Cycling Around

Last night, Aaron Hill hit for the cycle in the Arizona Diamondbacks 9-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers.  It was Hill’s second cycle of the season.

Hitting for the cycle is one of the game’s great novelties.  It’s really cool for the player, a bonus for the team, a boon for the media, and amazing for fantasy owners.  But at the end of the day, its just a novelty.  Doing it twice in a season (twice in the first half at that) is almost unprecedented, but still only a novelty.  But that’s part of the beauty of baseball.  It’s the only sport that gives us these rare but great feats without staying power (the cycle, the unassisted triple play, etc.).  We all know that this time tomorrow, the front page of ESPN.com won’t feature Aaron Hill.

In basketball, players can get a triple double or they can score 50 points but it’s not the same.  Somebody goes for a triple double almost every night.  It’s something to mention during the Sportscenter highlights, not a real noteworthy accomplishment.  Scoring a ton of points is different too.  Not everyone can do it.  Kobe can, Lebron can, Kevin Durant can, but the Aaron Hills of the NBA certainly can’t; definitely not twice before the All-Star break.  Also, there’s no definitive number of NBA points (worthy of its own designation) that is noteworthy. 40 would be mentioned (“Rondo dropped a mid-life crisis last night”?). 50 is impressive (“Kobe put up a Curtis Jackson against the Suns”?). 60 is the talk of the town (“LeBron was retirement-eligible in Game 3”?). 100 is unattainable (I believe this is actually referred to as “a century” but whatever, Wilt was the last and it’s gonna stay that way).  In any case, even if it worked that way, the game of basketball doesnt allow for the drama to unfold like baseball.  There is no single breath-holding moment where the player either does it or doesn’t.  No bottom of the 9th, 3-2 count, all he needs is a single.  No waiting and hoping for one thing to happen.

I suppose that the closest thing in sports to hitting for the cycle is notching a hattrick in soccer.  Not even hockey, becuase I think that that happens too much.  Soccer is different because if somebody scores a hattrick, everybody hears about it and then forgets it almost as fast.  The problem again is that only the best players score enough to do this.  The other problem is that I really hate soccer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBOH3gJG7P4

The beauty of baseball is that everyone on the field–no matter where in the batting order, no matter how many career homers, no matter how many zeros in their paycheck–can do something great any given night, any given at bat.  This year alone we have two cycles by Aaron Hill and a perfect game by Phil Humber (Josh Hamilton also did something cool but that’s not really the essence of this post).  Last year, a near perfecto by Armando Gallaraga, and 2 years ago Dallas Braden was perfect (on Mother’s Day) without hitting 90 on the gun.  Of course there’s more: in 1999, journeyman Fernando Tatis became the only major leaguer ever to hit 2 grand slams in an inning; in 2003, Bill Mueller, a journeyman switch hitter with just 85 career home runs became the only player in history to belt grand slams from both sides of the plate, adding another jack for good measure and driving in 9.  I could go on all day about players you’ve never heard of or never heard from again out-pitching Cy Young award winners, throwing no-hitters, hitting for the cycle, whatever.  Baseball’s great.

Thing is, Aaron Hill isn’t really in the never-heard-of-probably-never-will-again-category.  In case you didn’t know, Aaron’s a former All-Star and he’s having quite the season.

-Max Frankel