Top 5 – Best Career Batting Average
By Nick Browne
It takes a special player to regularly bat for average. There’s a reason that batting .300 is the benchmark for a solid season; it’s really not that easy to do. These five players all hit well above the .300 mark for their entire careers.
Ty Cobb – .3664 batting average
Cobb had an extremely lengthy career, playing from 1905-1926 for the Tigers and finishing in 1927-1928 with the Philadelphia Athletics. He was the AL batting champion 12 times.
Rogers Hornsby – .3585 batting average
Hornsby played 23 seasons in MLB, recording 2,930 hits. He was the NL batting champion seven times during his career.
Shoeless Joe Jackson – .3558 batting average
Jackson played MLB from 1908-1920 for the Athletics, Indians, and White Sox. He hit an astounding .408 as a rookie, but most folks instead talk about how his career ended. He was banned from the game after the 1920 season for allegedly fixing games as part of the Black Sox Scandal.
Lefty O’Doul – .3493 batting average
O’Doul played 15 seasons in the Major Leagues from 1919-1934. He led the NL in batting average twice in his career.
Ed Delahanty – .3458 batting average
Delahanty is a Baseball Hall of Famer who spent his 1888-1903 career playing for the Philadelphia Quakers, Cleveland Infants, Phillies, and Washington Senators. He was a two-time NL batting champion.