I should probably throw in a statistic to my last post. Cy Young averaged 334 innings pitched per year. Which is roughly 100 more per year than a good season for anyone nowadays.
Not to meniton, in keeping with the OP, that’s a single season record, not a career record.
I don’t know much about many sports outside of baseball, so I’ll stick with those records:
Cy Young’s 511 wins: I’m sorry, I know 511 wins is a metric buttload, and with today’s 5-man pitching rotation it is, IMO, the least likely record to ever be broken. But back when he used to pitch, the spitball, shineball, emoryball, etc, were all legal. Starting pitchers pitched every other day and were expected to finish the game. The same beat-up misshapen ball was used the entire game. The ball would often be black from tobacco juice being rubbed on it by the infielders, making it difficult to see and hit. Plus the ball itself was not as well made as today’s baseball - it was looser, not as tightly wound. It was called the deadball era for a reason. So the greatest record? Not in my opinion.
Young, BTW, also holds the record for most complete games (749), losses (316), games started (815), and innings pitched (7,356).
Ty Cobb’s .366 average: Hmmm… I’m not sure about this. Considering he did that in the last years of the deadball era, in light of what I just said, makes that pretty impressive. However, the batters were not without their little assistances in the early years of organized professional baseball either. Often the fields would be poorly kept, causing balls to take weird hops making them difficult to field. That dark, stained ball made it just as difficult to see when trying to field it as when trying to hit it. Then there’s the number of times Cobb hit .400 in a single season. He and Rogers Hornsby did that three times in their careers. Between 1887 and 1925, the .400 mark was reached 34 times. It would be reached once more, when Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941 to become the last man to bat .400. In the 60 years since, no one has reached the .400 mark (although Tony Gwynn and George Brett got really close). Something tells me hitting must have been somewhat easier to do back then.
So were the players really that much better back then? Or was it just a different game than we know now? While the rules are still pretty much the same for baseball now, it had to have been a different game and I have trouble comparing the stats from the deadball era to the game of today.
So then the modern era of baseball:
Rickey Henderson’s 1,395 stolen bases: Impressive, sure. The greatest? No. What’s my reasoning? I dunno, the stolen base just doesn’t seem to have that aura of greatness about it.
And speaking of Rickey Henderson, he also holds the career record for runs scored (2,248) and walks (2,141).
Part of this may just be I don’t like Rickey Henderson, who incidentally, was Nolan Ryan’s 5000th strikeout victim.
Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs: This is losing its aura of greatness just because it seems so fragile lately with 3 different players having 60 homerun seasons in the past 4 years, two of them hitting 70 or more homers. Aaron never had a 50 homerun season, while Sosa has had four 50+ HR seasons in a row, 3 of those seasons hitting 60+ long balls. This record is going down. I doubt Barry Bonds will have the longevity to do it, but Sosa and Griffey are still young enough.
And here’s a little something that I find just extremely impressive about Aaron - With 755 homeruns and 3,771 hits, Aaron is one of only three players in both the 500 homerun club and the 3,000 hit club (along with Willie Mays and Eddie Murray). If you subtract all 755 of Aaron’s homeruns, he still has over 3,000 hits.
Aaron, BTW, also holds the career record for RBIs (2,297), extra base hits (1,477), and total bases (6,856).
Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 strikeouts and 7 no-hitters: Here it is. This is the one I’ll have to give my vote to. Ryan’s total strikeouts is nearly 1600 more than #2 Steve Carlton (4,136) and almost exactly 2000 more than #3 Roger Clemens (3717). And as for the 7 no-hitters; there’s entire teams out there throughout the history of the organization that don’t have 7 no-hitters to their credit. And not just the expansion teams like the Rockies or Devil Rays, IIRC the Detroit Tigers only have 5 no-hitters as a team.
Ryan is also the career leader in walks (2,795), nearly full 1,000 over Carlton who is again ranked 2nd with 1,833.
BTW, other career records, aside from the ones previously mentioned in this post:
Lou Gehrig’s 23 career grand slams
Pete Rose’s 4256 career hits
Babe Ruth’s .690 career slugging average (56 points over second place Ted Williams’s .634 average.)
Ted Williams’s career .482 on base percentage not much at first glance, but just think about that for a second. In 19 seasons of baseball, Williams reached base nearly half of his total at bats.
Mark McGwire’s career homerun percentage of 9.42 Big Mac is statistically the most prolific homerun hitter who ever played, knocking out a homerun alomst once in every 10 at bats. He’s almost a full percentage point over #2 Babe Ruth (8.50%).
Ed Walsh’s career ERA of 1.82
Lee Smith’s 478 career saves
Walter Johnson’s 110 career shutouts
and I’m surprised I didn’t see this one:
Cal Ripken Jr’s record 2,632 consecutive games played.
Crunchy Frog: For that wonderful, thoughtful, enlightening baseball post, I give you this honey-glazed, chocolate-dipped, walnut encrusted fly for your eating pleasure. <<>>
Baseball season is almost here! Yippee!
I have a baseball fanatic friend who says that the record least likely every to be broken is Cy Young’s career mark for complete-game losses. (Unfortunately, I don’t know the number - perhaps C. Frog does.)
His point is that complete-game losses are rare these days - pitchers are typically not allowed to stay in if they are losing.
Because I really have nothing else to do with my night…
I dunno either. I got my statistical information from either The Baseball Almanac or Baseball Reference.Com. Neither site was that specific that I saw.
Let’s play around with the math some.
Cy Young started 815 and completed 749 games, leaving a difference of only 66 games. He lost 316 games and won 511. So he got the decision in 827 games - 12 more decisions than starts. He pitched in 906 games total, leaving 81 games in which he pitched but did not start. So, we know he got a minimum of 12 decisions in those 81 appearances in which Young did not start.
Right off the top, the maximum number of complete game losses would be 316 for Young, since that’s how many losses he had and he certainly pitched enough complete games to cover that.
The minimum number of complete game losses would be 238. He pitched 749 complete games. It’s rare for a pitcher to pitch a complete game and not get a decision, so if all his wins were complete games, then 749-511=238 complete game losses.
And I say rare to get a complete game with no decision, because apparently it is possible, since Cy pitched 40 complete games in 1898, but was credited with a record of 25W and 13L, only 38 decisions. How did this happen? Sometimes the umps would call the game a tie if they started running out of daylight. But I’m not 100% sure on how scoring was done back then, especially in case of rainouts, darkness, etc.
Anyway, the number would likely be between 238 and 316. And the minimum of 238 is still a ton of complete games on its own, not even considering that its likely to be complete game losses. (And again, I say likely because at the time it was possible to be credited with a complete game but not get a decision.)
If we’re talking averages, without question, it has got to be Sir Donald Bradman’s 99.94 Test batting average. None of the previously mentioned names were as far ahead in their field as this batting legend.
To show the gap he leaves to those below him…
- DG Bradman 99.94
- A Gilchrist 61.00*
- RG Pollock 60.97
- GA Headley 60.83
- H Sutcliffe 60.73
- Still playing.
I challenge someone to come up with figures of another sportsman that show more dominance than that.
Someone with equal dominance, eh? How about Gretzky, who has more assists than anyone else has points?
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Garry Kasparov’s 10 straight Super-GM Tournament Wins in Row feat (and still counting). Or Bobby Fischer winning 20 straight games in the Interzonals back in '70-'71.
[ul][li]Juan Manuel Fangio winning the Formula One World Championship five times.[/li][li]Michael Schumacher who will probably equal that record this year, in much tougher circumstances.[/li][li]Diego Armando Maradona’s monumental career, with all its ups and downs, is still an example - no other man has ever won a world cup singlehandedly (1986).[/li][li]Pele. Enough said.[/li][li]Johan Cruyff scoring an amazing one goal per two matches, measured over his entire career.[/li][li]Yengshir Kahn absolutely dominating squash for more than a decade.[/li][li]Raymond Ceulemans. Belgian billiards player. [/li][li]Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis, snooker.[/li]Ivan Lendl and Pete Sampras, both for the same reasons, one by virtue of hard work, the other by virtue of talent.[/ul]I could go on and on and on.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned these Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a game in 1962 and averaging 50.4 points for the 1961-62 NBA season. Not that anyone is capable of this now, but basketball is such a team sport, I doubt any coach would allow a single player to dominate possession of the ball.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a game in 1962 and averaging 50.4 points for the 1961-62 NBA season. Not that anyone is capable of this now, but basketball is such a team sport, I doubt any coach would allow a single player to dominate possession of the ball.
(Please ignore the previous post which was submitted before I could edit it.)
I gotta go with Gretzky.
He holds or shares 61 NHL records including:
10 time hart trophy (mvp) incl 9 consecutive
most goals, assists, points in a season, playoff, career
13 consecutive 100+ point seasons
50 3+ goal games
12 consecutive 40+ goal seasons
4 consecutive 60+ goal seasons
career assist/game 1.32
etc.
Come to think of it, ignore both my posts. I forgot this thread wasn’t about single-game or single-season records.(Skulks away in embarassment.)
True, But I said “If we’re talking averages…”. It is very easy to say so-and-so scored a gazillion career points if he played a gazillion games in order to do it.
He didn’t play that many more games than anyone else. This isn’t exactly akin to Pete Rose playing five billion games and collecting five billion hits. He was getting 200 assists a season for several years.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Coldfire *
[list][li]Juan Manuel Fangio winning the Formula One World Championship five times.[/li][li]Michael Schumacher who will probably equal that record this year, in much tougher circumstances.**[/li][/QUOTE]
If two guys are going to hold it, it’s not much of a career record. I think the OP was asking for the most amazing career records. Fangio’s record isn’t all that amazing if it’s about to be tied.
imampuhna, Gretzky certainly never got 200 ASSISTS in a season. His record is 163. As career records go I believe his assists and points records are probably the most amazing; he is so far beyond anyone else it’s almost absurd. His points record is, IMO, more impressive than Cy Young’s 511 wins.
As to longetivity, no player is even close to Gretzky in points per game except Mario Lemieux, and Lemieux could never stay healthy.
Well, this site gives a lot of individual records (Gretzky, Gretzky, Gretzky… it’s kinda dull) but no per-game career averages.
Looking at the top career point-getters, though, you get the following averages per game:
2,857 - Wayne Gretzky, 20 seasons, 1,487 games played (894g-1,963a) 1.92 points/game, 0.61 goals/game, 1.32 assists/game
1,850 - Gordie Howe, 26 seasons, 1,767 games played (801g - 1,049a) 1.05 points/game 0.46 goals/game, 0.59 assists/game
1,771 - Marcel Dionne, 18 seasons, 1,348 games played (731g - 1,040a) 1.31 points/game 0.54 goals/game 0.77 assists/game
1,714 - Mark Messier, 21 seasons, 1,479 games played (627g - 1,087a) 1.16 points/game, 0.42 goals/game,0.73 assists/game
1,590 - Phil Esposito, 18 seasons, 1,282 games played (717g - 873a) 1.24 points/game, 0.56 goals/game, 0.68 assists/game
This Bradman guy leads his closest competitor by 63%. Pretty damn impressive. Gretz’ points per game average is only (!) 47% better than Dionne’s, his closest competitor; however, his assists per game average is 71% better than Dionne’s. So in this major record his career-long dominance is even greater than Bradman’s, at least among the top career scorers. There may have been someone with a short, high-powered career in the NHL (Bobby Orr?) who got closer to Wayne’s per-game averages, but for long-term, consistent excellence, I don’t think anyone will ever top him.
And this is the one that realy impresses me:
Iowa State’s Sanderson Caps a Perfect Wrestling Career
“March 24, 2002 , Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. – Cael Sanderson went out perfect.
The Iowa State senior completed his record-setting college career Saturday, winning his 159th match without a loss and claiming his fourth consecutive NCAA wrestling title.”
Read more here
Imagine, stepping into single combat 159 times and coming out on top every time (not losing for your entire college career). That ranks very high in my book of individual achivement. Now he’s trying out for the olympic team, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.
I think Bradman is hard to beat, but let me throw Walter Lindrum (billiards) into the mix. They changed the rules twice to stop him and he was still unbeatable. His technique was so good he killed the game as a competitive enterprise.
Just to throw a woman into the mix, how about Heather McKay (squash)
Maybe Rod Laver deserves a mention too.
And just to be fair to you non-Australians, how about legendary hurdler Edwin Moses?:
I’m no admirer of Bradman the man, but as a keen observer of Test cricket his record beggars belief.
hawthorne, could you explain in more detail walter lindrums skill and how they changed the rules because of him?
cricketeers, i dont understand cricket; what does bradmans average represent?
thanking you.