royals speedster Paulo Orlando has most recently joined this group of mainly obscure players. But, only these live ball era players started their careers in an unusual way. What distinguishes the starts of these players’ careers among those of all other live ball era players? (Click on MORE to see the full list of quiz players)
| 1. Hal Rice | 7. Jack Merson |
| 2. Paulo Orlando | 8. Spike Owen |
| 3. Dave Silvestri | 9. Keith Miller |
| 4. Aaron Hill | 10. Ivy Griffin |
| 5. Bobby Clark | 11. Keith Moreland |
| 6. Danny Gardella | 12. Bobby Del Greco |
No Statistician But got things rolling by identifying that our quiz players had all recorded two or more triples in their first 5 career games. But nobody took it the rest of the way to note that, despite that quick start in compiling this rarest type of hit, none of our quiz players could add more than two more triples over the balance of the first 100 games of their careers, a peculiarity reserved for these players among all others with 100 game careers since 1920.
There have been 46 players since 1919 (Ivy Griffin was the player who started in 1919, but he’s been included as a live ball era player since he played 168 of his 185 career games since 1920) who started their careers with multiples triples in their first 5 games. Of these, 12 failed to play 100 games in their careers and 22 recorded three or more triples over the balance of their first 100 games, thus leaving our 12 quiz players.
The most recent player to join the group was Paulo Orlando who holds at least a share of the career record for triples after n games for all values of n from 2 to 22. But even the speedy Orlando (who is also the only searchable player to record triples for each of the first three hits of his career) couldn’t muster more than two triples from games 6 to 100 of his career, and so, perhaps surprisingly, ends up in our quiz group.
