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Most Career Games Without an Ejection
Player | Games |
Hank Aaron | 3298 |
Stan Musial | 3026 |
Willie Mays | 2992 |
Brooks Robinson | 2896 |
Robin Yount | 2856 |
Tony Perez | 2777 |
Derek Jeter | 2553 |
Paul Waner | 2549 |
Ernie Banks | 2528 |
Harmon Killebrew | 2435 |
In the Game Thread last night, it was noted that during Jeter's 18-year career, he has never been ejected. It makes sense--Jeter's opinion is highly respected throughout baseball and he never loses his temper on the field with umpires. In today's era of quick-trigger umpires, this feat is still remarkable considering how little it seems to take to set umpires off. I wondered how Jeter compared to players of the past and used data from Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet to compile the list.
On August 25th, Jeter played his 2,550th game without being ejected, passing Paul Waner of Pittsburgh Pirates fame ("Big Poison) for seventh on the all-time list (teammate Andruw Jones is next on the active leader list with 2,176). However, the Captain is still several seasons of games behind "Hammerin' Hank" for the top mark (Aaron is also third on the full games played list). It's conceivable that he could pass Perez, and maybe even Yount and Robinson, but he would have to really stick around for awhile to crack the top three. At this point, it's hard to count Jeter out of anything though.