With Bonds on the brink of tying the Babe on the all-time HR list, I decided to take a look at sports greatest individual feats to see which one is the most prolific. Now, since it's individual feats this list will exclude the 1980 USA Hockey Team, the 72-10 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, the eight consecutive NBA titles (Celtics 59-66), the 72' Dolphins, 26 World Championships (NY Yankees), and the 88 consecutive wins for John Wooden's Bruins. That's a separate post.
The list I put together is mostly mainstream sports. No bass fishing, no bowling, no arena football, no pool, no race car driving and no volleyball. I'm not saying those are not sports, I'm just not into making a list of sports greatest feats on 2nd tier sports. I'm talking NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, Cycling, Horse Racing, and one long jump. Yeah you read correctly. The long jump. Let me see you jump 29 feet and 4.5 inches. That's four Shaq's and a garden gnome. You can't do that. Mike Powell did it. World Record, 1991. That's a great sport feat. Here are more.
Bonds- Bonds 73 Home Runs, eclipsing the 70 McGwire pumped out in 1998. Of course this record seems tainted due to the steroid cloud over Bond's head.
755- That's the number all Home Run Hitters look up to. Hank Aaron hit the baseball out of the park 755 times over his 23 years in the bigs. His highest total was 1962 when he had 45 dingers. From 1935-1974 Babe Ruth held the record with 714 Home Runs. A record that Barry Bonds will eclipse any day now.
56- As in 56 consecutive games with a hit. Yeah that's right, a 56-game hitting streak. The summer was 1941, and Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio made history en route to a .357 batting average. He won the MVP that year, it would be the second one that was later three. Yanks won the show that year by beating the Brooklyn Dodgers four games to one. Rose was the only player to get close with a 44 game hitting streak.
.406- Ted Williams is the only player to ever finish the season with a batting average over .400. The final average was .406 and Williams worked for it.
On the final day of the season Williams was at .3996 which would have been rounded up to .400. But he chose to play in not one but two games that day. He got 6 hits out of 8 trips to the batter's box raising his average to .406. No one has hit .400 since. By the way, he lost the AL MVP trophy to Joe DiMaggio that year. 1941 was a great year for baseball.
Sidenote: Bill Terry hit .400 in 1930
Ironman- Cal Ripken, eclipsing Lou Gerihg's streak of consecutive games played at 2,130 in 1995. He pushed it to 2,632 before taking a game off on September 20th, 1998. A great feat considering how often players get injuries today.
Cy Young- Pinnacle. 511 wins. This will never be touched. Closest is Roger Clemens with 341. An amazing feat stretched out over 23 seasons. He also has the record for most complete games at 751.
Stolen!- Rickey Henderson, the man who started third person interviews in MLB (maybe even sports). His record is criminal. 1406 stolen bases. That's the all-time record. Lou Brock is second with 938.
Pete Rose- This man deserves his own Post and one day I'll do it. Til then, gawk at this. 4,256 total hits (Most), 3,562 games played (Most), 14,053 at bats (Most), most 200+ hit seasons (10), and 17 all-star appearances. Ty Cobb is second in hits, the closest active player is Craig Biggio with 2,795. Good Luck.
Ryan Express- King of K's. 5,714 strike outs. Clemens is second with 4,502. There is no one close to this for years to come. Ryan also has the most no-hitters in the history of the game with 7. All aboard.
Awards- Few mentions across the board here. Roger Clemens, 7 Cy Young awards. Bonds, 7 MVP's. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 6 MVP's.
Jack Nicklaus- 18 Grand slam titles that include. 6 Master's, 5 PGA Championship's, 4 US Open's, and 3 British Open's. Wow.
Tour de Force- As in force to be reckoned with. 7 Tour De France titles. An amazing accomplishment considering what he overcame to continue his sport.
Pass the Rock- John Stockton, poster boy for Men's daisy dukes. No one was better at passing the rock. All-time NBA assist leader at 12,713.
Lew Alcindor- A.K.A the man who's scored the most points (38,387) in NBA history. The most blocked shots, the most seasons played and the most All-Star appearances. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Wayne Gretzky- Greatest Hockey player ever. Single season records include, most points (215), most goals (92), most assists (163) and a 51 point game scoring streak. Career you ask. All-time leader in goals (894), assists (1963) and points (2857).
Rice- Three records, three feats, one fine receiver. Receptions, 1549. Touchdowns, 207. Receiving Yards, 20,895. And a fine dancer.
Emmitt Smith- 18,355 total rushing yards. Great record. Also has the all-time rushing TD lead with 164. No one is at arm's reach.
Dan the Man- His arm must hurt. Because he threw for 61,361 yards in his career. Also has the TD record with 420 but Farve is 25 behind.
31 lengths- Last leg of the Triple Crown. 1973, Secretariat ran like the wind. Smashing the world record for time at 2min, 24 seconds. He won the Belmont by an astonishing 31 lengths. Record still stands today.
It's hard to pick what feat is the most greatest. It would be a great debate.
But my top 5 would include:
Cy Young's 511, Nolan Ryan's 5,714 K's, Lance's 7 Tour's, Jack's 18 Grand Slam Title's and Hank's 755.
I'm tired. Post your comments on your top 5 or even what you think is the greatest feat of all.
Padrino Out.
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10 comments:
Okay, since you invoked ESPNMobile, I was wondering about the commercials they slam you with during any and all of their programming. Are there any costs to them besides production (which is obviously low)? Are there internal funds transfers to the broadcasting unit from the marketing dept? Wasn't that maniac an FA at Liberty at some point?
It was like the ESPN commercials for TILT. Or Stuart Scott hosting Drowned Alive with David Blaine in a giant fishbowl at the Lincoln Center. Espn is a pimp.
There's alot of correlations between baseball then and baseball now.
1. He pitched from 1914-1919, so five years of home run totals would increase his 714 to about 914. That's retarded. All I did was took his yearly average and times is by 5 (years he spent pitching), came to 210. So yeah the number would be different.
2. No way of knowing this. When was the rule changed? How often did it happen?
3. True, plus I'm sure there were no bandboxes back then like there are now (Coors, Citizen Bank Park, etc.)
Orestas Destrade: worst ESPN hire.
EVER.
Althoug one day I would love to see Dikembe Motumbo on NBA fastbreak. That would be awesome.
On Ruth...
1. Is it fair to assume that he would average 40+ HR's in his first 5 seasons in the bigs? I would have to think the combination of youth and inexperience would reduce that average some.
2. I was unable to find any reference to a "ground-rule" HR. I even checked a baseball rule change history site. So, I am not sure if this is accurate, but even if it was, how many bounce over HR's would he have? With no indoor and/or turf parks, the total would have been very low.
3. Agree with all points, although some older parks did have some fairly short porches. Minimum boundary rules did not come into effect until 1959. For instance, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis had only a 310 foot distance down the right field line.
Top 5 feats...
I actually think Ryan's 7 no hitters are more impressive than his K's.
Cy Young's 511 is definitely up there. But his 316 losses will be tough to beat.
56 games by DiMaggio will be really tough to beat. It's definitely tougher than Ted Williams being the last person to bat 400. I think someone will get 400 in our lifetime.
Wilt's 100 point game might be broken (Kobe proved how close you can get), but I don't think anyone will ever average 50 points a game ever in a season like he did.
And how about this for a feat... Barry Bonds leads history with 607 intentional walks. The next closest is Hank Aaron with 293. Do you think anyone will ever top Bonds in that category? I don't think so.
Smokin-
Maybe right about the no-no's. Seven is incredible. The hitting streak is hard to beat but I never looked at it as being impossible.
But I do think that if anyone had a chance to beat it, it would have been Rose (he came up 12 games short)
Wilt was a giant amonsgt man. No way someone averages 50 ppg today.
The 100 point game is easier to reach.
Re: Int walks, maybe Pujols if he continues to beat the baseball like he is now. I mean what is he, 26?
If Pujols becomes as fearsome in his later years as Bonds, then maybe. But if Pujols experiences a slight dropoff in later years, he will still be a great hitter but teams will pitch to him more.
This is why I think Bonds record will not be broken.
1. He got a lot of those walks in his later years when he was supposedly juicing and became fearsome beyond belief.
2. If we believe the new steroid policies will be effective, hitters will see enough of a dropoff in their later years that even though they can still do some damage, opposing pitchers will not see the need to walk them intentionally when they are 35 or older.
I just think that the days of serious juicing are over, and we will see a lot more home run hitters become like Mike Schmidt. One of the best in his day, but he hit a wall and became normal for his last few years.
NBA feat: Oscar Robertson AVERAGES a triple-double in a season, bear witness--30.8 pts 12.5 reb 11.4 ast
Now, since your such a new jack teabagz, I'll break it down for you slowly; that's Iverson + KG + Nash in one package.
Good one York, I missed it. It's not the most amazing feat. But worth mentioning.
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