What's the most actively admired sports record?

What are the most prestigious numerical records in American sports?

I got to thinking about that question again because giant New York Yankee outfielder Aaron Judge (6’7” 282 pounds) hit his 50th and 51st homers of the season today, putting him on track for 63 for the year. If he could keep up his season long hot streak, he would break his own American League record of 62 in 2022, which broke Roger Maris’s 61 in 1961, which broke Babe Ruth’s 60 in 1927.

Round numbers help in fame, as do legends, like Babe’s 60 homers and Wilt’s 100 points in one game.

To me, the AL record remains the most prestigious baseball record. In contrast, the National League home run record progression: Barry Bonds’ 73 in 2001, breaking Mark McGwire’s 70 in 1998, breaking Hack Wilson’s 56 in 1930 is kind of silly: the two most recent players were obviously highly juiced before testing imposed some reasonable limits. And the 1930 NL baseball was notoriously juiced.

In the middle of the 20th Century, Ruth’s 60 was by far the most famous record in U.S. sports, in part because it wasn’t ridiculously out of reach: Jimmy Foxx hit 58 homers in 1932 and Hank Greenberg in 1938. So it was talked about all the time. Lots more sluggers came along who seemed to have a shot at it. So it was an ideal mark: the most famous record by the most famous athlete, but one that wasn’t a fluke or superhuman. It was fun to talk about whether Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle could break it.

Cap Ripken’s mark of playing in 2,632 consecutive baseball games is much admired, but it doesn’t get talked about much lately because nobody threatens it. It doesn’t seem likely to be broken anytime soon because the current leader is Matt Olson with 588.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game-hitting streak is enormously famous, in part because DiMaggio didn’t set that many other records. It’s kind of a silly, arbitrary record, but DiMaggio deserves something.

Various Nolan Ryan records like 383 strikeouts in a season and 7 complete game no-hitters in his career are remarkable. But pitching trends of throwing fewer innings per start and per season are making it less and less likely than they will get much talked about in the near future because somebody is challenging Ryan’s marks.

Today, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points in an NBA game seems like the most famous sports record, although it’s not that prestigious to me because nobody played defense in 1962. The word had gone down from management that fans wanted to see scoring, so don’t kill yourself trying to stop the other guy. You let him score, he lets you score, everybody is happy.

Five players have scored 70 or more in the 2020s, so Wilt’s record isn’t inconceivably distant lately. But, still, it’s talked about so much not because anybody has come close (second place is Kobe Bryant’s 81 in 2006), but because it’s a round number and it’s Wilt.

Also, there’s no film of the game, which would probably deflate its prestige: if you watch the game, you’d probably come away with the feeling that NBA coaches were pretty bad back then to not come up with a strategy to slow down Wilt, who was an amazing physical specimen, but who lacked the fine motor skills to be a great shooter.

NFL offense has been improving so much that it’s hard to keep track of records. If any quarterback were to throw for 6,000 yards and/or 60 touchdowns in a season (Peyton Manning set the current marks in 2013 of 5,477 yards and 55 touchdowns), that would be something. The newish 17 game season makes it not impossible.

But the most prestigious NFL career mark is obviously Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl victories. Patrick Mahomes now has 3 in his first 7 seasons, which puts him about on Brady’s pace.

Similarly, Michael Jordan went to 6 NBA Finals, won all 6, and was Finals MVP in all 6.

Yogi Berra’s ten World Series titles isn’t that famous, but ought to be.

In country club individual sports major championships, Novak Djokovic leads with 24, Rafael Nadal 22, Roger Federer 20, (and among Americans) Jack Nicklaus 18, Tiger Woods 15, and Pete Sampras 14.

In the Olympics, Michael Phelps has 23 gold medals and nobody else, summer or winter, has more than 9.

No horse has come closer than two seconds to Secretariat’s time of 2:24.0 in the 1973 Belmont Stakes.

Judge appears to be a worthy successor to Ruth. This is the third time he’s hit at least 50 homers, while Ruth did it 4 times (as did McGwire and Sosa). His projected triple crown figures for this entire season, .333 batting average - 63 homers - 151 RBIs or .333 / .465 / .736, would fit in well in Ruth’s stats.

Maris’s 61 was kind of a fluke. 1961 was an expansion year in the American League, so there was a lot of not quite ready for the big leagues talent, allowing a number of players to have surprising seasons like Norm Cash (who hit a Ruth like .361-41-132). Plus, Maris hit only 16 doubles and 4 triples in 1961, so over 75% of his extra base hits went for homers.

Still, Maris had won the AL MVP award in 1960 with 39 homers, so he was an excellent player, if not as great as his teammate Mickey Mantle, whose fading chance to catch Maris in 1961 ended when with 4 games left in the season, he went to JFK’s Dr. Feelgood, Max Jacobson (He’s the President’s doctor, so he’s gotta be good, right?), who damn near killed the Mick with an inept injection.