The only real statistics of use when comparing sporting prowess in different fields is those that show dominance over the oppostion - simply, how much better that the other guys are you?
By this measure, the most outstanding achievement of which I am aware is the batting average of Donald Bradman. (That’s cricket for the less civilised nations!)
The Don’s batting statistics show that he was very nearly twice as good a batsman as any player before or since.
Different players in baseball have different probabilities of hitting the ball, as reflected in their varying batting averages. The point is that, statistically, you can take the average batting average, average number of at-bats per game, and the number of games that have been played in major-league professional baseball, and calculate that it is very likely that someone has hit safely in 50+ consecutive games sometime in that period. Exactly which person that might be is a matter of chance, although the nature of a streak makes that chance heavily weighted in favor of players with higher averages. (In John Allen Paulos’ Innumeracy, he analyzes the ‘streak’ phenomenon in baseball using Pete Rose’s NL record hitting streak rather than diMaggio’s longer AL/Major League record, because Rose’s lower career average makes his streak individually less statistically likely and [to Paulos] therefore more interesting.)
Skill is absolutely a factor-in fact, the point of the anti-streak analysis is that it’s the factor. If you’re a basketball coach, and the other team has just been called for a technical foul, so you can have whoever you want shoot the free throw, who do you send? The guy with a career average of 94% from the line, but who has hit only two of his last ten free throws, or the guy who shoots 82%, but has hit all of his last ten? The answer is the first guy. The recent performances are statistically meaningless blips relative to the long-term numbers. Trends may be meaningful-the second guy may have recently improved his technique, and the first guy may have a nagging thumb injury he hasn’t told anyone about. If you want to take that into account statistically, you might use some kind of rolling average rather than total career numbers. But blindly going with the guy on the ‘hot streak’ is not justified …
The problem is not so much that Americans care about American sports. That is perfectly understandable. I don’t expect everyone to know about the greatest performances in every sport ever played in every country. But we should all be open to the possibility that what we have always thought of as the greatest performance in sport might, in fact, have been bettered by someone who we’ve never even heard of.
I’ve been involved in conversations like this quite often, and the most irritating thing is that when achievements outside of American sports are brought up, the Americans in the conversation often just keep comparing Joe DiMaggio and Cy Young as if you’d never even spoken. Rarely does anyone turn and say, “Hey, that sounds like a pretty impressive achievement; maybe we should put that guy’s figures up against the guy in our sport and see how they pan out.”
Personally, my take on this coincides with nikotime’s–the only way to compare across sports is to examine how dominant each person was within their sport. And so far, Donald Bradman seems to be further ahead of his peers, statistically, than any other sportsperson that i know of. I’m perfectly willing to have my mind changed on the matter, but i know of no sport where the greatest performance is literally twice as good as what would normally be considered an outstanding performance.
Actually, someone else who comes to mind is the great Pakistani squash player Jehangir Khan.
I doubt that undefeated streak will be broken anytime soon.
Y’all are too biased in favor of humans. Secretariat’s 31-length victory in the 1973 Belmont is the greatest athletic achievement of all.
Jehangir Khan was pretty dammed good, but from the same sport I’d suggest Heather Mackay. Walter Lindrum could play a fair game of billiards too.
I certainly think those are worthy candidates, woolly.
I’m glad you mentioned Heather Mackay. I’m sure that there must be other female athletes who should be mentioned in a thread like this, but the lack of mainstream media coverage means that we tend not to hear as much about women athletes, except for tennis players and golfers, and during the Olympics.
Interestingly, i did a Google search for “greatest sportswomen,” and it asked me “Did you mean: greatest sportsmen.”
So? Ravi Shastri also did it, for Bombay, in 1984. Hardly an impossible feat.
How about Wilfred Rhodes going his entire career without bowling a wide? Quite apart from taking more wickets in a first-class career (4,187) than anyone ever will…
On the subject of Wilt’s 100-point game… What’s the runner-up to that record? Who has the third-highest total, or the fourth? How many points does the average NBA player score per game, and what’s the standard deviation? Is it even a Gaussian distribution? And how many NBA player-games have there been?
I heard Tony Gwynn (I think) on television once when he talked about hitting. The model he used placed humans on a line that represented their baseball abilities and he said that most humans are standing near the origin. Out in the distance somewhere is a wall that humans will never be able to pass, The kind of idea that a sprinter might run 9.7 in the hundred but never 4.7. Further, he said that in the past fewer people trained at baseball, fewer people played, etc., so that few guys were close to the wall. Names like Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Hornsby, etc. were close to the wall, and there was a lot of separation between them and even the rest of the major leaguers. In any case, today the pros get better nutrition and training, the work at their craft full time (as opposed to working in a store in the off-season) and there is a bigger player pool and better competition. The result? All of todays players are close to the wall and it is much rarer for a player to stand out as much.
Why did I bring up this model? Well I for one am quite impressed with Jehangir Khan’s performance. His numbers stand out the way Babe Ruth’s numbers did and still do. As career numbers and streak numbers they will never be equaled, but that is not to say he (or The Don) is necessarily the best ever. At their peak, perhaps no one stood as close to their repective walls as they did. At a future time, though, if players approach closer to the wall than Khan, it is likely to happen in a group as many players get into a sport that is (possibly) growing in popularity. If a group of players is even better than Khan, they’ll still never get 500 wins in a row, because there are many of great players who will beat each other. These players are theoretically better than Khan in a time-travel match, but they’ll never get his career numbers.
It is this type of scenario that makes the OP so interesting. DiMaggio’s streak happened in the most popular sport (at the time) in a populous country where the sport had dominated for more than 50 years. It is a statistical anomaly that usually occurs when a sport is new (and records can be set) or when a sport is dying (only one good player is left and he beats every one else). I can’t even think of a dying sport example, though. Even with all of that, I think that DiMaggio’s streak was weird, but Williams should’ve won MVP.
For sports impossibility, I nominate Emil Zatopek, the Czech runner who won the 5000, 10000, and the marathon at the 1952 games - his first marathon ever! He also set Olympic records in all three!
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/events/1996/olympics/daily/aug4/flashback.html
This is a few years old, but I’m pretty sure nobody has scored 70 or more points in a game since 1999.
THE TOP TEN:
Points Player Opponent Date
100 Wilt Chamberlain, Phil NY 3/2/62
78 Wilt Chamberlain, Phil LA 12/8/61
73 Wilt Chamberlain, Phil Chi 1/13/62
73 Wilt Chamberlain, SF NY 11/16/62
73 David Thompson, Den Det 4/9/78
72 Wilt Chamberlain, SF LA 11/3/62
71 David Robinson, SA LAC 4/24/94
71 Elgin Baylor, LA NY 11/15/60
70 Wilt Chamberlain, SF Syr 3/10/63
69 Michael Jordan, Chi Clev 3/28/90
I don’t think comparisons of player games or average scoring of every player would be completely accurate, as you’d need to play a whole game to score 100 points and most players don’t do that.
It also doesn’t take into account the way Chamberlain dominated the league: he was bigger and stronger than everyone by far for much of his career. This is a man who average 50 points per game for the entire 1961-1962 season. Nobody will ever approach that again.
For the record, Chamberlain also holds the record for the four next highest points-per-game average (44.8 ppg in 1962-63, 38.4 ppg in 1960-61, and 37.6 in 1959-60). And he’s also number six - 36.9 in 1963-64. [Number five is Michael Jordan, who managed to score 37.1 per game in 1986-87.]
Of course not. But you have to be looking at the individual sports themselves, and then the statistics within that particular sport. Since the argument of American VS Non-American sports have come up, I’ll use two that are decidedly (or at least not particularly) American, but that I am still somewhat familiar with as examples; Soccer (football to you hooligans) and Formula 1 Motor Sport Racing.
Let’s say for example that some Brazilian striker comes straight out of Latin America and scores a record 100 goals in his first 100 matches.
In F1, Michael Schumacher (5 times World Champion) goes on to win 17 out of 17 races the next season (2004), winning his record 6th world championship.
Now I have used a really simplified example. Both these sports are completely incompatible. However, which one stands out as the most statistically significant feat or accomplishment?
This is where the idea of “streaks” pops up. Given player (or whichever sportsman) ability (which I can only assume is measured by the average of the number of shots taken and scored/the relevant stat for the category of sport), which event(s) is/are so many standard deviations away from the mean that they come as close to the margin of impossibility as can be? That was what I meant by saying “by the numbers”. Of course sports are not really comparable. You cannot say in the above example that Michael Schumacher is less (or more) skilled than the Brazilian, and nor am I saying that.
However, taken into the context of other achievements in that field, how (numerically) unlikely was it that the particular sporting event/events in question were to happen? Certainly I could say Joe Dimaggio’s “streak” was far more unlikely to be repeated than Schumacher winning his sixth title. It is because the odds of doing so are extremely slim, whereas the odds (going from previous records such as Alain Prosts 4 world titles and Juan Fangio’s 5) of M.Schumachers record of 6 titles being broken are much much higher.
I’m not asking anyone to measure the indentation of the trainers that won the 100 metres for C.Lewis and compare them to that on the trainers which won for Maurice Greene, and then construct a formula which can somehow analyse the data and produce the definitive runner making adjustments for these indents, wind velocity on that particular day etc.
Nobody disputes the records as they are broken (for example C.Lewis clocking a faster 100m time than say Jesse Owens, even though the type of track they ran on was different). Neither am I. I’m just going by the numbers. I’m not asking for an evaluation of who was the better athlete at which time or who is ultimately stronger or more skilled. It’s all about the numbers.
If you actually look at the cut-out you’ve quoted me on, you’ll see that that was what I am saying. I’ve emphasised the text you wrote and I wrote to clarify this point.
Perhaps instead of “naturally” I should have placed “statistically”, but you get the idea. And the point of the study was not to show that you can never predict when a streak will fade. It was to show that statistically, when the number of shots made by the players showed a streaking pattern (i.e. a sequence of shots scored in succession - I forget the exact number), that this pattern was not statistically significant enough to constitute a display of the “hot hand” phenomena. In fact, the evidence suggested that (with regard to player ability which I assume they have calculated via average number of shots made by the player in question) the “hot hands” were the statistical equivalent of a coin-flip model.
Even in a sequence of coin-tosses (say for example 50) you experience a streak (i.e. you will begin to get heads 10 times in a row after 50 flips - this is a bullshit number by the way, I’m just using it as an example). Thinking about the experiment that way, we can see that the streaking phenomena experienced by the players (and yes, taking into account thier ability) was nothing out of the ordinary i.e. not outside what we would expect by chance for that player. So in other words, when these guys thought they were having a hot day, they weren’t. They were just more lucky with thier shots (well, not exactly correct I’ll grant you, but that’s the idea).
Oh but there are exceptions to this rule, according to the statisticians. Joe Dimaggio’s streak, which was so statistically improbable that according to them “it should never have occured at all”, and the aforementioned BB Jump (though they claim the former is more impressive than the latter). I just wanted more examples of this. I think SC Simmons explanation of the streaking idea is more adequate than mine, for those who have not fully clocked this.
Why would any streak have to be eliminated? We don’t know whether it was for skill or luck that any particular sporting accomplishment was achieved, no matter how good the player/sportsman. I was interested in certain events that were outside the norm so completely, that they seemed to defy the numerical odds of achieving it. I’ll grant you that its difficult to calculate, but I wasn’t exactly asking for a full-blown calculation - just estimations or evidence of study.
More unlikely? Probably. But impossible? No way! Not if you are willing to call other sporting achievements possible or repeatable, it’s laughable to then say the others are impossible for others to beat or equal (as has been mentioned before, Beamon’s record jump was eventually succeeded). The same way you count the balancing-odds-in-your-favour-approach for batting (with respect to hitter position or in other words “lucky placement of my body”) could be used for a long jump (wind velocity, trainer grip, micro-muscle contraction etc.).
Thanks. Your luck came in handy.
Well, if you accept the statement that “the conventional sports wisdom (regarding the “hot hands” phenomenon) is more superstition than anything else, since statistically it doesn’t exist” then streaks become interesting statistical anomalies rather than athletic prowess. Even if we acknowledge that from a purely statistical point of view that better athletes will be expected to have longer streaks than average players, you still can’t eliminate the component of chance in any of those achievements.
I think we need to categorize some of these sports achievements. One category would be streaks which we have discussed already. Another would be achievements in which some component of luck is involved such as Herschel Walker’s 99 yard touchdown run (actually I thought it was Tony Dorsett). A third would be things that rely on pure or almost pure athletic ability such as Bob Beaman’s broad jump. (I say “almost pure” because I recognize that a lot of things had to come together just right for Beaman’s jump and part of that is luck.)
Since I am physically capable of hitting a baseball beyond the infield, I can guarantee that if allowed an infinite number of at-bats, I will eventually have 100 hits in a row. Since I am physically capable of running 99 yards, I can guarantee that if you line me up on the one-yard line enough times, I will eventually score a touchdown from there. But no matter how many attempts I have at the broad jump I will never be able to propel myself 26 feet through the air. It may not be impossible for others but it is impossible for me. That is simply beyond my physical wall. Similarly there is probably some distance that is beyond the wall of human physiology. That is why there is a qualitative difference between this last type of achievement and the other two.
Can you ever discount chance from any of these events? Absolutely not. Who the hell knows whether DiMaggio ended up getting lucky for all those hits? Or whether Beamon actually ever had the pure athletic ability to repeat his accomplishment 55 times in a row? Obviously I can’t ask you to seperate the elements of skill from the elements of luck, and like I’ve said before, that’s of course not what I’m asking for. I just wondered whether there was any evidence that suggested that numerically as-close-to-impossible odds were ever actually achieved in any category of sport. This would of course include the breaking of records.
And I’ll grant you that there are differences between qualitative and quantitative achievements as you have highlighted. But it is always gonna be a difficult score to keep track of qualitative (is it harder to win a motor car race or score a touchdown?) as opposed to quantitative measurements. Therefore I wanted to completely ignore this aspect. I was talking about pure numerical supremacy… or calculating odds (for example, by the methods used by the authors of the aforementioned article) and seeing as to whether they are or can be exceeded.
Now I think we are going to have a problem with your last proposal, i.e. the seperature of the qualitative aspects of the sport from the quantitative. The problem is, we have no real idea how freggin good a hitter you are. You may indeed be the next Sammy Sosa. Given this, I can in no way intrinsically tell whether what you are doing (namely, hitting ball after ball) is down to some great batting on your part, or whether you are just the luckiest guy in the whole god-darn planet.
Therefore, what I am saying is that there is no real comparison of this sort. If you begin to eliminate certain categories of sports (such as the ones you believe you can physically attempt), other qualitative arguments come into play. Suppose I tell you that after some initial training, you are able to exceed 27 feet. Does that render your accomplishment void from the qualitative category? Can I really tell whether you did it because you had a great jump or were in the right place at the right time? Not really. I can understand your point, that we should seperate what we consider to be statistical “lucky strikes” with “real” athletic accomplishments. I just think when you go down that road a whole other bunch of monkeys come about… and at the end of the day we’re talking about all sports here. I’m not asking to validate the particular athlete/sportsman in question.
I think this is an excellent theory. It takes accunt of changing levels of professionalism, while still looking at a person’s domination within their sport at any given time, and without making simplistic assertions about who would beat whom if players from different time periods clashed in a theoretical match.
I’m still sticking with Don Bradman , though. 
It was Tony Dorsett who had the 99-yard touchdown run in the NFL. He did it in Minnesota on 1/2/1983.
The Cowboys only had 10 players on the field for the play.
Well look at that! WE just broke Herschel Walker’s record… hehe.
Interesting that nobody has mentioned Sergey Bubka yet… 6 straight pole vaulting world championships, Olympic gold, 35 (!) world records, first man to clear 20 feet, first man to clear 6 meters…
Apologies for my earlier post- it wasn’t meant to be an anti-American flame, but the point is not that Americans care about American sports, its that so many don’t realize that sports actually go on in the outside world…
Anybody know what the longest kickoff return record is? It could be 109 yards, I suppose…
The longest kickoff returns in NFL history are three guys with 106 yards.
The punt return record is 103.
The field goal return record is 104.
Two interception returns have been 103 yards
Two fumble recoveries have been for 104 yards.
Actually, just this past year, the record was increased to 107 or 108 yards. In a game against Denver, Chris McAlister of Baltimore returned a field goal at the end of the first half for a score. Longest play in NFL history.
Ray Lewis may have also set a record for hardest block ever on this play - anybody who saw it may know what I mean.
Dude, i know exactly what you mean. That block had me up off the couch, and the TD run had me leaping around the loungeroom, as it put the Ravens up by about 20 at halftime against a team they were never supposed to beat.
I think McAlister’s run-back was eventually scored at 107 yards, although it has not yet been added to NFL.com’s records.
Id think that longest home run would be one. ONE of the furthest was Mantle’s 565 foot hr in 53. I find it hard to believe that any baseball hit has gone past 600 feet, but its probably possible.