1,000 Hit Club

1,000 Hits

1000 hits is the first notable hits milestone in a player's overall career. The 1,000 hit club is not the most exclusive club in all of baseball. As of March 2021, there have been 1,346 players who have reached 1,000 hits in their career. 1,000 hits is a good measure as to whether a player has been productive enough to stay in the lineup for an extended period of time. The charter member of the 1,000 hit club was Cap Anson, who reached 1,000 hits during the 1881 NL season. He went on to be the first player to get 3,000 hits in his career. Napoleon Lajoie was the first American League player to reach 1,000 hits, doing so in the 1906 AL season. Only nine players in MLB history have reached 1,000 hits in both the AL and NL; Dave Winfield, Frank Robinson, Vladimir Guerrero, Fred McGriff, Carlos Lee, Orlando Cabrera, Carlos Beltran, Alfonso Soriano and Albert Pujols.

Records and Trivia

1927 Exhibit PC

The youngest player in history to reach 1,000 hits was Ty Cobb; he hit the mark when he was 24 years, 145 days old. Cobb holds the record in the AL whereas Mel Ott holds the National League record by getting his 1,000th hit at 24 years, 154 days old. The fastest player to reach 1,000 hits since the 19th Century is Chuck Klein; it only took 683 games for him to reach 1,000 hits. Klein is also the fastest on record to reach 1,000 hits in the National League. Willie Keeler reached 1,000 hits in fewer games than Klein (he had 1,147 hits in 685 games) but record keeping regarding which game he reached it in is rare. In the American League, Ichiro Suzuki reached 1,000 hits faster than anyone in history; he did so in 696 games.