Yet another reason to love the Red Sox

The Triple Crown is one of Baseball's most challenging prizes.  It is only awarded to a player who has the most home runs and runs batted in, and who also has the highest league batting average.  To give you a sense of just how elusive this award is, there was a 45 year gap between Boston's Carl Yazstremski winning the triple crown in 1967 and Detroit's Miguel Cabrera winning it in 2012.  Most years nobody can top all three of the stats.

This year, Boston's J.D. Martinez is taking a run for it.  He's tied for most home runs at 39.  He leads RBIs with 114.  He's second in batting average with .336 - closely behind teammate Mookie Betts' .342.  That 0.006 is actually more of a challenge than you might think, but it's plausible that Martinez could pull it off this season.  There are still 27 games left, after all.

But what's cool about Martinez is that he's a strong Second Amendment supporter:

"As most of you guys know, I'm Cuban-American," Martinez explained. "Most of my family was run out of Cuba because of a brutal dictator. It's terrible…. My parents still talk about family members that are back in Cuba that I'll never get to meet. And it sucks." It sure does. Here in the United States, though, Martinez can celebrate the fact that a heavily armed citizenry helped repel subjugation. 

"I love my country," Martinez went on to tell the New York Daily News. "I stand by the Constitution and I stand by the Second Amendment."

Here's wishing Martinez success this season, and continued success as an ambassador for self defense.

Photo via MLB/Red Sox