Unbreakable Baseball Records

Baseball was a different game in Young's career, which spanned the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Nevertheless, his all-time wins record, which has already stood for nearly 100 years, will easily last for at least another 100. Just to get to 500, a pitcher would have to average 25 wins a season for 20 years, and only two pitchers in the past 30 years have had even one season of 25 wins.

DiMaggio's famous streak has never been seriously challenged. In the nearly 70 years since his magical summer of 1941, only Pete Rose (44 in 1978) has even reached 40 straight games, and other than DiMaggio, no player in history has gotten to 45 in a row.

Since Cobb retired after the 1928 season, there have been only 46 seasons in which a hitter reached .366, and only one hitter (Tony Gwynn) ever did it at least four times. Gwynn's lifetime average? .338, nowhere near Cobb's mark.

There was a time when it seemed Henderson's record might not last very long. In 1985, Vince Coleman stole 110 bases and followed it up with seasons of 107 and 109 but Coleman couldn't keep it up and no one has come close since. By the end of the 1980s, the renewed stolen base craze had come to an end, and no one has even reached 80 steals since, with Marquis Grissom (78 in 1992) and Jose Reyes (78 in 2007) coming closest.

Though Ruth's more glamorous records have been eclipsed, this one has withstood challenges from Lou Gehrig to Ted Williams to Barry Bonds and remains intact. Albert Pujols, currently the game's most prolific slugger, has never reached .690 even once in his stellar career.

Bonds holds the top three spots on the single-season walk list, culminating in his 2004 season in which he was walked 232 times, 34 more than his own previous record, set in 2002. In that '04 season, Bonds walked in 37 percent of his plate appearances, and had 120 intentional walks; the runner-up for total bases on balls in the NL that year, Houston's Lance Berkman, had 127.

The Ryan Express kept chugging for a remarkable 27 seasons, helping him blow right past every existing strikeout record and pull into a station all his own. Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens, a pair of hardthrowers whose careers lasted more than two decades, both failed to reach even 5,000.

Nothing illustrates the changing nature of pitching through the years better than this stat. The overall record is 75, set by Will White in 1879. Chesbro ranks just 124th all-time but he holds the modern era record with 48 in 1904 and is the only pitcher over 45 in the modern era. Even if the bar is lowered to begin with the Live Ball era (which began in 1920), the mark would still be untouchable. Both Grover Cleveland Alexander (1920) and Burleigh Grimes (1923) had 33 complete games. Most pitchers today, assuming they stay healthy, will make 34 starts a year, and no pitcher in the 21st century has even gotten to double-digit complete games in a season.

Teddy Ballgame combined a keen eye with a lethal bat that added up to the best career on-base percentage in baseball history. In the half-century since Williams retired, only four players have posted a .482 mark in a single-season, and only one (Barry Bonds) has done it in multiple seasons. Bonds' career OBP (.444) still fell well short of Teddy Ballgame's.

Aaron was aided by baseball's decision to play two All-Star Games from 1959-1962, but his total is nonetheless remarkable. Aaron played 23 seasons in the major leagues and was an All-Star for all but two of them, the first (1954), and last (1976). Among the players who debuted since Aaron's retirement, Rickey Henderson is the only man to have even played 25 seasons in the majors, and Henderson made a comparatively paltry 10 Midsummer Classics.