Baseball's Legendary Statistical Numbers Quiz

Answer: Joe DiMaggio

Many baseball people cite DiMaggio's fifty six consecutive game hit streak as THE record which will never be broken, for good some reasons. Because of the obvious and huge financial benefits, today's ballplayers are more interested in hitting home runs and less interested in making contact; night baseball, where seeing the ball is evidently more difficult, is now the norm; and nasty, hard throwing relief specialists make late game hits much harder to come by. The "Yankee Clipper" hit for power and average and patrolled center field for the Bronx Bombers in the 1930s and '40s with unmatched grace and ease.

He was a legend in his own time and the envy of many American males not only for his on field prowess. Who else got to go to sleep with Marilyn Monroe, then wake up as Mr. Coffee and get paid millions for smiling and holding a coffee pot? His iconic status was only enhanced with the release of the movie "The Graduate" and the song "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkle, in which the disappearance of "Joltin' Joe" stood in for the loss of American innocence.

Answer: Cy Young

Denton True Young's 511 career wins as a pitcher is 94 more than Walter Johnson's second place figure of 417 wins. With the specialization of today's game, specifically the proliferation of relief pitchers, this is a record which will probably never be approached, let alone be broken.

The reality is that complete games are almost extinct in the modern game, and pitching wins is becoming an irrelevant statistic. Give the team a "quality start" (six innings pitched, three or fewer runs allowed), hand the ball to a relief pitcher, and you've earned your huge salary for that day. Astute baseball observers will note that 511 is also the career home run total for Hall of Famer Mel Ott.

Answer: Roger Maris

If you could be one of the top talents in the game, on one of the biggest stages (New York City), and successfully take on and surpass one of most hallowed records in sport (Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in a season), would you sign on? This was Roger Maris' life playing right field for the New York Yankees in late summer of 1961.

Instead of enjoying the ride, Maris became increasingly withdrawn as the pressure mounted and the media hounded him daily. The stress of it all caused Maris to start losing his hair.

Many writers, fans, and old time players resented his assault on Ruth's record, and felt golden boy superstar Mickey Mantle was the one who deserved to break it. Maris finally blasted his record breaking 61st homer on October 1st, the last game of the season. Ford Frick, who had been a personal friend of Ruth when the Babe was still alive, was the commissioner of baseball at the time.

He decreed that the new record was "unofficial" because the MLB season had been increased to 162 games, whereas Ruth had only a 154 game season to play with.

In 1991 an MLB committee on historical accuracy voted to remove the distinction and award the record fully to Maris. In 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Maris' record. In 2019, Barry Bonds held the all-time single season home run record with 73. Mantle, by the way, finished 1961 with 54 round trippers, even though his season was curtailed by injury.

Answer: Nolan Ryan

This number represents every time a major league hitter either swung and missed, or watched, as the third strike pitch from the arm of Nolan Ryan smacked into the catcher's mitt. Ryan pitched for four teams over an amazing 27 year career. Number two on the all time strikeout list at present is Randy Johnson, with 4,875 K's.

Answer: Babe Ruth

Another iconic record from the legendary "Sultan of Swat" which many thought would last forever, this is Babe Ruth's career home run total. As when Roger Maris surpassed Ruth's one season record for homers, lots of folks were not happy to see the Babe lose another spot in the record books.

Unfortunately, the negativity in this case took on racial overtones. The record breaker was an African American by the name of Henry Aaron. Aaron was acknowledged and respected throughout baseball, and by most fans, as one of the top two or three players in the game, but it came out later that he had received death threats and lots of hate mail from extremists, warning him not to break the record.

Despite this pressure, Aaron belted number 715 off Al Downing of the LA Dodgers on April 8th, 1974 in his home park in Atlanta. Aaron retired in 1976 with 755 homers and held the career record until Barry Bonds broke it in 2007.

Answer: Pete Rose

This is Pete Rose's career hit total, standing like a distant beacon for all the MLB players trying to reach base safely by hitting the baseball. Amassing 3,000 career hits puts a player in rare company as one of the game's greats, and is generally a sure ticket into the Hall of Fame. Rose Rose surpassed Ty Cobb's long standing career hit record of 4,191 on September 11th, 1985, having triumphantly returned to Cincinnati for the end of his storied playing career.

The self-styled "hit king" has had a rough go in his post baseball life, however, largely due to his questionable behavior on and off the field.

This included betting on games while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds baseball team; and since he was banned from the game for these actions, he has stubbornly refusal to admit any wrongdoing, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence of his gambling problem. Because of the ban, he is ineligible for Hall of Fame consideration.

As a pure hitter, however, his skill and tenacity was unmatched in the era in which he played, the 1970s and 1980s.

Answer: Roberto Clemente

This figure is Roberto Clemente's career hit total. Clemente is a legend and a national hero in Puerto Rico, where he was born in 1934. He died in a plane crash on December 31st, 1972 while on a humanitarian mission to Nicaragua, which had been devastated by an earthquake a week earlier. Corrupt government officials had diverted three previous plane loads of relief supplies, and Clemente figured if he accompanied this delivery personally, he could assure it got to those in need.

This was typical of his nature and character. Tragically, the plane was overloaded, took off without two crew members, and then developed engine trouble before going down off he coast of Puerto Rico.

As fate would have it, he had collected his milestone 3,000th hit on September 30th, in what was to be the last regular season at bat of his career. Clemente earned twelve consecutive Gold Glove awards and played in fourteen All-Star games.

The normal five year waiting period for Hall of Fame eligibility was waived and he was voted into the Hall in 1973.

The league bestows The Roberto Clemente Award annually to the MLB player who "best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and contribution to his team."

Answer: Ty Cobb

Any conversation about unbreakable records must prominently include the career batting average (CBA) of .366 compiled by Tyrus Raymond Cobb, who played the bulk of his games with the Detroit Tigers. Unless the rules of the game change radically, anyone even remotely approaching this mark is unimaginable.

Some things to consider: Except for Ted Williams, who was born in 1918, all the top fifteen career average leaders were born in the 19th century. For a stat where a differential of a few points is huge, the second highest average of all time is Rogers Hornsby, a contempory of Cobb, who produced a .358 CBA; Anyone hitting close to Cobb's CBA for even one season is highly unusual.

Answer: Ted Williams

The other best known batting average number is the .406 season average Ted William crafted in 1941. The "Splendid Splinter" was arguably the best pure hitter who ever swung a bat. His scientific and mathematically precise diagram of the strike zone foreshadowed the analytics which drive the modern game. With his chart, he predicted exactly how successful he expected be with a pitch is any part of the zone.

In this manner he determined when and in what count he should swing. His general knowledge of the strike zone was so legendary that even umpires were intimidated. If Williams didn't swing at a close pitch, it must be a ball, so they wouldn't call it a strike, much to the exasperation of pitchers, who felt the last thing Ted needed was any advantage. Baseball fans love to debate whether anyone will ever hit above .400 again, because unlike with Cobb's career mark, it seems possible that someone could put together one truly exceptional year.

The aforementioned Tony Gwynn made the last serious run at this record, hitting .392 in 1994.

Answer: Cal Ripken Jr.

Lou Gehrig's run of 2,130 consecutive games played lasted from 1925-1939, becoming the most famous longevity record in American sport. The streak lent further credence to the great Yankee first baseman's most appropriate nickname, "the Iron Horse." Pundits said it would never be broken....until it was, by lifetime Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken Jr., whose streak started on May 30th, 1982. He played in his record breaking 2,131st straight game on September 6th, 1995, and finally ended the streak at 2,632 on September 19th, 1998.
Unlike Babe Ruth's legendary records, this one came without much controversy and resentment. There were a few grumblings that it was a selfish record, and that the team would be better off if he rested occasionally, but his manager, teammates and especially his consistent excellence on the field said otherwise. Ripken was revered in Baltimore and widely lauded across baseball for doing things the right way, always with understated class. It's worth emphasizing that his career record, regardless of the streak, qualified him as a Hall of Fame player. He was a two time MVP, a Gold Glove winner, won eight Silver Slugger awards, and was a 19 time all star.