Braves outfielder Nick Markakis joined the 500 doubles club Monday night, becoming the 64th player in MLB history to achieve such.
When Markakis doubled home a run in the ninth inning of Monday’s 13-8 loss to the Phillies, he became the fourth active player to reach the milestone. He joined Albert Pujols (662), Miguel Cabrera (578) and Robinson Cano (564).
By his own admission, Markakis isn’t “a big numbers guy,” but he briefly enjoyed the moment.
“I’m more of a guy who goes out there and does my job, and whatever the numbers are at the end of the day, or the end of my career, they are what they are,” he said. “It was a cool time. A little weird with nobody in the stands, but most importantly, the main thing is we lost the game yesterday, which put a damper on things. It would’ve been nice to come out and win the game, too. But that’s how baseball goes. We packed our stuff up and here we are at Yankee Stadium.”
Markakis’ next double will push him past Goose Goslin and John Olerud on the doubles list. The 36-year-old entered Tuesday with 2,359 career hits, ranking him No. 135 on the all-time list. Naturally, he hasn’t thought about how long he would need to continue playing reach 3,000.
“If that happens, it happens,” Markakis said. “At this point in my career, I’m taking it game by game, day by day, and we’ll see where it ends up taking me.”
His day-by-day mindset eventually swayed him back to his team. Markakis decided against playing this season in early July, but two weeks later, announced his comeback.
Exactly one month after he declared his intention to sit out the season, Markakis returned to the starting lineup and hit a walk-off homer against the Blue Jays last week. It kicked off his 15th major-league season and sixth with the Braves.
“It’s been an honor to manage a guy like that,” manager Brian Snitker said. “Just the career he’s had and continues to have, the player he’s been, the consistency, all that. You go back and look at those numbers, it’s pretty impressive.”
