It took Alex Rodriguez21 years, 2,630 games and 10,034 at-bats to reach 2,999 hits.
The New York Yankees’ designated hitter, enjoying an excellent comeback season after sitting out an unprecedented 162 games for illegal performance-enhancing drug use, hit the first pitch he saw from Detroit Tigers starter Justin Verlander on Friday night and sent it into the right-field seats at Yankee Stadium to join Hank Aaron as only the second player in baseball history to collect more than 600 home runs, 2,000 RBIs and 3,000 hits.
Rodriguez’s hit was also the 667th home run of his career — more than all but Barry Bonds, Aaron and Babe Ruth — the 2,004th RBI, and the first run of what became a 7-2 Yankees victory.
The night belonged to A-Rod, who did not keep the 44,588 fans in attendance waiting very long, jumping on the former Cy Young and AL MVP winner’s first-pitch fastball, clocked at 95 mph, and sending it on a line into the seats midway between the Yankees’ bullpen and the foul pole. According to ESPN Stats & Information, it was calculated at 373 feet, meaning it only would have been a home run at Yankee Stadium.
“I was just thinking be aggressive, get a good pitch to hit and not try to do too much,” Rodriguez said. “To be quite honest, a year ago today, I didn’t know if this day would ever come. There were some really dark days, I got to tell you.”
This was not one of them. After Rodriguez collected two hits — and drew a very unpopular walk in his final at-bat — in Thursday night’s game against the Miami Marlins to pull to within one of the milestone, the crowd at Yankee Stadium came pumped to see history.
And Rodriguez himself was loose before the game, laughing and joking with teammates and reporters as he headed out for batting practice.
“Well, last night I just kept staring at the ceiling about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “I didn’t get much sleep just thinking about the day and anticipating what today would be like. But the fans, they were incredible and just gave me a lot of confidence coming into today.”