This date in 1985: At Wrigley Field, Pete Rose singles in the first inning off Reggie Patterson for career hit 4,190, then adds 4,191 with another single in the fifth. 4191 supposedly tied Ty Cobb's all-time hits record, but there's a fascinating backstory (thread)

Rose got # 4,192 three days later back at home in Cincinnati, with a single off Eric Show of the Padres. We all know this great baseball moment, right? Turns out that Cobb's total is actually 4,189, as a two-hit game was double-counted for years.

What's the deal with Cobb? Well...

Before the 1910 season, Chalmers Motor Company announced they’d give away a model of their new automobile to whoever had the highest batting average in the majors that year. It was a tight race between Cobb & Cleveland’s Nap Lajoie all summer.

Cobb finished at .382, while Lajoie was at .375, with one doubleheader to play against the Browns on the last day of the season

Browns manager Rowdy Jack O’Connor had rookie 3B Red Corriden stand in left field during Lajoie’s AB's so Lajoie could lay down bunt hit after bunt hit

After a triple in his first at bat, Lajoie had seven bunt singles to go 8-for-8 in the twinbill and move past Cobb by one point. Obviously, this set off a gigantic firestorm (must've been a heck of a time on Baseball Twitter).

AL president Ban Johnson banned O’Connor from the league, but also tried to minimize the controversy by naming Cobb the winner regardless, saying the league “discovered” that one of Cobb’s two-hit games that season hadn’t been recorded.

So that two-hit game was added to Cobb’s total, but it was actually just counting the same game twice. Chalmers ended up giving a car to both Cobb and Lajoie anyway, while Cobb’s career hit total went uncorrected for decades.

When the discrepancy was discovered and presented to commissioner Bowie Kuhn in 1981, he said the statute of limitations had passed and that correcting the record was “not practical.” When was Kuhn ever on the right side of an issue?

The controversy persists today, as “Total Baseball,” MLB’s official encyclopedia and historical record, says Cobb has 4,189 hits (you'll see that on Retrosheet, Baseball-Reference, etc.) while Major League Baseball itself insists it's 4,191.

But the true record-breaker was actually on this date, with that first-inning single off Patterson in Chicago. In the words of MLB's official historian, @thorn_john: "Baseball's records are not set in stone, but positioned in wet cement." (end)