I suspect the world would be better if that percentage were even greater.
Update: Was Hank Aaron really that good?
Back in 2007, I was looking at the career total bases expressed as miles, mainly to demonstrate what an outstanding career Hank Aaron had.
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I expressed with certainty that Bonds would never catch (and indeed, nobody may ever catch) Aaron’s numbers for total bases. In his career, Aaron had 6856 total bases. If you multiply that by 90 feet, you get that Aaron ran 116.86 miles in his career.
Bonds finished with 5976 bases, for a total of 101.86 miles. That places him just above Ty Cobb (99.78 miles) but below Aaron, Musial and Mays.
Among active players, only Alex Rodriguez seems remotely possible, but he’s already in his 18th season, and has 5057 total bases (as of today). He’ll probably catch Griffey (5271 in 22 seasons) by the end of the year, but it would take about six or eight more years of playing at his current level to reach Aaron.
Comment from Dave Rutledge
Time 4/10/2011 at 11:37 am
Hank Aarons has 1.24 miles of base running where he was thrown out while attempting to steal (but presumably still ran the full 90 feet), though Ricky Henderson has him beat by more than a few miles with 5.7 miles of failed base stealing attempts!