Some Sports Records Are Safe

You hear the phrase quite frequently -- "records are made to be broken." Or "this record will never be broken." The next thing you know some breaks the record.

Some 20 years ago we probably thought Hank Aaron's all-time career home run record would never be broken. Then, in early August 2007, San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds breaks the record. That mark, however, might just get broken sometime within the next 6-14 years.

After all, balls continue to fly out of the yard for a few reasons. For starters, expansion has watered down the quality of pitching worse than a flat Budweiser. Secondly, ballparks are smaller and hitters look more like middle linebackers. Keep in mind, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke Roger Maris' single season home run record (61) in 1998. It only took Bonds three years to break that record with 73 home runs in 2001.

Cy Young's 511 career victories are certainly not going to be broken, at least by any modern-day pitcher. New York Mets left-handed pitcher Tom Glavine, who played many years with the Atlanta Braves, is likely the last 300 game winner we'll see for a long time. Glavine achieved that feat earlier in the 2007 campaign. You see, pitchers getting wins is largely dependant on how good the team is but with more five-man rotations, it's going to be harder to pile up wins on a consistent basis.

I also don't see an NFL team going undefeated any time soon, which is a feat the 1972 Miami Dolphins achieved. For one thing, the season is longer. It was 14 regular season and three playoff games in 1972 and 16 regular season games and three postseason games today. That's two more chances that a team has a change to lose a game. Two Super Bowl championship teams from the 1980s came close by going 18-1 (1984 San Francisco 49ers and 1985 Chicago Bears).

The 49ers lost their lone game in Week 7 against Pittsburgh (17-14) as Ray Wersching missed a 51-yard field goal that would have sent the game into overtime. The '85 Bears lost their long game in Week 12 on Monday Night Football, 38-24 to Miami. Nowadays, if a team wins its first 12 games the pressure (i.e. media and fan scrutiny is enormous). Another reason why it's highly doubtful to see an unbeaten team is because of the salary cap it's much harder to keep teams together, which makes injuries that much more difficult to overcome.

Most people might not rank the New England Patriots and the NBA's San Antonio Spurs among their respective sports' all-time best despite winning three titles in four years for the former and four titles in eight years for the latter. However, what cynics fail to realize is that those teams have sustained their success in an era when dynasties were thought to be a thing of the past.

You can also forget about Rickey Henderson's single-season (130) and career (1,406) stolen base record being challenged. Keep in mind, when Henderson set the season mark in 1982, he also attempted 172 stolen bases. How many players even get on base that many times today?

Keep in mind, with the emphasis being so heavy on home runs; managers do not want to take the bat out of their sluggers' hands by risking the base-runner getting thrown out trying to steal. Even the quality of base-running has diminished in today's version of baseball because fewer coaches who were base-stealers in their heyday are coaching in the minor leagues.

You certainly are not going to see back-to-back no-hitters, set by Johnny Vander Meer in 1938 because which pitcher in heavens name is going to do it three straight outings let alone two? These days if a pitcher throws a no-hitter there is a flood of media attention. Plus, pitching a no-hitter takes a little bit of luck too. Maybe, the hitter mis-times his swing on a pitch he normally hits hard. Maybe, the pitcher gets bailed out by a great defensive play. Or maybe, on a judgment call a fielder gets charged with an error instead of the batter getting awarded a hit. Who's going to get those kind of breaks three straight outings?

UCLA basketball's 88-game winning streak is likely safe. Basketball teams simply do not stay together long and sometimes not at all. While the 2006-2007 Florida Gators are not likely to enter any all-time great discussions, it is impressive that they won consecutive NCAA titles by keeping largely the same team together because it's so rare today.

Look at the underclassmen leaving school early for the NBA or for that matter going to the pros straight out of high school. Tim Duncan and Shane Battier are two modern-day college players that are the exception but not the rule in that those individuals stayed in school all four seasons. The early departures have also created more parity in college basketball. That means even the best teams in college basketball are going to lose a conference road game here or there.

Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak is not likely to be topped. Pete Rose came the closest in 1984 and still came 12 games short. To break this record, players have to be so enormously consistent. They also have to catch a break. Baseball is such a strange game that way. You can hit the ball super hard but it's right into the glove of a fielder. You can hit a blooper that either takes a spectacular catch to record an out or it finds a hole. Then, there's judgment calls by the official scorekeeper that can be scored a hit or an error.

You can also forget someone scoring 100 points in a basketball game like Wilt Chamberlain did. Kobe Bryant scored 81 two years ago against the Toronto Raptors, whose defensive play won't make us forget an of the great Detroit Piston teams. Given the fact that NBA teams have put a greater emphasis on defense for the past decade, there are teams not even averaging 100 points per game. All the more reason that no one individual will score 100 in a game. Unless a game goes into six-tuple overtime.