Records
Many people
have come up with a list of baseball records that they think will never be
broken, for one reason or another. And with this article, I am adding myself to
that list, but maybe with a different slant than previously discussed.
As with
most of my lists, I will limit myself to ten records, although there are many
more that won't, or can't, be broken. Some of those are records of
circumstance, such as being the first to do this, or accomplishing something in
your first at bat or first game.
Some of
them are also a matter of the era in which they were set. That being said, I
have not used records that were reached and set before 1900, when the game was
vastly different.
So, Cy
Young's 511 wins, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders losing 101 games on the road, Old
Hoss Radbourn winning 59 games in 1884.
That being
said, in no particular order, my list.
- Babe Ruth's home runs. Yes, I know
that Babe hit 714 in his career, which places him third on the all-time
list, meaning his career record has been bettered. Also, his high water
mark of 60 homers in a season. No,
my favorite statistic, just because of the combination of the randomness
of it, combined with the enormity of it, is that 84.5% of Babe's home runs
established a new record. 603 of the 714 established a new record, both
single season and career. Of course, the era that Ruth played in factors
heavily in this statistic, as baseball itself was evolving into a home run
based offense (Remember, as the ads from the nineties said, chicks dig the
long ball) But it is still amazing. In effect, if someone were to break
the current single season home run record, matching Ruth's feat when he
did it, they would have to hit 136 home runs. To set the new career home
run record, one would have to smash 1406 homers, or a little over 70 per
season for twenty years. Pretty safe bet that won't happen. So, in my
mind, the most impressive “Ruthian” number is not 714 or 60, but rather
84.5. No one has really come close to that shattering of a record, except
for...
- Rickey
- Walter Johnson's shutouts. The Big
Train pitched an incredible 110 shutouts in his career. Those are complete
game shutouts. The greatest pitcher of this generation, Greg Maddux, in
his storied Hall of Fame career
tallied 109 complete games. (35 of those were shutouts, in case you
were wondering). Second to Jonson is Grover Cleveland Alexander, with 90,
and Christy Mathewson is third with 79. If we were to look at pitchers
active in the last 70 seasons, Warrren Spahn would be the leader with just
63. As of this writing, Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers is the active
shutout leader with 15. Today's game doesn't really place much emphasis on
complete games, opting instead to concentrate on pitch counts. One could
only imagine how unhittable Johnson would have been if he had been limited
to 120 pitches per start. Of course Johnson had the advantage of pitching
during the dead ball era, or so it would seem. He had to face Ruth, Cobb,
Crawford and Speaker on a pretty regular basis, so it wasn't super easy
for pitchers. The story on Johnson was that while he was a fierce
competitor, he was truly a nice, gentle man. And he had a fear of killing,
or even maiming a batter by an errant pitch, despite what has been
described as impeccable control. Batters of the day were of the opposite
mindset, being afraid to crowd the plate for the fear of being injured.
All except Cobb. Cobb figured that Johnson's good nature would override
his competitiveness on the mound, so Ty would dig in and crowd the plate. Amazingly,
Cobb hit .366 against Johnson. The same as his career average. Johnson was
also the first pitcher to record 3,000 strikeouts, which he did in 1923.
He remained the only pitcher with that many strikeouts for fifty-one
years, when Bob Gibson reached that plateau. Which brings us to...
- Nolan Ryan's strikeouts. Lynn
Nolan Ryan was the 12th round draft pick of the New York Mets in the
inaugural baseball free agent draft of 1965. (and actually the only Hall of Famer drafted by the Mets to this day) The Ryan Express would play
in twenty-seven seasons, becoming the first pitcher to record 4,000 and
then 5,000 strikeouts. In a statistical anomaly, Reds outfielder Cesar
Geronimo was the 3,000th strikeout victim of both Nolan Ryan and Bob
Gibson. Ryan finished with 5,714 total strikeouts, 839 more than the
second place pitcher, Randy Johnson. The opposite of Walter Johnson, who
pitched in an era where strikeouts were not a part of the game, eighteen
of the top twenty on the strikeout list played during the 'expansion era'.
Putting that aside, Ryan's record is 17.2% higher than the next highest
total. So to equal that, a pitcher would need to record 6,697 career K's
to equal Ryan's astronomical tally, or just 285 strikeouts per year for 20
years to be close to tying the 5,714. Amazingly, Ryan spent a good amount
of his career hovering around the .500 winning percentage point, meaning
he lost just about as many as he won. In fact from 1967-1980, he won just nine
games more than he lost (178-169) But he never lost 20 in a season. Unlike...
- Vic Willis' 29 losses in 1905. Willis,
the pride of Cecil County, Maryland, was a pretty good pitcher at the turn
of the century. He won 25 games as a rookie for the Boston Beaneaters in
1898, and would top the 20 win mark eight times in a thirteen year career.
But he also lost 20 or more three times. His 29 losses are the most by a
pitcher in a season during the twentieth century. Much like complete games
and forty starts per season, the 20 game losers are a thing of the past.
In fact, the last time a pitcher lost 20 games was Mike Maroth of the 2003
Tigers. And then back to 1980 to find the next one. There was a theory I
remember from the mid-eighties that hypothesized that teams would keep a
pitcher from losing his twentieth because of the 'baseball card factor',
that the pitcher would be embarrassed to have that particular negative
stat on his card for posterity. Willis was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veteran's Committee in 1995. Switching gears, we turn to...
- Chief Wilson's 36 triples. J. Owen
Wilson hit 36 triples in 1912 (a season that I analyzed earlier this year)
That record still stands to this day. Not only does it still stand, but no
one has been close to challenging the record since. Shoeless Joe Jackson
and Wahoo Sam Crawford both legged out 26 triples in 1912 and 1914
respectively. In the past 50 years, Curtis Granderson's 23 in 2007 remains
the closest to
- Barry Bonds intentional walks. Bonds,
a modern day baseball pariah, tallied an unheard of tally of 120
intentional walks in 2004. Barry Bonds set the record for home-runs in a
single season and career, but not without controversy. I won't delve into
whatever issues surround this slugger, but it is hard to deny his
abilities. He was a phenomenal hitter, and a home run threat each time up.
It got to the point, as this record attests to, that opposing pitchers
would rather walk Bonds and pitch to someone else, than let him beat them.
His 120 is 76.5% higher than the second best intentional walk count, which
was 68 in 2002 by...Barry Bonds. He holds the three highest single season
intentional walks issued totals in history. But the intentional walks kept
Bonds from driving in runs, unlike...
- Hack
- Connie Mack's 3,731 wins. Spread
out over an incredible fifty-three year managerial career, Mack averaged
just 70 wins per season, so there is hope. If a manager toiled for forty
years, and averages 93 wins per season, he would be close. Mack won 968
more than John McGraw, who is mired in second place. Mack won six 154 game
seasons more than McGraw. But times, and rules, have changed. Mack was
also the owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, and as such, was entrenched
in his position regardless of his managerial performance. He didn't have
an owner second guessing his decisions at every turn. I suppose that has
its advantages. And for the last of my ten records, I present...
- Hank Aaron's 25 All-Star Game appearances.
This will be tough to beat for two huge reasons. First being a productive,
All-Star caliber player for at least twenty-five years. Second, they no
longer have two All-Star Games during the season. Really, Nolan Ryan is
the only player that had a shot at this, over his twenty-seven year
career, but some of those seasons were less than stellar.
So there
you have my list...I hope you enjoyed the reasoning and the history.
Thanks for
reading!
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