Maccabi Tel-Aviv Basketball Team – 44 Israeli League Championships out of 51 seasons played, including 34 out of the last 35, with 23 consecutive (1970-1992 inclusive) titles along the way. Will almost certainly win this year’s championship as well, which will make the current streak 12 years, and 35 of the last 36.
Also just won the European title for the second time running – a feat last accomplished by Jugoplastica Split in 1990 – and for the third time in five years.
I suggest **Brett Farve’s ** streak of Most Consecutive Starts including playoffs, among NFL Quarterbacks at 224 games(Started 1992 - Present).
How impressive is it? Number 2 is Ron Jaworksi at 116. In 2004 4 opening day starting QB’s were still starting on the last day of the regular season (not all due to injury but not necessarily all 4 started every game)
When Farve passed 200 (in 2003) The other 31 teams had gone through 178 starters (avg. of 5.74 a piece). Eleven of his backups had gone on to starting gigs. Favre is the only player in the four major professional sports to start every game since Sept. 27, 1992.
Is there another sports streak where no.2 trails no.1 by 52%? I ask rhetorically but dramtically
The New York Yacht Club won and defended the America’s Cup in 25 consecutive competitions. Although the competition was probably spotty in some of those years.
Much more impressive in my book would be hurdler Edwin Moses, who won 122 consecutive races, of which 107 were finals, between 1977 and 1987.
You beat me to it. This is the greatest winning streak ever - 132 years.
And while there were probably spotty years, the fact is that most of the time the Brits were grimly determined to win that cup, and dumped tons of time and money into it. See here: http://www.answers.com/topic/america-s-cup
The Saint George rugby league team won the Sydney football premiership for 11 consecutive years between 1956 and 1966.
Not to dis the Bruins or anything, but the University of Winnipeg women’s bball team also won 88 consecutive games from 92-95. The level of competition wasn’t as high, and there’s nothing comparable to the tourney streak, but that’s still a heck of a lot of games.
Well, rather tongue in cheek I would point out the college football score difference record - held by Georgia Tech under the leadership of the ruthless John Heisman. GT beat Cumberland 222-0 in 1916. The story goes that Cumberland begged GT to give them a game, when in fact Cumberland didn’t even have a real football team. It was basically a scrimmage game. During half time GT was up something like 144-0 and Heisman told his team “Don’t let up, you never know what these boys have up their sleave.”
Sorry, jimmmy, while Favre’s record is admirable for football,there is no way he’s tougher than Doug Jarvis. And Jarvis played at the top level of hockey, winning four Stanley Cups and a Selke Trophy.
Sweet GOD, he played in every hockey game his team showed up for. Hockey. Every game. For twelve years and two days.
I submit Connie Mack’s streak of managing a major league team (Philadelphia A’s) for 49 consecutive years! I know it helped that he owned the team but 49 years!
But then again, Bobby Cox could very well break that record in 2028.
LL
Streak? Don Bradman’s entire career! Australian cricketer from c 1928 - 1948. His lifetime international (“Test”) batting average (runs scored divided by times out) was 99.94 - 6996 runs from 80 innings, of which 10 were “not out”. Had he scored only 4 runs in his last Test innings he would have had an average score of 100. The best of the rest are in the sixties, and there are only a handful of these. Batsmen who are considered greats may well have an average only in the high 40s. Bradman was the first and until recently the only batsman with two Test scores of 300+ and, not to belittle Brian Lara’s achievements, these were both made on pitches that were not absurdly batsman-friendly; Australia won both of the Tests in which Bradman made 300 (West Indies drew those in which Lara made 375 and 400). He was also once left “not out” on 299 (the innings ended because all the other batsmen were out). His highest non-Test score was 452, then also a world record.
Bowlers whose careers spanned more than fifty years between them rated Bradman the hardest of all batsmen to bowl to. In a Test series (England in Australia, 1932-1933) in which a special form of attack was resorted to solely to restrict his scoring, Bradman averaged over fifty - failure by his standards, outstanding success by anyone else’s. He made a hundred first-class hundreds in less than 300 innings; on average he scored a hundred every other match he played in, a 200 about once every six matches. And he usually scored his runs quickly - he did not merely grind bowlers into submission but dispatched them to all corners of the ground.
One anecdote: Bradman was on the losing side in the final Test England vs Australia, The Oval, 1938, in which England batted first and declared (voluntarily ended their innings) on the then-record score of 903 with seven men out. By this time Bradman, pressed into service as an emergency bowler, had injured his ankle and took no further part in the match. England’s captain, Hammond, was understood to say that even with 900 runs on the board he would have continued batting had Bradman been able to bat - for there was no guarantee that Australia’s run-machine might not have overtaken even such a monumental score.
I have yet to hear any cricket authority seriously argue that Bradman’s achievements will ever be bettered.
Bradman might however have been taxed had he ever encountered bowler S. F. Barnes in his prime. Barnes dismissed 189 batsmen in his Test career, a total that has many times been surpassed - but Barnes raced to that total in only 27 matches. Seven wickets per match comfortably exceeds anyone else’s strike rate over any but the most trivial span. (Shane Warne, who is rightly considered phenomenal, currently has 583 wickets from 123 Tests. Had he Barnes’s strike rate, he would have 861.)
That’s what I like about the Dope. We get to hear about some of the streaks that otherwise would have never made the news in the US. I have no idea what Malacandra was even talking about (I know NOTHING about cricket) but the content of the post gives enough information to put Bradman in the running.
I need you dopers to start to second some of the suggestions so far. It’s still early and we’ve got some good input so far.
Scrappy, how would you compare Gordie Howe to Doug Jarvis? Or Jarvis to Gretzsky for that matter.
Howe played from 1943-1980. Jebus!
If you talk about consecutive games played, you can’t leave out Cal Ripken at 2632, that’s over 16 seasons. He also played in over 8,000 straight innings, that’s more than 5 seasons without sitting on the bench even once for any part of a game.
Those streaks need to be compared to others in their sport. Favre’s streak is impressive because QBs are very often knocked out for a game or two during a season, it’s the nature of the job. Other football positions have long streaks as well, generally linemen can play all season long, even though they get beat on pretty good. I can’t find the record for a non-QB, though.
Ripken’s record is impressive because only the legendary Lou Gehrig was even in the same league, nobody else is close. Nobody from Ripken’s era even pretended to approach his durability. Jarvis’ record doesn’t strike me as much because he isn’t as far ahead of other hockey players, and the second guy on the list was from the same era.
Surely this isn’t an annual competition?
Why mention 132 years?
I had forgotten Vander Meer’s no hit feat. I’ll go along that it will never be broken. Being a real chance taker I’ll even go further. The chances that it will ever be equal are so close to zero that I doubt anyone alive today will ever see it happen.
John, I disagree because this streak is built upon the false assumption that the Braves didn’t finish second behind Montreal in 1994. The argument that the division crown wasn’t awarded that year because of “labor-management unpleasantness” strikes me as just spin to justify the Braves streak and ignores the reality that the Expos were in Atlanta’s division and had a better record than Atlanta did that year. Its an “asterisk” just like saying Maris held the homer record for 162 game seasons but Ruth still held it for a 154 game season.
Having said that, I’ll second/third/whatever the nomination of “Double No Hit” Vander Meer as the streak most likely not to be broken.
Found it, Jim Marshall with 282. That’s 19 seasons, folks. And, apparently, he also shot himself with a gun, and still didn’t miss a game.
I think we need to take a closer look at Vander Meers’ Record. Who did he play for, who were the no-hits against, - basically, what the talent was like.
Anyone got the time?
Except the players walked out on August 12th of that year. At that time the Expos were a mere 6 games in first place with many more games to be played. Therefore no one won the division that season. It never happened. I do agree though that perhaps it should at least be mentioned whenever you hear the “13 straight division titles” line used. Still…an impressive feat.
A great feat, but maybe not so great when a division title and/or a world series can be bought. At what level was there payroll during those years?
Many people don’t consider chess to be a sport, but for those who do, Fischer’s 20-game streak deserves consideration.