40–40 club

In Major League Baseball (MLB), the 40–40 club is the group of batters who have collected 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season. Jose Canseco was the first to achieve this, doing so in 1988 after having predicted the feat in April of that year. The most recent player to reach the milestone is Alfonso Soriano, achieving the feat during the 2006 season.

In total, only four players have reached the 40–40 club in MLB history and none have done so more than once. Of these, three were right-handed batters and one was left-handed. Two players—Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez—are also members of the 500 home run club. Jose Canseco is the only player to have won the MVP Award in the same year of his 40–40 season, he's also the only one to lead his club to the postseason making it to the World Series. Alfonso Soriano collected 41 doubles alongside achieving 40–40. Rodriguez is the only non-outfielder to attain 40–40. All four 40-40 club members had at least 400 career home runs and 200 stolen bases.

Becoming a member of the 40–40 club is an elusive achievement in modern American baseball, as players who possess the power to hit 40 home runs and the speed to steal 40 bases in a season are rare. Generally a player with the strength to hit 40 home runs will not have nearly the speed necessary to steal 40 bases, and vice versa. This remains true even as statistical trends change in baseball — stolen base totals in the 1980s were unusually high, but very few players reached 40 home runs; home run totals were extremely high in the late 1990s, but stolen bases became more rare as the steal was a sparingly used tactic. Bonds achieved the feat when his body was lean and quick, before his body grew thicker.

Due to the relative modernity of the 40–40 club, no eligible club members have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Eligibility requires that a player has "been retired five seasons" or deceased for at least six months, disqualifying active players. As of the 2015 season only Rodriguez remains active. Bonds remains on the Hall of Fame Ballot, and Soriano will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2020.

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