Doubles

Johnny Damon collected his 500th double last night in the Rays 7-4 win over the floundering Marlins.
That's a lot of two-baggers.
Damon is the 53rd guy to reach 500 doubles and when you look at the overall numbers on Damon, the guy is likely to become a Hall of Famer. He's 37, in relatively good physical condition and he's just 354 hits short of 3,000. Also, throw in a couple of World Series rings. Those 500 doubles puts him in a tie for 51st place on the all-time list. Goose Goslin and John Olerud have exactly 500 doubles.
When looking at the all-time doubles list on www.baseball-reference.com, Damom should track down at least 6 guys by the end of the season. Mark Grace, with 511 doubles is 45th on the all-time list, should be caught by Damon this season.
Looking at this list, there are a couple of interesting items. Rusty Staub, who was slow as glacier, hit 499 doubles. While people don't make a big deal out of doubles, too bad Rusty couldn't have gotten at least one more. How many would he have had any semblence of speed. By the way, gotta like Rusty. Same birthday as me, April 1st, but many years before I was invented.
There is a great, yet unknown, doubles chase going on higher up on the list. Todd Helton and Bobby Abreu each have 541 doubles, tied for 27th on the tote board. They'll soon track down Harry Heilmann (542) and Tony Gwynn (543).
One interesting player on this list of course is Rickey Henderson. Rickey is 46th on the all-time doubles list with 510. For a guy with over 3,000 hits and his speed you think he would have had more than 510 doubles and 66 triples. However, Rickey was all about stolen bases and he settled for way too many singles than he should have. You can't steal second when you've hit a double. And you can't steal third when you've hit a triple. There is a reason Rickey had 1,406 lifetime stolen bases.
The all-time leader in doubles? Tris Speaker with 792 followed by Pete Rose with 746. Don't think Damon will get that high but in baseball, who the hell knows.