For an introduction to the list, click here.

For previous parts, click on the links: 50-46 , 45-41 , 40-36 , 35-31 , 30-26

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25. Wayne Gretzky wins 9 Most Valuable Player awards

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24. Rickey Henderson steals 1406 career bases

Henderson makes his second appearance on our list with his career steals record. He was not a “one-really-amazing-season” guy. Henderson stole bases for years and years (it is no wonder, then, that he also holds the record for most runs scored in a career).

This record is astounding because of how far out in first place Henderson is. He ended his career with 1406 steals, but he broke the record at 939, and the man whose record he broke (Lou Brock) is still in second place with that number. The difference between Henderson and Brock is greater than the difference between Brock and Roberto Alomar…who ranks 41st on the all-time list!

Insane: Only one active player (Juan Pierre) is even half-way to Henderson’s career number. He has 527 steals. So, if he tied Henderson’s single-season record 5 years in a row, Pierre would still not have the career record.

More Insane: Only two active players (Pierre and Carl Crawford with 409) are within 1000 steals of Henderson’s mark!!!

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23. Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 career record

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22. Nolan Ryan strikes out 5714 batters

Nolan Ryan is my favorite baseball player of all time. His 5714 career strikeouts are a testament both to his longevity and his power pitching. Many pitchers have hurled for 20 or more seasons, but very few have been pure power pitchers, as was Ryan.

Ryan broke the record for most strikeouts over 2000 times, because when he set the mark, Walter Johnson held the record with 3509 Ks. Since then, 7 other pitchers have passed “The Big Train,” but none by so wide a margin as Ryan.

Randy Johnson finished his amazing career in 2nd place all time. Though he was feared and had a great career, he was still almost 900 strikeouts behind Nolan Ryan’s record, with 4,875. Roger Clemens, considered by many to be the best pitcher of the last 20 years, was over 1000 Ks behind Ryan.

Pitchers will pile up strikeouts, but to do so for this many years will leave Ryan’s record on the books.

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21. UCLA men’s basketball wins 88 games in a row

This is an insane record. As one who follows college basketball very closely, this is a record that will never be approached. In our modern era, there are too many factors working against a team breaking this record.

• Players only staying at a “power” school for 1-2 years before going to the NBA
• Far more very good and good teams
• More games in tournament format
• Far more media pressure once a streak gets to even 20 or more games.

For a team to break this record, they would have to have 2 straight perfect seasons (which would be about 40 games per season), then start another year with at least 9 straight wins. With so much turnover and pressure in the game today, it’s not going to happen.

But that it ever happened is amazing. UCLA’s streak covered almost exactly 3 years, and was inclusive of 74 regular season games and 14 tournament games. They won 3 national titles during the streak, and the streak cemented UCLA’s place in the record books. Led by great players, they will never worry about this streak being broken. Oh, and they had a pretty amazing coach, too!

List Fact: UConn’s women’s record of 90 straight wins was considered. Since they just broke their own record, though, it is hard to put them on here, although they deserve recognition for years of total dominance of the women’s game.

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30 records are now in the books. What are your thoughts?

For an introduction to the list, click here.

For previous installments click the following links: 50-46 , 45-41 , 40-36

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35. Barry Bonds is intentionally walked 688 times in his MLB career

The Career Intentional Walks record was re-established every year from 1955 until Hank Aaron retired in 1976, recording 293 IBBs. Bonds broke the record in the 1999 season, then preceded to obliterate it by 395 walks over the remaining eight years of his career.

Bonds’ lead in this category is so astounding that adding Aaron at #2 (293) and Willie McCovey at #3 (260) together is 95 walks short of Bonds’ record. Bonds also holds the single-season record at 120 walks. The next closest non-Bonds season is McCovey with 45.

Albert Pujols currently ranks fourth in career IBBs behind McCovey with 251. Expect him to jump to number two soon. But don’t expect him to reach Bonds. Ever.

Compelling Inconsistency: This record is more impressive (and unbreakable) than Bonds’ 762 career home runs. Yet no one writes it 688* even though it was also a result of his performance enhancement.

–Joey Sparks

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34. Bill Russell wins 11 NBA titles

 

Even more amazing, Bill Russell, the incredible center for the late 50s and 1960s Boston Celtics, won 11 titles in just 13 seasons as a player. The Celtics of that era were so dominant that no other team is represented by players in the NBA who have won 8 or more titles. Second in the list is Sam Jones, who won 12 titles with the Celtics.

Among active players, Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher are the leaders. Both have won 5 titles with the Los Angeles Lakers, but both have played 15 seasons, meaning they are on the downside of their careers.

With (1) players going from team-to-team through free agency, (2) more rounds of playoffs, and (3) more specific scouting of teams and players by opponents, the odds of one player even playing in 11 NBA Finals would be an amazing accomplishment. Among players since the Celtics dynasty of the 1960s, only Robert Horry has won 7 titles, and even Michael Jordan only played in 6 Finals rounds.

Bonus: Russell was not considered a high recruit, so he went to the University of San Francisco. While there, he (of course) won two titles and also won a gold medal in the 1956 Olympics. So, Bill Russell won 14 basketball titles!

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33. Eric Gagne converts 84 consecutive save opportunities

 

Over a period of 23 months (2003-2004), The Dodger’s Eric Gagne converted 84 consecutive game opportunities.  In that same stretch all the other relievers in MLB combined to blow 969 saves! Incredibly, he totaled more saves (84) than he allowed hits (71). Strikeout-to-hit ratio: 207/71!  Strikeout-to-walk ratio: 207/34! He had streaks of 10 appearances and 8 appearances when he allowed no hits. At one point during the streak he struck out at least one hitter in 35 straight trips to the mound. His ERA was 0.82. He struck out 14.3 hitters per nine innings, and of the 23 runners he inherited in those games, none of them scored. But above all, most of his saves were one run saves. Crazy things happened to keep the streak alive. Shawn Green threw two runners out at the plate during the streak. And Dave Roberts went over the fence in Houston to rob Lance Berkman of a home run. (Help from Jayson Stark – ESPN.com).

–Jeremiah Tatum

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32. Jerry Rice’s 208 career touchdowns

 

Every so often, a player has 2 or 3 great seasons and we begin to think, “What’s that career TD record again?” Then, we see what it is, and we remember how great Jerry Rice really was.

How amazing is this record? Here are some facts:

• Only 20 players in NFL history have at least 100 total touchdowns. (If you are unfamiliar with the term “total touchdowns, this does not include quarterbacks. QBs have their own list of records. “Total touchdowns” are for rushing, receiving, and returns.)
• Only 1 player of those 20 is still an active player, and he is now a backup running back (LaDainian Tomlinson with 159).
• The difference between Rice and 2nd place, Emmitt Smith, is 33 TDs.

Rice will never be touched. As pass-happy as football has become in recent years, only Terrell Owens is within 50 touchdowns of Rice’s record (he was 49 behind). This is, truly, a remarkable number.

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31. Sam Crawford’s 309 career triples

 

Yes, this is a baseball record from yester-year, but this is still a ridiculous number. How far out is this number? Back in Crawford’s day, his number didn’t look all that amazing. After all, he is only the career leader by 12 triples over Ty Cobb, and there are several other players from that era (pre-1920) with 200 or more.

Since that era, though? There are very few. Among players who finished their career after World War 2, the leader is (dad, get ready to smile) Stan Musial, who finished just a bit behind Crawford’s 309. How far behind? Musial  hit 177, barely half of Crawford’s record.

Oddly, the current leader among active players is also named Crawford. Carl Crawford needs a few more three-baggers to catch his name’s sake. He has a grand total of 110 triples, good for a tie for (wait for it) 119th place, all time.

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All right, sport’s fans. We’ve done 20 spots on our list. What are your thoughts?

To read an introduction to the list, click here.

For numbers 50-46, click here.

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45. Brett Favre throws 336 career interceptions

While it sounds as though this is a bad record, it’s really not. Favre played for 20 seasons, in every game during those years, and threw the ball a lot during all those games. Naturally, INTs will add up. But the obvious factor in Favre’s pick-throwing prowess is that he was good enough to play all those years, games, and snaps. Favre’s INT % is actually a respectable 3.3%. That’s better than 22 Hall of Famers (including Jim Kelly, Roger Staubach, and Johnny Unitas). The closest active players to Favre’s record are Peyton Manning (198) and Manning’s current “fill-in,” Kerry Collins (196). Eli Manning (114) is the only active player with over 100 INTs under the age of 30. (The all-time low for career INT % is Green Bay’s current QB Aaron Rodgers at 1.9%.)

–Joey Sparks

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44. Oscar Swahn wins an Olympic athletic competition medal at age 72

Oscar Swahn was able to compete in more than one Olympiad, winning a total of 6 medals. It is his silver in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, though, that gets him on this list. Swahn, a Swede who competed in several shooting events, was 72 years of age when he finished second in something called “team 100 meter running deer, double shot.” Interestingly, when Swahn won two gold medals in the 1908 Olympics, he was 60 years of age, which was just 1 year younger than the oldest medalist at that time, so Swahn actually broke the record in 1912, then again in 1920.

Ridiculous Fact: This entry is called “athletic competition medal” because, from 1912 until 1952, there were also art competitions in the Olympics. A British man named John Copley, who competed in “engravings and etchings” in the 1948 London Olympics, won a silver medal at the age of 73.

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43. Hack Wilson’s 191-RBI season

I remember watching Juan Gonzalez hit two homers off of Randy Johnson on the last game before the All-Star break in 1998. This gave him 101 RBI. He finished the year with 157. In 1930, Hack Wilson had 191 RBI for the Chicago Cubs. He only played 155 games. He almost had as many RBI (191) as hits (208). Nobody has been close to his record in 81 years. The closest recently was Manny Ramirez (165) 1999.

Footnote: How good was he? They used to think he only had 190, but in 1999 they checked every box score and actually found one more – so apparently, Hack is still knocking them in!

–Jeremiah Tatum

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42. Ron Hunt takes 50 hit by pitches in one season

Technically, Hunt’s 50 HBPs is not the record. In 1896 Hughie Jennings was hit 51 times. However, in the modern era, when hitting became far more prominent, the hit by pitch became more rare.

Ron Hunt, of the Montreal Expos, was hit 50 times in 1971. To give you an idea of how far out this record is, the next-closest player since 1900 was Don Baylor, with 35 HBPs in 1986. So, whether you count Jennings or Hunt, this record is not going to be broken anytime soon.

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41. Wilt Chamberlain’s 55 rebounds in one NBA game

We did not include Chamberlain’s 100-point game, because, with the 3-point line being in place, that record could conceivable go down. However, to grab 55 rebounds in a single game? That will not happen again.

For several seasons, Chamberlain and Bill Russell went back and forth with the record, but Chamberlain is the only player in NBA history to top 50 rebounds in a single game. Since 1985, the most rebounds any player has ever grabbed was Charles Oakley’s 35-board effort in 1988. The most by an currently-active player was Kevin Love’s 31 in 2010.

Someone might bomb 3-pointers and get 101 points in a game. But to grab 56 rebounds in one game? Just not going to happen.

 

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Ten records down, 40 to go. What are your impressions so far?