Why I Love the Cycle

I’ve been trying to avoid blogging about the trade deadline or “the list,” so I had to take a break. I decided to wait for something better to happen. By better, I mean something that wasn’t being blogged about by four million other hacks like myself. It’s been pretty quiet for the last couple weeks until yesterday when Melky Cabrera hit for the cycle for the 287^th time in Major League Baseball history. That got my mind going.

In the game of baseball, there are few things more exciting than hitting for the cycle. It’s pretty rare, if you think about it (not as rare as the perfect game; Mark Buerhle, you still have the upper hand on that one), but it’s not something that happens as often as, say, the double play or the grand slam. It differs from the no-hitter because it almost sounds more achievable. The numbers are close; there have been 263 no-no’s recognized by Major League Baseball, but somehow, the cycle still seems like a more elusive conquest. It might be because the no-hitter gets more recognition than the cycle. No-hitters are given news coverage for weeks, while the cycle seems to be forgotten the next time the player goes to the plate. It might be because the cycle depends more on the individual player than the whole team. A pitcher has to work damned hard for his no-hit game, but if his team isn’t pulling its weight, his efforts end in vain. With the cycle, there seems to be only one guy who can really make it happen and that’s the guy with the bat in his hand. Of course, one of baseball’s best secrets is how hitting is not really up to just the hitter. There are so many factors that go into successful plate appearances (pitch sequence, match-ups, game situations, batting order, and so on), but to the casual baseball fan, the batter is a lone warrior.

The cycle has many forms. There’s the basic cycle, where the hitter puts up a single, double, triple, and a jack in any order. Obviously, that’s the most common form. There’s also the natural cycle, where the player posts those hits in that very order. First, the single. Then the double. Then the triple. And finally, the home run. Of the 287 cycles recorded in the game’s history, a mere 14 are natural cycles. All but one of those recorded natural cycles since 1957 occurred in only four AB’s; that honor belongs to Brad Wilkerson of the Montreal Expos in 2003 (remember them? The Washington Nationals do). There’s also a reverse natural cycle, where the home run comes first and the other hits follow in reverse order. This is even more rare; it’s happened three times in the last fifty years. Two of those were in the last three years (Carlos Gomez in ’08 and Luke Scott in ’06. The other player was Jim Fregosi in ’68). The number of cycles with grand slam home runs is one lonely digit: 7. By the way, in case you were wondering, yes, the inside-the-park home run does, in fact, count as a homer when going for the cycle; there have been 24 of those. There’s also the bastard stepchild of the cycle, the home run cycle. This involves hitting all of the four possible home run combinations: a solo shot, a two-run jack, a three-run bomb, and the granny. In 2005, Alex Rodriguez got within one, lacking only the solo home run. To date, the home run cycle has never happened in Major League Baseball, but a fellow named Tyrone Horne of the Arkansas Travelers (AA, Texas League) did it in 1998 and is still the only guy in pro baseball to ever pull it off.

That brings me to a major facet of the cycle's appeal; it is a great equalizer. The most baffling thing about the cycle is who has and who hasn't accomplished it throughout time. There are some names that seem obvious (Honus Wagner, Mel Ott, George Brett, Lou Brock, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig), but then there are guys whose careers are obscure, whose names never appear in any record books. The first player ever to hit for the cycle was Curry Foley in 1882; I’ll bet you’ve never heard of him. Yeah, neither had I. He played for the Buffalo Bisons (imagine that; Buffalo with a Major League team!) and the Boston Red Caps. Foley was a career .286 hitter with only 6 home runs in his six seasons of professional baseball. He also pitched, garnering the same number of wins as losses (27), putting up a 3.54 ERA, and posting a mere 127 K’s. Quite an unremarkable career, really. In the modern era (since 1900), the first guy to do it was a Philadelphia Athletics first baseman named Harry Davis. Davis had a good career (lifetime: .277 BA, 75 HR, 951 RBI), but he was never a superstar. Other names that would be buried in baseball obscurity if not for the cycle are Chippy McGarr, Duff Cooley, Jim Ray Hart, Jeff DaVanon, and some guy named George Burns who never did stand-up comedy a day in his life. Some names missing from the list that might surprise a lot of baseball people are Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Derek Jeter, Ty Cobb, A-Rod, Pete Rose, and Tony Gwynn. Of the players who have posted cycles in their repertoire, only 24 have done it more than once, and the most cycles by an individual player is three by a Babe but not the Babe. Babe Herman did it all three times in the 1931 season. Herman was famous for not paying attention on the base paths. On several occasions, he was admiring a home run and got passed up by the hitter (thus rendering the tater only a tot…um, the home run counted as only a single). When it was Herman himself who hit the bomb, he was known to occasionally admire it, too, and accidentally run right by the guy in front of him, so one has to wonder how many times he’d have cycled if he wasn’t such a narcissist.

Like a lot of things in baseball, the cycle is becoming more and more common. Fifty-seven of baseball’s cycles have been hit in the last fifteen years; five of them have been recorded in the 2009 season thus far. Orlando Hudson, Ian Kinsler, Jason Kubel, Mike Cuddyer, and now Cabrera have done the one-two-three-four this year; there have been five or more cycles per season only twelve times (the most in a season has been seven in 1890 and 1933). However, unlike the home run, one would be hard-pressed to believe we'll be counting cycles as a statistic any time soon. Just like the no-hitter, the nature of the game will keep the cycle from losing its luster.

The cycle is a lot of things. The cycle is stealthy. A pitcher sort of feels that he’s going for the no-no at a certain point, but there are hitters who have said following their cycles that they didn’t even realize it until the very last hit. It’s one of those things that helps both the player and the team, so it’s perfect for the game. Baseball is a beautiful balance between individual and team accomplishments, and the cycle is one of those moments that showcases that, like the no-hitter or the perfect game. The cycle is unpredictable. It can start with the easiest hit of the four—the single—and progress, or it can come on the heels of that first inning triple that gets the crowd into the game early. The cycle is unbiased. It doesn’t care who you are in the eyes of the game; you can be Cal Ripken, Jr. or you can be Lyman Bostock. The cycle also doesn’t care what team you play for. You can be a New York Yankee or a Pittsburgh Pirate (who, incidentally, are the all-time leader with 23 players in their history hitting for the cycle). Most of all, the cycle is a unifying factor. Just like the no-hitter or perfect game, even if the guy going for it plays for the “other” team, we find ourselves rooting for him. It becomes all about the game, and that’s what counts the most.