A concerned reader wrote in to ask why I hadn’t posted about Todd Helton’s 500th career home run. I had similar feelings when I first misread last night’s recaps; turns out Helton hit his 500th career double, and also hit a home run in the eighth inning to break the tie and lead the Colorado Rockies to a 4-3 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
If you’re looking for video highlights, I like MLB.com’s sadly unembeddable package.
Two things. First, five hundred career doubles, while not as cool as the same number of home runs, are incredibly impressive. Helton has been playing for years, sure, but the mark takes a ton of consistency, durability, and skill, and he’s had all three in spades. I can still remember when he first joined the team in 1997, my first year as a Rockies fan; he showed up late in Larry Walker’s MVP season, but showed enough promise to run wildly popular first baseman Andres Galarraga out of town.
The Big Cat was beloved in Denver; known best for his hitting (won the batting title with a .370 average in the franchise’s first year), he was actually surprisingly agile around the bag. I can recall his doing the splits to catch errant throws at first. But Helton never gave Rockies fans even a hint of a reason to think the team had made the wrong move. To the Cat’s quickness at first he added a terrific throwing arm; rarely does a first baseman have the chance to showcase it, but when he does, it’s oh-so-sweet. And, of course, his hitting numbers have been incredible, and no one even bought it years ago when he may have sort of been accused of using steroids.
And second, Helton is having a resurgence this year. He’s hitting .324/.406/.528 so far this year, with eleven homers and twenty-nine of those doubles. Helton will be 36 within a month. It’s pretty crazy to think the ride will be shutting down soon, but it’s nice to see he’s still getting it done.
Comments
I was watching the game at lunch yesterday and was lucky enough to be able to see Helton reach that milestone live. There was a long standing ovation from the crowd and Helton was given the second base bag. The whole time he had this look on his face like, "what's the big deal, let's play some freaking baseball!"
Hitting 500 doubles is a big achievement, Helton is only the 50th player to ever accomplish the feat and as pointed out by Troy Renck of the Denver Post, he did it faster than any other player since 1954.
Hopefully Helton can keep it up for a couple more years!
It is pretty awesome how unimpressed with himself Helton is.