Winning the Triple Crown in Major League Baseball — leading your league in batting average, home runs and RBI — is an achievement unlocked only by the elite.
For the first two decades of the 20th century, there was a Triple Crown winner about once every six or seven years. That pace quickened to once every 3½ years during the live-ball era (1920 to 1941), only to slow to once every six to eight years during the integration (1942 to 1960) and expansion (1961 to 1976) eras. After that, Triple Crown winners were only a dream until 2012, when Miguel Cabrera broke a 45-year stretch since the previous Triple Crown winner, Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
