As a baseball fan, you certainly know that the longest hitting streak in the Major Leagues is 56 games, by Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees in 1941.
As a Cubs fan, you may know that the longest hitting.
How often does a pinch runner score?
For the Cubs, in the Modern Era, the answer is 29.3 percent of the time, according to my analysis of data and play-by-play at baseball-reference.com, plus.
A previous post looked at some of the longest batting streaks by Cubs other than hits and home runs, including Hank Sauer scoring runs in 15 games in a row, Stan Hack making singles in 22 straight.
From Fred Pfeffer's 3-run blast against Detroit in 1884, through Gabby Hartnett's solo "Homer in the Gloamin' " against the Pirates in 1938, to Jason Heyward's drive with 2 aboard against the Reds.
Games-played streaks, Part 1: Billy Williams By JohnW53 on Apr 25, 2021, 7:03am CDT +
In some, the player rarely took an inning off, let alone missed a game.
Early in Cal Ripken Jr. s record streak of 2,632 games, he played 8,264 straight innings. The second-longest such stretch in the Modern Era is just 4,620. Ernie Banks had the second-longest since 1940: 3,223, less than 40 percent of Ripken s total.
Every long streak included games in which a player pinch hit, pinch ran or appeared only as a defensive replacement.
Some players kept their streaks going with what can only be described as gimmicks.
In the 1,427th of Lou Gehrig s 2,130 games, at Detroit in July 1934, he was listed as the Yankees shortstop and batted leadoff. He singled, then gave way to a pinch runner.