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Unbreakable Records - When The Sun Goes Supernova, They'll Still Be In The (Ashen) Books


DonRocks

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Then there's these college football unbreakable records....I'm willing to concede the 222-point margin of victory record as unbreakable....

Wow, what's amazing is that I was expecting obscure Division III records; the first two names I saw were Andre Ware and Barry Sanders!

1,318 punting yards by one punter in one game? WTF?

I got to see Herschel Walker all three of those years - I actually got to see *three* Heisman trophy winners play against Clemson (George Rogers, Herschel Walker, and Doug Flutie), plus an Outland Trophy winner (Bruce Smith), although Smith wasn't in person. Damned childhood friend of mine caught the game-winning touchdown from Flutie against us one year; needless to say, I didn't live it down. However, I saw Clemson, led by Larry Nance, upset a previously undefeated, number-one-ranked UVA basketball team led by Ralph Sampson - damn, that was awesome. :)

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I got to see Herschel Walker all three of those years - I actually got to see *three* Heisman trophy winners play against Clemson (George Rogers, Herschel Walker, and Doug Flutie), plus an Outland Trophy winner (Bruce Smith), although Smith wasn't in person. Damned childhood friend of mine caught the game-winning touchdown from Flutie against us one year; needless to say, I didn't live it down. However, I saw Clemson, led by Larry Nance, upset a previously undefeated, number-one-ranked UVA basketball team led by Ralph Sampson - damn, that was awesome. :)

I take it back. I saw *four* Heisman trophy winners play against Clemson in just three seasons: 1979-1980, 1981-1982, and 1982-1983: I forgot Mike Rozier played for Nebraska in the 1981 Orange Bowl. And Clemson played Auburn in 1981, so I only missed Bo Jackson by a year (he was still a senior in high school) - that would have been *five* Heisman winners in three seasons!

To stay more on topic, how about this one (these numbers are not typos): in addition to playing 11 seasons in the major leagues, Connie Mack went on to manage for 50 years. He has 1,000 more wins (3,731) than any other manager in major-league history, and he has over *twice* as many losses (3,948 (!)) as any other manager in major-league history. He actually had a career losing record as a manager, if you can believe it. Nevertheless, he managed a total of (again, this is not a typo) 7,755 major-league games. Given that the season was 154 games long until 1962, Mack managed the equivalent of *50 full seasons* - 50 seasons x 154 games per season = 7,700 games, and he managed 7,755 games. Despite all the extraordinary records listed in this thread, this has to be right up there with the most unconquerable of them, unless they figure out how to tamper with human DNA and extend life span.

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Unbreakable: The New York Giants had a team ERA of 0.00 in the 1905 World Series. Of note: Christy Mathewson was 3-0 in the 1905 Series with a 0.00 ERA - I guess it's mathematically possible to go 4-0, but his series would be tough to beat.

Your Orioles, in 1966, had a team ERA of 0.50 against the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series, winning the first game 5-2 in L.A. and then shutting out the Dodgers for a record 33 consecutive innings. To me, that's more impressive than the unbreakable record of the 1905 Series....

....so, maybe we have another category? "Unbreakable Records That Are Less Impressive Than Comparable Achievements."

Add Max Scherzer's stretch of starts in June 2015, which are even more impressive than Johnny Vander Meer's two consecutive no-hitters.

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The 183-game 2010 Isner-Mahut Wimbledon match must be considered as a legitimate candidate for multiple unbreakable records (216 total aces in a match? 502 points won by a losing player? 138 games in one set? 11 hours and 5 minutes long?)

Wimbledon is Wimbledon, and it's possible for the server to perennially hold service in grass-court tennis, but for 138 straight games?! This match is so much of an outlier that it consisted of *100 games more* than the 2nd-most games ever played in a match after the introduction of the tiebreaker.

Here's some trivia: The longest point ever played in a professional match was during the 1984 Central Fidelity Banks International tournament - in a match between Vicki Nelson and Jean Hepner, a point was played that was 643 shots and 29 minutes long (if anyone can find video of this, I'd love to see it).

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1,318 punting yards by one punter in one game? WTF?

Punting has received such a bad name in today's game. It actually can be an effective way to advance the ball (hidden yards, as Bill Parcells called it). In that particular game, looks like they were just punting on first down a lot. If you aren't confident you will gain yards on 1st through 3rd down, may as well go ahead and advance the ball on 1st by punting when they don't have someone back to return (or maybe eventually both teams put someone back on 1st down?). Win the punting battle, gain field position, give yourself a shot at some decent field position and possible a score. Not sure what shape ball they were using in 1939, but the older, rounder ones were probably much more likely to bounce and roll forward rather than take weird bounces backwards or sideways. On 1st down, you could punt and gain 50 yards and give the other team possession who really has no interest either in running offensive plays.

Of course, today - and really for a long time - it's been extremely easy to move the ball so nobody even considers punting before 4th down anymore. We can probably count on one hand the number of punts (quick kicks) have been on a down other than 4th in the last 20 years.

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Okay, I've got one: Jerry Chambers (University of Utah, 1966) winning the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player Award while playing for a 4th-Place team. The consolation game was abolished after 1981, and unless they reinstate it, there will never again be a "3rd-place" or a "4th-place" team in the NCAA Tournament. So it would take a rule change for someone to ever do this again (not inconceivable).

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How about Jack Chesbro in 1904: 48 complete games in a single season? (He also started 51 games that years and won 41, so it's conceivable that he had 41 complete-game victories in a single season - if that's true, it would be a difficult record to break.)

ETA - Never mind: Old Hoss Radbourn won 59 games in one season.

Old Hoss Radbourn has two unbreakable records: He's also the first-ever person to be recorded by a camera giving the finger, in 1886.

post-2-0-75428700-1459391081_thumb.jpg  (Back row, on the left - note the name of the .jpg)

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On 1/30/2018 at 11:38 PM, DonRocks said:

How about a pitcher with a 94-46 W-L record (.671 winning percentage - higher than Sandy Koufax's), and a 2.28 career ERA over 10 seasons pitching?

24 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Not impressed?

I asked my talking dog what he thought of that stat.  Do you want to know what he said?

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10 minutes ago, dcs said:

Actually, he said it was indeed a rather impressive stat, although he cautioned against comparing it to the records of other hurlers who did not play in the dead ball era.

Winning percentage, you can (it's a zero-sum game); ERA, no way (and good point).

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On 6/8/2018 at 1:33 PM, MC Horoscope said:

That stat on Warren Spahn is just amazing! Nobody will ever do that again unless the game changes a whole lot!

Look at what Walter Johnson did in the decade from 1910-1919. I know it's 100-years ago, but he averaged 26.5 wins per season (265 wins total).
For the first 7 seasons of the decade, he won *at least* 25 games each year.

In the (mostly) pre-modern era, from 1891-1904 (14 years), Cy Young averaged over 28 wins per season (396 wins total).
He averaged almost 31 wins per season for 6 straight seasons. 

Now we're getting into video-game numbers.

I can only imagine how frustrated Pete Sampras was, being tied with William Renshaw with 7 Wimbledon singles titles.
Look at the rules when Renshaw played: The defending champion *only* had to play in the finals the next year.
That makes what Federer has done (8 singles titles) all the more incredible - and he had 2 match points this year to win his 9th.

[I'll move these last two posts somewhere else.]

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On 12/9/2013 at 6:33 AM, porcupine said:

How about this?

On 12/9/2013 at 9:33 AM, DonRocks said:

This is impressive, that's for sure.

I had *no* idea that the cheesy 1970s movie Cannonball Run was based on a true story and a real person!

One thing I'll add is that I can easily see this broken, depending on what "this" is. Can't you envision, sometime in the next 500 years or so, an electric car with a battery so durable it needs no recharging for days, and the U.S. sanctioning a cross-country run to demonstrate the new technology to the world? I'm not saying it's likely, but I don't think some scenario like that is impossible - maybe in that situation, a run could be done in under 20 hours.

(On the other hand, I suppose the rules of baseball could change 5,000 years in the future, and teams could regularly score 400 runs a game, so there are a lot of inherent assumptions made in a thread like this - basically, a gentleman's agreement that the sport in question will basically remain the same, and that would mean no U.S. sanctioned cross-country run because that would take away 80% of the danger.)

Under the current rules and laws, making that trip in under 29 hours is ridiculous. Still, it seems like there have been several successful attempts in the 31-hour range. I'm not sure whether to sit back and be awed, or argue that it's possible to break this record. Regardless - talk about anti-heroes ... Basquiat ain't got nuttin' on these guys.)

This was broken in just six years.

"These Guys Finished a Record Cannonball Run from New York to L.A. Averaging 103 MPH. Here's How" by Alex Horton on washingtonpost.com

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On 2/26/2015 at 5:18 PM, DonRocks said:

Park's record (giving up 2 Grand Slams in 1 inning to the same batter) is just as unbreakable as Tatis'.

Had the inning ended, and Tatis hit another Grand Slam in another inning, it wouldn't be nearly as significant (or unbreakable) - 13 players have hit 2 Grand Slams in 1 game (nobody has hit 3, and I suspect it will be quite awhile before anyone does, but the "1 inning" restriction makes the record pretty unbreakable - the additional restriction of "against the same pitcher" makes it even more so.

My guess is that a player will hit 3 Grand Slams in 1 game before another player hits 2 Grand Slams in 1 inning.

While not as amazing as what Tatis achieved, I found this tidbit out today: 

Frank Robinson hit grand slams in back-to-back innings with the exact same players on-base both times (Blair on 1st, Buford on 2nd, McNally on 3rd).

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