52 games isn’t a very long career though, is it? It doesn’t strike me as being much of a data sample. What other sorts of matches did Bradman play in, and what was his average in those?
These will be tough to beat.
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In October 1933 Gordon Richards rode 12 consecutive winners (11 of them at Chepstow).
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In March 1983 Michael Dickinson trained the first 5 horses home in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the championship race for staying chasers.
Just to put thing in perspective, Chesboro’s record is a little arbitrary. Radbourn’s 59 on the otherhand…
Rank Player (age that year) Wins Year Throws
1. Charley Radbourn+ (29) 59 1884 R
2. John Clarkson+ (23) 53 1885 R
3. Guy Hecker (28) 52 1884 R
4. John Clarkson+ (27) 49 1889 R
5. Charlie Buffinton (23) 48 1884 R
Charley Radbourn+ (28) 48 1883 R
7. Al Spalding+ (25) 47 1876 R
John Ward+ (19) 47 1879 R
9. Pud Galvin+ (26) 46 1883 R
Pud Galvin+ (27) 46 1884 R
Matt Kilroy* (21) 46 1887 L
12. George Bradley (23) 45 1876 R
Silver King (20) 45 1888 R
Jim McCormick (23) 45 1880 R
15. Bill Hutchison (31) 44 1891 R
Mickey Welch+ (25) 44 1885 R
17. Tommy Bond (23) 43 1879 R
Larry Corcoran (20) 43 1880 R
Billy Taylor (29) 43 1884 R
Will White (24) 43 1879 R
Rank Player (age that year) Wins Year Throws
Will White (28) 43 1883 R
22. Lady Baldwin* (27) 42 1886 L
Bill Hutchison (30) 42 1890 R
Tim Keefe+ (29) 42 1886 R
25. Jack Chesbro+ (30) 41 1904 R
Dave Foutz (29) 41 1886 R
Tim Keefe+ (26) 41 1883 R
Ed Morris* (23) 41 1886 L
Charlie Sweeney (21) 41 1884 R
Dimaggio’s Streak might one day fall as could Ryan’s total of Strikeouts or Ripken’s consecutive Games played. All of these will be incredible hard to beat, but at least they can be beat.
But the Cy Young carer wins and Walter Johnson’s 110 career Shututs cannot be beaten unless the game radically changes.
Cy Young’s Innings pitched, Games Started, Complete Games & Batters faced should also stand forever.
To go with what Airman Doors said, Sam Crawford’s 309 carrer triples will not be beat. There is no active player in the top 100.
Jim
Gene Rychlak dropped a 1,015 lb. barbell on his chest during a failed bench press attempt. That’s got to be a record of some kind, and I don’t see anyone trying to break it any time soon.
Is Nadia Comaneci’s seven perfect 10s at the 1976 Olympics a record? With the changes in gymnastics scoring it’s very unlikely that feat will be duplicated.
Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals in one Olympics seems pretty safe.
Spitz’s record can be tied, at least. There have been several athletes since then to at least attempt it. The rules haven’t changed in any fundamental way to preclude it. So that one is reachable. Nadia, OTOH, just might be safe.
But tying a record is not breaking a record, that is why these two are legit examples. They might be tied, but they sure as heck are not going to be broken.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Byron Nelson’s 11 straight tournament victories.
I think “Most Kills in a Colliseum Gladiator Match” is pretty safe, though at the moment I can’t recall who holds it. 
Miguel Tejada is on pace to break the record in 2016 - he’s the closest. The days off aren’t a big deal, it’s avoiding injury, which becomes increasingly harder as a player ages. Ripken was 35 when he broke Lou Gehrig’s record. Tejada will turn 40 the year he (hypothetically) challenges the new record. I don’t know what year your average star ballplayer gets started in the majors, but anybody challenging the record in the future will be close to 40.
Since the stolen base is hardly a part of baseball today, I don’t think Rickey Henderson’s single-season and career stolen base marks are going to be broken. Nobody has come within 50 stolen bases of his single-season record in the last 15 years. Career-wise, he has almost 50% more steals than the #2, Lou Brock, and the nearest active player, the washed-up Kenny Lofton, is more than 800 steals behind Rickey.
Give baseball 50 years and the game will change enough for the SB to come back again. It died once before and came back stronger than ever. It just awaits the next time the pendulum swings back to favor pitching again.
Jim
Those 52 games were Test matches over a period of 20 years [1928-1948], where Bradman represented Australia against another country (England, South Africa, India and the West Indies).
In all, he played 234 first class (“major league”??) matches, scoring 28,067 runs at an average of 95.14.
Not sure that record is unbreakable. I don’t follow pro basketball, but some player put up a monster number earlier this year…something like 86 points in a game.
Of course, that other “scoring” record Wilt claims (unverified) is also impressive…
As a matter of fact, current stolen base totals are fairly middle of the road by modern standards; you’re used to the 1980s, when they were VERY high, but for much of major league history they were far lower.
In 2005 the average team stole about 85 bases, with the highest total being 161 (Anaheim.) By way of comparison, fifty years before, in 1955, no two teams COMBINED stole 161 bases; the highest team total was just 79, and the average was about 40. In the 1950s, not a single team in the National League stole 100 bases in a season. Not once. In the AL the White Sox did it four straight times from 1957 to 1960 - the only three 100-steal seasons by a team in the AL between World War II and 1964. From 1946 to 1964 the stolen base was very, very rare.
Once home runs go down, steals will go back up. Stolen bases as a strategy generally increase in time of less hitting. Rickey’s records are amazingly high, but you never know.
Kobe Bryant scored 81 points, which I think is actually a greater achievement: Wilt wouldn’t have scored 100 points in the course of a natural game. Instead of playing defense, his 76ers teammates were fouling the Knicks to stop the clock so they would get more possessions and more chances to pass to Wilt. And the 76ers were winning the game, too. It’s such poor sportsmanship that you just wouldn’t see it happen today, and I think that makes 100 impossible to surpass.
Gretzky’s 2857 point total is probably untouchable, at least for a generation. There are no active players in the NHL right now that have a shot at it. The next closest is Steve Yzerman at 1755, and he’s about to retire if he hasn’t already. Jaromir Jagr has 1432, but he’s not going to be around long enough to catch Gretzky.
In straight pool, I don’t see anyone breaking Willie Mosconi’s record of 526 balls without missing.
To clarify the thing on the triples: the reason they’re not hit much any more is that the ballparks aren’t as big these days. Triples won’t be part of the game for the foreseeable 20-30 year future, until and unless they start making larger baseball stadiums.
Home runs are easy to hit, comparatively, because they’re automatic: over the wall, it’s a home run. (Bouncing over the wall is only a double.)
Triples are damned hard because you really need to hit them at just the right speed and height into a part of the ballpark where it’s hard to field them — that means either into one of the far corners of right or left field, or into that Bermuda-triangle area where neither the outfielder nor the infielder can run there fast enough to get it.
You must hit the ball not so quickly that the outfielder gets to it right away on the first bounce, and not so slowly on the ground that the infielders have a chance to intercept it; into fair territory (not into the stands); and the ball must either land short (between the infield and the outfield) and bounce high, or go very far and richochet off the outfield wall — either way means it takes a few extra seconds to chase the ball down before the defense can throw it to third to cut you off.
And you have to be the kind of hitter who can do all of that, and still run like a gazelle to get around three bases before the defense gets the ball. It doesn’t happen often.
Great post and explanation except the numbers of triples for both a season and a career dropped long before the influx of small stadiums. The Triple had already greatly diminished. The last player to hit over 25 in a season was Kiki Cuyler who had 26 in 1925.
Carl Crawford is probably the best Triples hitter today for the combination of speed and power. He is only 24 and has put together several seasons already with high totals (by today’s standards) since 2003 he had 9,19 & 15 Triples and 11 so far this year. If he stays healthy, especially his legs, he might be capable of getting over 200 triples. Not close to the record but as Stan Musial (177, career ended in 1963) is the most recent player to accumulate a high career total, it will be a very impressive feat. Carl has 60 today and seems like the best candidate to get past Stan the Man. Watch out for Jose Reyes of the Mets, he is young fast and plays in one of the largest parks in baseball.
Jim
The decline in triples began in earnest in 1930 and continued until the 1970’s, since which we’ve seen a levelling off partly because there isn’t much room for further decline.
Although this doesn’t correlate exactly with any “influx of smaller stadiums”, stadium size is clearly one of the major determinants. Even though relatively few teams changed ballparks from the 1930’s through the 1950’s, the trend in field size was downward as outfield seats were added, and fences moved in, within existing parks.
For example, in Forbes Field the distance to the RF fence was lowered from 376 feet to 300 feet in 1925 (although Forbes remained triple-friendly). In Comiskey Park, the cavernous CF area was fenced off and reduced from 450 feet to 410 feet between 1930 and 1951. Likewise with Ebbets Field in 1932.
As the linked article notes, other factors in the decline were outfielder speed and proficiency and reduced incentive to stretch marginal doubles into triples as average runs increased.