Cap Anson's 3,000th Hit

Cap Anson was the first man to 3,000 hits, and he is the only member of the club whose milestone this archive cannot date to a game. He reached it in 1897, his twenty-second and final season with the Chicago club he had also managed for nineteen years.

The uncertainty is not an accident of record-keeping so much as an argument about what counts. Anson played five seasons in the National Association, from 1871 to 1875, and collected 423 hits there. Major League Baseball stopped recognising that league as major in the late 1960s, which removed those hits from his official total. Counting only the leagues now recognised, he finished with 3,012 and crossed 3,000 late in 1897. Counting the National Association as well, he finished with 3,435 and would have passed 3,000 three years earlier, in 1894.

Either way the game itself is beyond the reach of the sources here: Retrosheet's play-by-play record, which dates every other 3,000th hit on this site, begins in 1912. Anson retired in 1897 with the most hits anyone had, a record he held until Ty Cobb passed him, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1939.