Sports records that still boggle the mind
I've always loved playing sports, writing about sports and researching sports topics. I liked this story but couldn't find anyone who would publish it ... until I started my own Substack newspaper!
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for The American Conservative, showing how James Holzhauer completely re-wrote the way “Jeopardy!” had been played for five decades. In so-doing, he set prize-money records that might never be broken.
The “contrarian” or “outside-the-box” way Holzhauer set these records fascinated me. I was also fascinated by how much larger his winning margins were than the thousands of “Jeopardy” champions who came before him.
All of this got me thinking about the sports records and performances that were similarly stunning. I also started thinking about other sports contrarians who completely changed the way athletes in their sports did something.
I ended up doing a fair amount of research and wrote a story about “Great Sports Outliers.” Alas, nobody published my article. Since I now have my own Substack site, I can belatedly publish it now.
If you’re a sports fan - or are interested in stunning accomplishments that seemed impossible at the time - this article might interest you. If not, you might consider forwarding this to friends or family members who are sports history buffs.
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UPDATE: This article doesn’t mention one of the greatest record-book “outliers” of them all - our own Troy Trojans scoring 258 points in one college basketball game, a record that might also never be broken. I’m going to write a big story on that event in a future Citizen and included some details in today’s Reader Comment section.
By BILL RICE, JR.
Before being upset in his 33rd game by Emma Boettcher, James Holzhauer set at least 165 records on “Jeopardy!” The following vignettes present several “outlier” sports achievements and contrarian sports “pioneers” that might provide apt comparisons to “King James.”
James vs. Secretariat, Wilt, Beamon and Bolt …
When Holzhauer won $131,127 in his 10th “Jeopardy!” game, he surpassed the show’s previous one-game record of $77,000 by $54,127. This means the new record is 70.3 percent greater than the previous record, a record that had stood for almost nine years.
Four comparisons to iconic sporting achievements come to mind:
When Wilt Chamberlain set the all-time NBA record by scoring 100 points in a single game, he topped the previous record (78 points, owned by him) by 28.2 percent. The record, established in 1962, still holds 62 years later. Kobe Bryant’s 81 points in one game is now 2nd all-time.
When Secretariat won The Belmont by an amazing 31 lengths, he bested the previous record winning margin in a Triple Crown race (25 lengths) by six lengths - an improvement of 24 percent over the existing record.
Secretariat also beat the track record by two seconds (and finished 3 seconds in front of the runner-up). Secretariat still holds the record for fastest times at The Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont - all set in 1973, 51 years ago.
In a sport where horses typically win races by a few yards, feet or inches, Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont by an estimated 1/16th of a mile - 110 yards!
In the 1968 Olympics, Bob Beamon shattered the long-jump record by leaping 29 feet 2 1/2 inches, an improvement on the existing record of 21 2/3 inches.
Beamon’s record lasted for 23 years until Mike Powell soared 29 feet, 4 3/8 inches in 1991. Powell surpassed Beamon’s record leap by 1.85 inches. Powell’s new record has lasted 33 years.
Usain Bolt shattered his own world record in the 100-meter dash at a race in Berlin in 2009. Bolt covered the distance in a stunning 9.58 seconds, which was .11 seconds faster than his previous record of 9.69. Like Beamon, Bolt’s record surpassed previous record advancements by incredible proportions.
Other contrarians who revolutionized their sports …
Athletes who “revolutionized” the way athletes or contestants approached their own competitions (just as James Holzhauer did with his “maverick” strategy in “Jeopardy!”). Three examples:
Dick Fosbury - In the 1968 Summer Olympics, American Dick Fosbury was the only competitor to use the back-first “flop” method he had invented (now known as the “Fosbury Flop.”)
Four years later at the Berlin Olympics, 28 of 40 competitors used his revolutionary technique. Today, every high jumper uses the technique. It helped that Fosbury won the gold medal in 1968 with a jump of 7 feet 4 1/4 inches.
Pete Gogolak - Gogolak is credited as being the first “soccer style” kicker in college and the NFL. After a fine career at Cornell, the immigrant who grew up playing soccer in Hungary was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 1964. He had a 10-year-career in the NFL. His innovation revolutionized kicking.
The last “straight on” field goal in the NFL came in 1987 (by an “emergency” kicker). Today’s soccer-style NFL kickers convert 80 percent of their field goals. Before the innovation, straight on kickers were making less than 60 percent of their field goal tries.
The Great Kobayashi …
Takeru Kobayashi - Leave it to James to identify perhaps the best example of a contestant who immediately revolutionized what was thought possible in a “sport” by applying a few simple innovations.
“About a decade ago, nobody ever thought someone could eat more than, like, 25 hot dogs in ten minutes,” said Holzhauer in an interview with Vulture magazine. “But this guy named Takeru Kobayashi came along and he shattered the record by so much that people realized there was a new blueprint to do this.”
Through trial-and-error experimentation, the 130-pound Kobayashi discovered two or three innovations that allowed him to double the hot-dog record his first time out.
Once Kobayashi smashed the hot-dog record, his fellow competitors didn’t demand the rules be changed. They simply raised the level of their game. Today, an American once again holds the hot-dog-eating record - 72 wieners in 10 minutes - a record almost three times higher than the pre-Kobayashi record of 25.
The lesson is as obvious as Kobayashi’s bulging abdomen. When someone proves that performances once thought impossible are in fact easily obtainable, new levels of excellence become possible.
*** (Thank you for sharing with any sports history buffs/nerds you may know.) ***
Season-long record holders in the James ballpark …
Athletes who dominated over multiple seasons, or who dazzled sports fans with one “outlier” season include …
The Sultan of Swat
Babe Ruth’s single-season home run records stand alone when compared to the number of home runs hit by the player who finished in second place. In 1919, playing for the Red Sox, Ruth hit a then-amazing 29 dingers. Second place was 10 home runs. Ruth’s total exceeded second place by 65.52 percent.
The next season, playing for the Yankees, Ruth hit a mind-blowing 54 dingers. Second place was 19 homers.
Ruth led the Big Leagues in home runs 11 out of 14 years (1918 to 1931). In two of the years he wasn’t the home-run champ, he ranked second. In some seasons, Ruth hit more home runs than entire teams.
At some point, other baseball players started to figure out how to hit a lot of home runs too. When Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, his teammate Lou Gehrig was second in Major League Baseball with 47. By 1927, Ruth’s home-run total exceeded second place by “only” 21.7 percent.
Wilt the Stilt …
As “outliers” of their day, Babe Ruth’s home-run hitting prowess is perhaps only rivaled by Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring prowess . Chamberlain led the NBA in scoring in the 1961-62 season, averaging a record 50.4 points. The second highest scorer in the league that season was Walt Bellamy, who averaged 31.6 point/game. Chamberlain’s single-season scoring average was 37.3 percent higher than the next highest scorer.
Chamberlain also scored 70 or more points in a single game six times. Only five other NBA players have reached this point level in a single game, and none of these five did it more than once.
In the category “most points scored in a game,” Chamberlain holds six of the top 10 spots. As of this writing, Holzhauer holds 15 of the top 15 spots for “most money won in a single game” of “Jeopardy!”
Prior to Holzhauer, no contestant had won $80,000 in a single episode in the game’s history. James accomplished this 15 times in his first 27 games.
It’s like James averaged 100 points a game in basketball …
Pre-James, “Jeopardy’s!” single-game record for winnings was $77,000. Through 32 games, Holzhauer averaged just under $77,000 in winnings per game. A basketball analogy: It's like James not only scored 100 points in a single game (Wilt Chamberlain’s single-game record), but averaged 100 points over every game for an entire season.
Similar dominating runs or seasons …
Tiger Woods - Ranked No. 1 in the world in golf (at some point in a calendar year) 14 consecutive years. Woods’ reign of dominance spanned from 1997 into 2010. Five other golfers surpassed him as No. 1 player at different points in this run, but Tiger always climbed back on top.
Michael Jordan - His Airness led the NBA in scoring 10 out of 12 years (1987-1998). The two years Jordan didn’t lead the league he was either playing baseball for the AA Birmingham Barons or coming back to the NBA too late in the 1993 season to win the scoring title.
Absent his baseball sabbatical, Jordan very likely would have led the league in scoring 12 consecutive years.
Byron Nelson - Nelson won 11 consecutive PGA tournaments in 1945, a record that might never be broken. For the season, Nelson won 18 of the 30 tournaments he entered. He also won three of the first four tournaments he entered in 1946.
Ben Hogan won five of the six events he entered in 1953, including all three Majors in which he competed. Hogan’s smallest winning margin in his three Major victories was four strokes.
Jim Brown - No. 34 for the Browns led the NFL in rushing 8 out of the 9 years he played. No running back has come close to equalling this accomplishment. Four other running backs (Barry Sanders, Emmit Smith, Eric Dickerson and O.J. Simpson) led the league in rushing four years in a row.
Don Hutson - The NFL’s first great receiver (who played college ball at Alabama) led the league in receptions 8 out of 10 years, including five years in a row in the ‘30s and early ‘40s. No other receiver in NFL history has led the league in receiving more than three times.
John Stockton - The Utah Jazz point guard led the league in assists 9 straight years from 1988 through 1996.
Bob Cousy - Led the league in assists 8 consecutive seasons from 1953 to 1960.
Walter Johnson - Led the American League in strikeouts 8 years in a row and 12 out of 15 years between 1910 and 1924. Nolan Ryan led either the American or National League in strikeouts 10 times between 1973 and 1990 (18 seasons).
Mark McGuire - In 1998, McGuire not only broke Roger Maris’s famous record for home runs, he destroyed the record by nine dingers.
When McGuire hit 70 home runs in the 1998 season, he improved the record by 14.75 percent. The record had stood for 37 years. Barry Bonds topped McGuire’s record in 2001 by hitting 73 dingers - a 4.3 percent increase over the previous record.
We won’t mention the performance-enhancing-drugs potential asterisks (okay, we just did).
Bob Gibson - The Cardinals’ fireballer’s season-long ERA of 1.123 in 1968 is considered one of the most impressive pitcher performances in modern baseball history. It was the lowest ERA a pitcher had recorded since 1914.
In 1985, Dwight Gooden recorded an ERA of 1.58, which was .95 lower than the lowest ERA the season before (2.48). Gooden’s 1985 ERA was 36.3 percent lower than the low mark the prior season.
Ken Jennings is still the king here …
Ken Jennings’ record of winning 74 consecutive games on “Jeopardy!” might still be unreachable, and qualifies as an “outlier” of Ruthian proportions. Jennings, who is now the host of “Jeopardy!,” leads second-place Holzhauer by a canyon-sized 42 games.
The obvious sports comparison is Joe DiMaggio’s record of hitting safely in 56 consecutive games. DiMaggio broke the record previously set by Willie Keeler, who hit safely in 45 consecutive games.
Pete Rose also hit safely in 44 consecutive games in the 1978 season. DiMaggio’s record has stood for more than 80 years.
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(I appreciate everyone who may be able to support this Substack newspaper with a free or paid subscription).
I should have mentioned another record that will almost certainly never be broken - the 258 points that the Troy State basketball game scored against DeVry Institute in the 1991 season. I was sports editor for The Troy Messenger when Coach Maestri's team shocked the basketball world that Sunday afternoon.
I plan on doing at least one retrospective about that mind-blowing feat. I remember that Troy hit 51 (!) three-pointers in that game. Almost all the scoring came on either 3-point shots or dunks.
That record has stood for 33 years. No college team that I am aware of has even broken 200 points since then.
Cal Ripken Jr., and his consecutive games played streak seems very unlikely to be beat, let alone even be approached.