Miguel Cabrera Wins Triple Crown for First Time in 45 Years
By Josh Hill
Carl Yastrzemski. That’s the last major league baseball player to win a Triple Crown and that was in 1967. The current president of the United States Barack Obama was just 6 years old, the country was at war in Vietnam and we were still a decade away from a galaxy far, far away.
Well 45 years, two wars and six Star Wars films later we have another Triple Crown winner in Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera who locked up the prestigious title on an exciting last day of baseball.
Cabrera has been leading the three major batting categories for just about the whole second half of the season in the American League and with poor performances by Mike Trout and Josh Hamilton in their final two games, Cabrera just needed to not make a fool of himself at the plate in the Tigers finale to secure something a select few of the game’s greats have ever won.
Babe Ruth is recognized as one of the best players the game has ever seen. Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio was one of the greatest Yankees to ever live and carried the Bombers away and beyond the Ruth era. Roberto Clemente, Pete Rose, Mel Ott, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Lou Brock, Hank Aarron; all of these names are titans in the history of baseball, none can go to their graves saying they won a Triple Crown.
Miguel Cabrera has something all these Hall of Famer’s don’t have and he now joins a short list that includes Mickey Mantle, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Frank Robinson, Nap Lajoie, Ted Williams and Ty Cobb.
The enormity of this historic event in baseball is beyond grasp. This is more than just statistics, this is someone achieving something so difficult to achieve it hasn’t been done since before human beings walked on the moon. Heck, Cabrera himself wasn’t even born until 16 years after Yastrzemski won the Crown in ’67 which means an entire generation of ballplayers had come and gone between the time the Triple Crown was last won and today.
In case you’re wondering there was some damn fine ballplayers in last 45 years who have come and gone and failed to do what Cabrera now has done. This isn’t a small achievement in baseball considering the talent in the game.
This night, this statistical season belongs to Miguel Cabrera and he deserves it. He hasn’t tested positive for PEDs and in the day and age we live in that’s almost as huge as the Triple Crown. There is nothing that can take this away from Cabrera and he’s earned it and now has etched his name alongside greats in the game.
The history books will now read as follows: Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Nap Lajoie, Frank Robinson, Jimmie Foxx, Ty Cobb, Miguel Cabrera.