Major League Baseball Doubles Records

One of the longest standing records in Major League Baseball is the 67 doubles hit by Earl Webb of the Red Sox in 1931, a mark for one season that has been approached but never surpassed. The career leader in total two base hits is the great Tris Speaker, who slammed 792 doubles over the course of his 22 seasons in the game. The active player with the most doubles is the Astros' Craig Biggio, who now stands at 665 as his Hall of Fame career winds down.

Webb's mark is one of the strangest records in the game, achieved by a man who never had come close to that remarkable total before 1931 and never did again. Webb's 67 doubles for Boston in 1931 was his lone claim to fame, as his next highest amount of two baggers in one campaign was 30. The "Green Monster" left field wall of Fenway Park was not constructed until 1934, and Webb was a left-handed batter besides, so his ability to stroke so many doubles that one season will remain one of the anomalies of the sport. Webb was 33 years old in 1931, and although he was a lifetime .306 batter, he played just seven seasons and was out of baseball by 1934. His one 100 runs batted in season came in '31, as he plated 103 men.

Second to Webb for most doubles in one year are George Burns and Joe "Ducky" Medwick with 64. Burns played his entire career in the American League with five teams and won the MVP Award in 1926, the year he hit all those doubles. Burns then hit 51 the next season and wound up with a lifetime batting standard almost the same as Webb's at .307. Burns, like Webb, knocked in over 100 runs the year he went doubles-crazy, a season in which he hit just 4 home runs. Medwick was a feared slugger in the National League, a .324 batter over 17 seasons; his 64 came at the age of 24 in 1936 with the Cardinals. In fourth place on the doubles list for one campaign is Hank Greenberg, who poled 63 at age 23 in 1934 for the Tigers, while "Big Poison", Paul Waner of the Pirates, hit 62 in 1932.

Speaker's career doubles record will stand for a long time, if not forever; Biggio is in fifth place on the list but still 127 behind and is not expected to play much longer. Then you have to go all the way to Barry Bonds, almost 200 in back of Speaker at 601 doubles. The only players under the age of 32 that are in the top 200 for career doubles are Alex Rodriguez and Vladimir Guerrero, with Alex still 400 behind Tris. In second on the all-time doubles roster is Pete Rose at 746, followed by the wonderful Cardinal, Stan Musial, with 725 and then Ty Cobb at 726. Biggio is currently at 665; his next double will break his tie with Royals' Hall of Famer George Brett.

The active leader in doubles for one season is the Rockies' Todd Helton, who belted 59 of them in 2000. Close behind is the 57 that Blue Jays' slugger Carlos Delgado managed the same year, while the Angels' Garret Anderson walloped 56 in 2002. Boston's Nomar Garciaparra also hit 56 in 2002, the exact total that Biggio had in 1999; all three are tied with that 56 amount among active players for one year. Career wise, Biggio is well in front of Bonds, who has hit 601, with the Dodgers' duo of Luis Gonzalez and Jeff Kent with 570 and 535 respectively. Ivan Rodriguez of Detroit is the only other active Major League Baseball player with at least 500 doubles, a number that he reached recently with the Tigers. The youngest player in the top one hundred active doubles leaders is 27 year old St. Louis first baseman Albert Pujols, who at 287 would have to average 44 doubles for the next eleven and a half seasons to catch up with Speaker.