What is more impressive is that he has never been 20/20 before, mainly because he has only stolen 20 bases once before. That year was 1990, making it 17 years between times that he stole 20 bases.
That has never happened before. Using Crystal Reports and Sean Lahman's baseball database, I found exactly two players that had longer gaps between their first and last 20 steal season, however, they all had other 20 steal seasons in between: Rickey Henderson with 22, and George Davis, who played over 100 years ago, with 18.
Joe Morgan is next with 17 along with Sheffield, and then there is a four player logjam at 16 with Willie Mays, Lou Brock, Max Carey and Paul Molitor. All of these players, however, stole 20 bases at least somewhere between their first and last 20 steal seasons.
You have to go down to 12 seasons to find Paul O'Neill of the 1980s Reds and the 1990s Yankees to find a player with a long gap between the two 20-steal seasons. A 26-year-old O'Neill stole 20 bases for the 1989 Cincinnati Reds, and then twelve seasons later, he stole 22 bases for the 2001 Yankees in his final season, which makes me wonder holds the record for playing the most seasons and having the most stolen bases of his career in his final year? I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Regardless, it has been a special year for Sheffield. He's still on pace for 30 home runs, and has an outside chance to get to 30 stolen bases. He hasn't really been getting on base as much as he was mid-season, either, so to keep his swipe total rising in pretty good. If he can get back into a groove and get a few more hits here and there, getting his average up to .300 again, he's got a chance.
Then again, it seems as if he was stealing more when he wasn't hitting, such as in the early part of the season, so hitting some out of the park, or gappers for doubles might hurt his chances.
It's hard to say. Hopefully someone will worry less about individual statistics than me and the team will start winning some ball games. Three against Cleveland at home starting on Tuesday night. Hopefully, the Tigers can take the series and stay in the race as opposed to falling out of it. Four with the Yankees after that, so a sweep would go a long way to help them keep pace...
