Chase's Chase

Chase Utley's hitting streak ended last night, 35 games after it began.

Whenever a baseball player runs a consecutive-game hitting streak past, say, 20, the media and fans build a bandwagon and all bound on. Every evening, that player's box score becomes the most-read item in sports reporting. (I have no data to back that up — but so what?) The daily observance is not surprising; Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak of 1941 remains baseball's most awe-inspiring and bat-challenging record.

And as close as Utley came to besting that achievement, he really wasn't close at all. Thirty-five consecutive games of hitting — over a month of daily consistency — is still three weeks short. Three weeks is an impressive streak all on its own.

No player can be considered close to breaking DiMaggio's record until he's surpassed 50. And that's still only 90 percent of the chase.

Finally, the Trade Finale

As a wrap-up to my previous post, "Trade Rumor Amusement," here are the players most rumored to be traded who ended up not moving anywhere:

• Pat Burrell
• Andruw Jones
• Brad Lidge
• Jon Lieber
  
• Scott Linebrink
• Roy Oswalt
• Scott Proctor
• Alex Rodriguez
• Jason Schmidt
• Alfonso Soriano
• Miguel Tejada
• Dontrelle Willis
• Barry Zito
  

Carlos Lee did get traded, but to the Rangers. Wilson Betemit also, but to the Dodgers. Greg Maddux was traded, but not, as rumored, for someone valuable.

The nearly unanimous vote for best trade goes to the Yankees, who picked up a patient and powerful bat in Bobby Abreu and a fifth (or fourth) starter in Cory Lidle, in exchange for four prospects with questionable potential and a pitcher who's no longer used.

The lesson here is that today's media has grown addicted to reporting the process of gathering news, rather than reporting the news itself once it's been gathered. A journalist's role used to involve filtering rumors to discover real stories. These days, many journalists aim to report the rumors before the competition can do it first.