Some milestones need a moment. This one needed a walk.
Pete Crow-Armstrong drew a base on balls in the first inning against the Marlins on Thursday, took off for second and made it. That was stolen base No. 40. He already had 45 home runs. So before a lot of Wrigley Field had finished finding its seats, the Cubs had their first 40-40 player ever.
The whole club, in order of arrival:
- Jose Canseco, 1988 — 42 homers, 40 steals
- Barry Bonds, 1996 — 42 and 40
- Alex Rodriguez, 1998 — 42 and 46
- Alfonso Soriano, 2006 — 46 and 41
- Ronald Acuña Jr., 2023 — 41 and 73
- Shohei Ohtani, 2024 — 54 and 59
- Pete Crow-Armstrong, 2026 — 45 and 40, with three games to go
Seven players in 38 years. It is a smaller club than most bars’ Tuesday trivia team.
MLB.com adds a local footnote: his 45 homers are also the most ever by a left-handed hitter in Cubs history, passing Billy Williams’ 42 from 1970. Billy Williams is in the Hall of Fame. Crow-Armstrong is 24.
“Everything Pete has done this year has been really incredible,” manager Craig Counsell said.
Jed Hoyer, who runs the baseball side of the operation and has watched a lot of baseball for a living, went further: “It’s the best position-player season I’ve ever seen in my career.”
The Cubs won 2-1 and clinched a playoff spot on the same afternoon, which is the kind of scheduling you can’t buy. The steal ended up being a footnote to a clinching day, and the clinching day ended up being a footnote to the steal, depending on which end of the bar you asked.
For the record, several of the uncles have also reached 40-40. Forty years old, forty pounds over. Nobody put us on a graphic.