When Cal Raleigh makes history, you can be pretty sure somebody will let you know about it. When Shohei Ohtani makes history, there's an excellent chance a few zillion headlines are coming -- in multiple languages.

But sometimes in baseball, history isn't so obvious. Which means ... this must be a job for our Weird and Wild Department!

So if there's a very wacky all-time strikeout record on the line ... or there's a serious threat to a home run record held by the legendary Topsy Hartsel ... we're here for you when no one else is.

I apologize in advance that there's no full-fledged Weird and Wild column this week. Too many balls in the air to make that happen. But I did find time for another edition of Weird and Wild's September History Watch. So here it comes ...

I was digging in on the National League leaderboards Thursday morning when I noticed something.

So wait a minute, you're saying. One of those guys (Wood) is a hitter, and the other (Skenes) is a pitcher. You would be right about that. That's also the point!

Here was my question: Has any league's leaderboard ever looked like that -- where the hitter with the most strikeouts actually had more K's than the pitcher with the most strikeouts? Since the name of this column is "History Watch," you can probably guess the answer. Nope!

It's barely even been close. The only truly narrow call in a full season came way back in 1938, when Clay Bryant (the pitcher) edged Vince DiMaggio (the hitter) for the National League strikeout "title," 135-134. There was also a late charge in the NL as recently as last year, when Chris Sale (the pitching champ) missed his last two starts, and Elly De La Cruz (the hitting champ) then made it to within seven of him (225-218). But other than that, this "record" has never even been in play.

So can Wood pull this off?

His challenge is that it isn't only Skenes he's dueling. The Giants' Logan Webb passed Skenes in his start Thursday night, and now leads the league (and Wood), 211-210. Plus Jesús Luzardo (206 K's) and Dylan Cease (201) are still technically alive, with two more starts left.

I knew this was bound to happen one of these years. Now here we are. Or not.

Aaron Judge is having himself another one of those years, because of course he is. But here's something amazing about it that attracted our attention.

Judge is on his way to becoming the tallest batting champ ever. (He's 6-foot-7, officially. He just seems like he's 7-foot-6.) But that's not even the Weird and Wild part.

The Weird and Wild part is this: He's two homers away from his fourth 50-homer season. Which would make him one of those rare batting champs who is also in the 50-homer, 100-RBI Club. And yet ...

He's not going to win the Triple Crown!

That seemed almost impossible to me. So I took a look. Turns out only one player in history has ever won a batting title, gone 50/100 and still not won a Triple Crown. And it's so rare, it last happened 87 years ago.

In 1938, Jimmie Foxx put up a monstrous .349/50/175 season -- but "only" led the American League in average and RBIs. Hank Greenberg cranked 58 home runs that year, so no trifecta (at least not that year) for Foxx. He did win a Triple Crown in 1933, but he gets no bonus points for that in this competition.

So can Judge hang onto his eight-point lead in the batting race? Can he fit two more home-run trots into his hectic schedule? I'd bet on both of those ... and the history that goes with it.

Has anyone else noticed that the Phillies are about to win a Triple Crown? Or at least a tag-team Triple Crown?

This is a cool feat I honestly just made up, but just go with it. Trea Turner leads the National League in batting average. His amigo, Kyle Schwarber, leads the league in homers and RBIs. That's all three Triple Crown categories. And yes, that's one more thing that doesn't happen much.

I'm not going to count individual Triple Crowns when I lay this out for you. So no need to tell me I forgot Miguel Cabrera or Carl Yastrzemski. I've heard of them, OK? But those are not the same thing as this. This is Triple Crowns won only by multiple players on the same team.

If we count years where somebody tied for the lead in one of those categories ... then we could say this has only happened twice in the last 50 years:

2016 Rockies -- DJ LeMahieu (average) and Nolan Arenado (led in RBIs, tied for home run title)

1983 Red Sox -- Wade Boggs (average) and Jim Rice (led in homers, tied in RBIs)

But ... both Turner and Schwarber lead the NL outright in those three categories. So now, we're getting into even more rarified territory. Because we've only had two outright Triple Crown tag teams in the last 72 seasons.

The last time this happened in the National League was a mere 84 seasons ago. The 1941 Dodgers turned this trick with Pete Reiser winning the batting title and Dolph Camilli taking the other two categories. And how about this: That's the only time it's been done in the NL in the live-ball era (since 1920). But maybe not for long!

You think Jose Altuve knows the "tall" tale of Topsy Hartsel? I hope so -- because in 1901, Topsy set (but definitely didn't "top") a record that feels like it will stand for many centuries to come. He led the legendary Chicago Orphans in home runs that season with seven. And why are we bringing that up now?

Because our man Topsy was 5-foot-5 ... making him the shortest player ever to lead his team in homers in a season (at the time). He would later share that honor with Bill Keister and Rabbit Maranville.

But we digress, because that was the dead-ball era. Here in the live-ball era, we find Altuve leading the Astros in home runs this season, with 26 -- three more than Christian Walker. And what's so Weird and Wild about that?

Well, for one thing, it's his 14th season, and Altuve has never led this team in homers before. So there's that. But the even "bigger" news is that he's still 5-foot-6 - meaning ...

He can become the shortest man to lead any team in home runs since the 1930s! He'd be tied for the live-ball era record with two other 5-foot-6 guys: Heinie Mueller (1939 Phillies) and Hack Wilson (led the Cubs and Dodgers seven times).

Of course, there are questions about whether Altuve is really even that tall. But all height and weight records were already suspect, since there's nothing in life that people lie about more than their height and weight. So here's to Altuve, still making it cool to be short.

Every few years, some hot hitter inspires us to ask: Will anyone in our lifetime ever hit .400?

I never thought to ask: Will any team ever differential 400? But these are nutty times we live in. So ...

Have you checked out those 2025 Colorado Rockies lately?

They dropped to 70 games under .500 on Wednesday. And that seems not good. But it wasn't even the most historic thing they did that day, because let's look in on their run differential for the season, following that 8-4 loss to the Marlins:

Minus-402!

And kids, those minus-400 run differentials don't come along every year. Or even every century.

To find the last team in history to plunge beyond minus-400, you don't just have to go back to the 20th century. You have to keep riding that time machine ... back to the 19th century.

Yes, the Minus-400 Club skipped an entire century. But on Wednesday, the Rockies tapped out the secret door knock and joined this prestigious group (and then on Thursday decided to pad their minus-400 mark even more):

(Source: Baseball Reference's Katie Sharp)

(*Through Thursday)

On one hand, the Rockies at least have the most wins in that group. On the other hand ... yikes!

On June 12, Steve Cohen's $339 million juggernaut, the 2025 Mets, were 21 games over .500, at 45-24. That was the good news. The bad news was that the season then continued.

Over their next 81 games, those same Mets were 17 games under .500, at 32-49. If you're fluent in baseball math, you know that 81 games represent half a season. So a team that played at that clip for a whole season would finish with a worse record than the Pirates, the Nationals, the Orioles and (for that matter) any team in the sport except the Rockies and White Sox. It would also lose 98 games.

But amazingly, after those 81 games, the Mets were still in position to be a playoff team. And hey, good for them. But since this is the History Watch column, it's a good time to ask: Has any team in the wild-card era ever had an 81-game stretch that messy and still made the playoffs?

Once again, that answer is ... nope!

The "record" -- over these last three decades of wild-card inclusivity -- is 13 games under .500 (34-47), set all the way back in ... OK, last year, when the Tigers did it, between April and July. And I found four other teams that were 11 games under (35-46) over an 81-game stretch:

2023 Diamondbacks

2016 Giants

2005 Padres

2004 Astros

Ah, but now this is where I dangle a little hope for these Mets. Back before the wild-card era, I did find one other team that also went exactly 32-49 over an 81-game stretch in May, June and July -- but then awoke from its slumber to get all the way to the World Series.

And if you were riding the No. 7 train back then, you'd remember it well ... because it was Tug McGraw's 1973 Ya Gotta Believe Mets! It only took 82 wins for them to make the playoffs that year. But whatever. And in October, none of what happened in the previous six months applied.

So is that where October is leading the 2025 Mets? Or is that 17-games-under stretch, over half a season, really who they are?

Those are fascinating questions, but they're also questions for next month. The question for next week is: Are these Mets going to join those Mets in another prestigious category dug up by this year's edition of the September History Watch?

Um, you're welcome?

MLB history watch: Players, teams that could break wacky records this month