Missing Out

In professional sports, luck has a big role in success. No matter how good the individual player, sometimes the stars just don't align in their favor. Everyone wants to win a championship, but depending on the circumstances and the quality of your team, you might not even get the opportunity. But at the very least, you'd like an chance to play for one on the field, right? Not everyone can do that, though. Andre Dawson (MLB-2,627) Rafael Palmeiro (MLB-2,831) Mike Gartner (NHL-1,432), Dale Ellis (NBA-1,209), and Gary Anderson (NFL-353) know that pain. They hold the records in their respective leagues for playing the most games without playing in a championship game/series.

Edit: It's Palmeiro instead of Dawson. See here.

So who is the Andre Dawson Rafael Palmeiro of MLS? That would be the recently retired Mark Chung. 284 MLS games as part of a great, consistantly underrated career. He reached the league semifinals three times with three different teams: KC-1996, NY-2000, and COL-2002. His best shot was probably last season with San Jose, but they blew it.

Counting a season as 32 games, Chung played about 9 full years of games. The other four men have all played at least 14 years worth of games. But I'm sure somebody will get there eventually in MLS, if we don't switch to single table.

Below you'll find the list of the top 25 MLS players for this statistic. Only 7 are active players. Jason Kreis is only 5 games away from tying Mark Chung, so if he plays every game, he should tie him on 6/28 and pass him on 7/4.


Most MLS Games Played Without Playing in an MLS Cup

(includes games through 5/31/2006)

1	Mark Chung	284
2	Jason Kreis	279
3	Mike Clark	221
4	Jeff Cunningham	217
5	Ritchie Kotschau	206
6	Oscar Pareja	189
7	Carlos Valderrama	175
8	Ivan McKinley	174
9	Brian Maisonneuve	172
10	Brian Dunseth	171
11	Chris Brown	170
11	Dante Washington	170
13	Mike Burns	169
14	Pablo Mastroeni	168
15	Bobby Rhine	165
16	Ted Chronopoulos	162
17	Brian McBride	161
18	Robert Warzycha	160
19	Richard Farrer	158
20	Ted Eck	156
21	Jorge Rodriguez	155
22	Mark Santel	154
23	Chad Deering	147
23	Eric Denton	147
25	Welton	144

Active players in bold.

Seems like this list is made of only Columbus, Dallas, and Colorado players.

I had to go 88 players deep to find the 25 for this list.

The next highest active player is Paul Broome at 127, followed by Matt Jordan at 117. It doesn't appear anyone else will join this list until next year.