Partial Retraction: Jayson Stark is Usually Awesome but Not Always

...And I can't come down too harshly on Jayson Stark because many other people have expressed the same or similar opinions. It's even backed by a poll (whatever that means).

I refer specifically to Stark's recent column "Baseball's top 10 'records' ... without the home runs". In the column, he selects Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak as his "top record." Call me crazy, but I've always found this record more flukish than impressive.

Strike that; the streak is impressive. But not because he hit safely in 56 straight games. It's impressive in that he hit so consistently well (.400-something--I don't feel like looking it up) for a little over two months. But a hitting streak is of fabricated importance only--something that fans and press members enjoy following.

WARNING: Statistical geekery to follow

A hit streak is nothing more than repetition of positive outcomes for exceptionally small samples with very high variance. The variance, of course, is obvious to any baseball fan. In five at bats, it's typical to see no hits as well as three hits, and not horribly uncommon to see five. That's not even to mention the shaky correlation between "earning" a hit and actually getting a hit (i.e. the so-called bleeder or blooper resulting a hit, and their counterpart, the "at'em" ball).

So why is the 56-game hit streak so impressive? It's not--at least not in and of itself. The consistently strong hitting is. If a player racks up an equal or greater batting average over, say, 62 games but never has more than a 24-game hit streak during that time, his achievement--in my opinion--is no less impressive. The random statistical phenomena were simply less friendly to him.

My point in a single readable sentence: Hit streaks may be fun, but they're a poor reflection of personal accomplishment.