Images of Jose Reyes, Michael Bourn, and Jacoby Ellsbury may not elicit memories of Rickey Henderson or Otis Nixon but today’s top speedsters are reclaiming the art of the stolen base with blistering efficiency. 

Like the left-handed pitching specialist found in each Major League bullpen, teams have also long employed the one-dimensional, late inning speedster whose sole purpose is to steal an all-important base. Players like Joey Gathright (80 career SB in only 445 total games), Homer Bush (65 career SB in a mere 409 games), or even more recently, Reggie Willits (40 SB in 844 career at bats) have all found themselves employed so to steal a clutch 8th or 9th inning bag. All of these players alike shared the role of pinch runner who was relied upon to get himself, and his team, into scoring position late in games, but rarely could these players sustain full time positions due to their dismal full season production. Players like Gathright, Bush, and Willits have since given way to full time players who’ve been allotted opportunities in the daily lineup and thus accumulated stolen base totals like national debt. 

Michael Bourn’s 30 stolen bases entering the final weeks of June paces him for an impressive 66, a total that would be the third highest national league total in over a decade. Caught stealing only three times in 2011, Bourne, like many other speedsters, gives his team a chance to score amidst an era now dominated by pitching. Like Bourn, The Mets’ Jose Reyes too has compiled stolen bases at a breakneck rate even after General Manager Sandy Alderson stated publicly that Reyes’ total was a sheer “footnote” to winning baseball. 

Reyes’ dominance on the basepaths has been far more than a footnote to his teams’ ability to tread water in the NL East, even with Reyes’ supporting cast that yields an uncanny resemblance to the teams’ AAA affiliate. Jose is currently on pace for 58, his highest total since 2007, but it’s Reyes’ talent for advancing safely that has the Mets in position to add runs. 

“If he’s not playing during the All-Star Break,” Mets manager Terry Collins told Y! sports, “there might be an investigation.” In addition to his hit and stolen base total, Reyes’ ability to advance bases has him on pace to score a career high 122 runs.

It was 1987 the last time a player reached the 100 stolen base threshold, St. Louis’ Vince Coleman swiped a league high 109 (22 caught stealing) for the high octane Red Birds en route a World Series appearance. We may never again see a player eclipse triple figures in large part due to the evolution of the game’s conservative nature, tactical “small-ball” approach, and reliance on power hitters to generate most of the production. Today’s infusion of star athletes may test the mark should the right talent come along for a manager willing to give a permanent green light. 

Players like Reyes, Bourn, and developing, athletic, baseburning stars like Jacoby Ellsbury (24 SB), Elvis Andrus (21 SB), and Ian Desmond (20 SB) give collective hope that baseball will no longer be a game that belongs to the lumbering masses of muscle that reside in the cleanup spot, but instead to the origins of the game: the athletes who know how to steal, and get away with it.