Robinson Canó reaches milestone with 4,000th professional hit; Vinicio García quietly joins him

Robinson Canó’s single with the Diablos Rojos in the Mexican League playoffs on September 13, 2025, made him one of 23 players known to have recorded 4,000 career hits at all professional levels. (Courtesy of Prensa Diablos / Enrique Gutiérrez)

On Saturday, September 13, 2025, Robinson Canó stepped into the batter’s box at Estadio Panamericano de Béisbol in Sapopan, home of the Charros de Jalisco of the Mexican League. Canó, now 42 years old and more than three years removed from his last game in Major League Baseball, was batting third as the designated hitter for the visiting Diablos Rojos del México. It was Game Three of the Serie del Rey, the fourth and final round of the Mexican League playoffs. Canó’s Red Devils held a 2–0 advantage in the series and a 5–2 lead in the game.

Charros starting pitcher Luis Iván Rodríguez was facing his last hitter of the night. Before Canó batted, Red Devils center fielder Allen Córdoba homered to stretch the early lead to three runs. Canó was patient, working the count full and fouling off the sixth offering. Canó then ripped the seventh pitch into right-center field for a single and jogged down to first base. It was the 4,000th hit of his professional career.

Fewer than two dozen players are confirmed to have reached 4,000 professional hits—when counting stats from the regular season and postseason of competitive professional leagues (major, minor, or independent) around the world, along with international tournaments (borrowing the concept of “club and country” from international football).

As Scott Simkus wrote in 2013 when he published the first list of players with 4,000 professional hits at SABR.org, “A player who reaches 4,000 hits in any professional baseball environment — in any country, in any era — exists in rarified air.” At that time, there were only nine known members.

In early 2025, Simkus published an updated roster that expanded membership to 18. By this time, Simkus was working with myself and Von Spalding, a researcher who scoured the Latin American leagues to confirm several more players with 4,000 career hits. I delivered an oral presentation at SABR’s 53rd annual convention titled “Julio, Ichiro, Miñoso, and… Carrillo? Professional Baseball’s 4,000 Hit Club.” Leading up to the convention, we confirmed three more players, bringing the membership to 21.

We also shared that Robinson Canó was not only working his way toward the milestone, but was thriving south of the border. Canó won the Mexican League’s Most Valuable Player award in 2024 after hitting .431/.475/.639 with 14 home runs and 77 RBIs in 78 games. In 2025, he slashed .372/.426/.573 as his Diablos Rojos attempted to repeat as champions. They swept the Leones de Yucatán and Pericos de Puebla in the first two rounds of the Mexican League playoffs before battling with the Pirates de Campeche for six games in the Zone Championship Series. That set up a Serie del Rey appearance against the Charros.

Canó’s single made him the 22nd confirmed member of the 4,000 Professional Hit Club. The Diablos Rojos celebrated the milestone on the field, collecting the ball while Canó saluted the crowd. He became the first player to celebrate the milestone in real time.

4,000 imparables. 4,000 momentos que quedarán en la historia.
Robinson Canó lo ha vuelto a hacer: llega a los 4,000 hits de por vida, y el número 4,000 lo conecta jugando su segunda Serie del Rey con los Diablos Rojos del México. 🔥

Un legado que trasciende fronteras, un hito… pic.twitter.com/vorFFtBG60

— DiablosRojosMX (@DiablosRojosMX) September 14, 2025

Pete Rose and Ty Cobb’s 4,000th professional hits came earlier and without the fanfare of their 4,000th major league hits. Even Ichiro Suzuki’s 4,000th professional hit, when minor and winter league hits are included, came in early 2012, more than a year before his milestone of 4,000 hits across MLB and NPB combined was widely acknowledged.

After Canó’s milestone hit, his Red Devils won 7–2. The next evening, they completed their sweep against the Charros with a 7–3 win to repeat as Mexican League champions. Canó picked up another hit in Game Four, bringing his total to 4,001. The breakdown:

This definition of “professional hits” does not include games in a non-competitive or instructional setting, such as Spring Training (where Canó compiled another 286 hits) or instructional leagues. It also doesn’t include exhibition games such as All-Star Games. Canó collected two hits in MLB All-Star Games, at least one in Mexican League All-Star Games, and two more in the Dubai Baseball United All-Star Challenge. There may be others, but our efforts were focused elsewhere.

*****

Just days after Canó reached his milestone surrounded by applause and admiration, another player surpassed 4,000 professional hits quietly in a spreadsheet—55 years after his final game.

In early July, fellow SABR member Thomas Van Hyning asked me if Vinicio “Chico” García, who collected seven major league hits for the 1954 Baltimore Orioles, had a shot at 4,000 hits. At first I was skeptical, but once I combined García’s major league, minor league, Mexican League, Mexican Pacific (Winter) League, and some Veracruz Winter League stats from Van Hyning, he crossed the 3,500 hit line. Von Spalding then exhausted his resources to find several more hits in winter leagues. Suddenly, we were only 63 hits away.

While García only played in 39 MLB games, that is just a sliver of an extensive career that spanned several decades and countries. García is a Hall of Famer in his native Mexico, inducted in 1981. In the Mexican League, he collected 1,601 hits and a .323 batting average (winning the batting title in 1963 at age 38). He collected another 1,535 hits in the minor leagues (hitting .291 overall and winning another batting title in the 1949 Arizona-Texas League), plus 115 hits in Cuba. After his playing career he managed in Mexico from 1965 through 1986.

The frustrating part is we knew García had cleared the milestone. We just couldn’t confirm it. We knew of three competitions for which we were missing hit data:

• 1945 for Mineros Grises de Parral of the Mexican National League (a minor league). An article by Jesús Alberto Rubio noted that García “had batted .260, eleven doubles, seven triples, and 49 RBIs.”
• 1945-46 for Venados de Mazatlán of the Mexican Pacific League (a winter league). A league encyclopedia noted that García led the league in at-bats with 232, but no other stats were listed.
• 1946 for Industriales de Monterrey in the Interamerican Series.

I reached out to teams and leagues to see if additional data was available. Unfortunately most emails bounced back and others went unanswered. I received a response from Jesús Alberto Rubio, but unfortunately he had no additional data for 1945. 

After Canó reached 4,000, I turned my attention back to García and reached out to Guillermo Gastélum Duarte, the author of the Mexican Pacific League encyclopedia noted above. Duarte came through in a big way. He shared that García collected 56 hits in 1945-46 for Mazatlán for a .241 average. I was hoping for more hits from that season, but alas García was only 20 years old. That still left us seven hits shy.

However, Duarte also noted García played three more seasons in the Mexican Pacific League that we were not aware of: 1947-48 with Los Mochis (28 hits), 1948-49 with Guaymas (42 hits), and 1949-50 back with Los Mochis (36 hits). Not only did this bring us past 4,000 hits, but García currently sits at 4,099, passing eight players in the process. Despite the fact we’re still missing data on his career—and there may be more we don’t even know about—García is now the 23rd player confirmed to reach 4,000 professional hits.

Vinicio “Chico” García, who played professionally from 1944 to 1970, including with the Baltimore Orioles in 1954, was inducted into the Salón de la Fama, the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1981. (Trading Card Database)

The 4,000 Professional Hit Club continues to evolve. Tris Speaker (3,987), José Cruz (3,938), Rickey Henderson (3,914), and Sam Crawford (3,910) are all within 100 hits, but we feel confident we have exhausted all opportunities for more. That said, there are still gaps in data coverage that remain a challenge. For example, if we had complete data from the playoffs in Mexico, we could possibly add Luis Polonia, Juan Navarrete, and Alonso Téllez to the list. We’re actually certain that Polonia is in the club, but confirmation eludes us. He has 3,999 hits as of this writing, but Spalding found mention of a playoff hit in Mexico (but no box score). Jose Altuve is the only known active player with 3,000 or more professional hits (though Freddie Freeman is just about there), but still has a long way to go.

The latest data for the 4,000 Professional Hit Club is available in a public Google Spreadsheet. There are tabs for grand totals, totals by competition type, individual seasons, and even a dashboard of players with 3,500+ hits who are on our radar. Coverage the project has received can be found on my personal website. If you are aware of any data we are missing, we would graciously welcome it.

ADAM DAROWSKI is the Executive Director of Design for Sports Reference, makers of Baseball Reference, Immaculate Grid, Stathead, and more. He is the creator of the Hall of Stats and is co-chair of SABR’s Overlooked Nineteenth Century Base Ball Legends committee. Contact him with any updates to the 4,000 hit club list.

Robinson Canó of the Diablos Rojos swings for his 4,000th career professional hit on September 13, 2025, during the final round of the Serie del Rey, the Mexican League playoffs, at Estadio Panamericano de Béisbol in Sapopan, Mexico. (Courtesy of Prensa Diablos / Enrique Gutiérrez)

Players With 4,000 Career Professional Hits

Author’s Note: All hit totals are the best available information as of September 25, 2025. Click here for a breakdown of hit totals by season, league, and level. We count hits collected in any competitive domestic leagues, playoffs, and international tournaments. We do not include hits compiled in an instructional or non-competitive setting (such as Spring training or instructional leagues) or exhibition games (such as All-Star games and barnstorming contests). The research team includes Adam Darowski, Von Spalding, and Scott Simkus.