Tuesday, May 15, 2012

More Unbreakable Record

Which is the more unbreakable record - Joe DiMaggio's 56-Game Hitting Streak or Cal Ripken Jr's 2,632 Consecutive Games Played Streak?  Most people would say DiMaggio's record is the more unbreakable record because no one has gotten within 10 games of breaking it and hitting a baseball is way harder than just playing in a baseball game, but I think I can state a case for Ripken's record.  First, in the past 25 years only one player has even broken 1,000 consecutive games played and that was Miguel Tejada (and he was taking performance enhancing drugs throughout).  Even then, Tejada only came within 1,500 games of the record which isn't even halfway there.  Meanwhile, 20 players have had hitting streaks of at least 30 games which is more than halfway to DiMaggio's record.  Next, the player with the current consecutive games played streak is Matt Kemp with 399 games, but he missed last night's game and the next guy with the most consecutive games played is Prince Fielder with 216 straight games and he is one extra turkey leg away from hitting the DL.  Meanwhile, two guys have had hitting streaks of at least 30 games in the past year.  And last, Ripken's record was done over a 17 year span and because of the more stringent drug testing policy, players rarely have careers that last that long.  There are only a handful of current players who have even had careers longer than 17 years (Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez) and most of them are either too banged up to play everyday or only play as pinch-hitters.  So, if you look at it that way, it is way harder to even get the chance to play long enough to be able to challenge Ripken's record, but if a player just has a ridiculous couple of months, you could break DiMaggio's record.  However, the real answer to this question is Cy Young's 511 Career Wins record.  There is no chance anyone will ever break that bad boy.

"She's breaking all sorts of records."

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