I was away from baseball for most of Miguel Tejada's career so my first reaction to the back of this card was "Wow! I didn't know he was such an iron man in the games played department."
Six straight seasons playing in all of his teams games, while tying for the league lead in five of those seasons. How did he play all 162 games in 2003 and not even tie for the league lead? Some knucklehead on the Yankees (Hideki Matsui) played in 163 games that year. Here's an article that explains how that happened because it didn't involve a one game playoff like I thought.
Tejada has the fifth longest games played streak with 1,152 consecutive games. It ended after he broke his wrist being hit by a pitch but not before he had one more at bat the next day. I don't follow the Orioles despite living just outside of DC on the Virginia side but I vaguely remember him being hurt. That's probably why I didn't associate him with such a long streak.
But the real point of this blog is to focus on his most current category where he led the league. As you can see by the card, Tejada led the National League in doubles in 2009 with 46. This was 4 behind his other league leading season of 50 back in 2005 with the Orioles and 10 behind the Major League leading 56 doubles by his former Orioles teammate Brian Roberts. Tejada finished in the top 10 in doubles two other times in his career and was consistently above thirty except for his first two (partial) seasons and an injury shortened season.
After his league leading season with the Astros in 2009, Tejada re-signed with the Orioles as a free agent for the start of the 2010 season. He was later traded to the Padres midseason, just in time for this photo to be taken for the Update series. (I doublechecked, this is a Getty photo, not a photoshop job.)
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