Last week, I mentioned that baseball was the only professional sport in this country for nearly 100 years and in that time many fans developed a love for the game's statistics.
Some of the hallowed stats from that time were Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in 1927 and Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak in 1938. Also during that period of baseball's glory, Ted Williams was the last player to hit .400 in 1941, just before the players were called into the service of their country for World War II. Most of them were out of the game four years.
When our national pastime returned to normal, pro football and basketball had arrived on the scene as competition after a rather slow start. Baseball, however, still had some glory days ahead.
Donny McLain became the last pitcher to win more than 30 games when he led the Detroit Tigers to the world championship in 1961 over the St. Louis Cardinals. In just a few years, he would be in prison facing a far tougher foe that the great Bob Gibson was.
The 60s also produced strikeout records by the greatest pitcher I ever saw, Sandy Koufax. He struck out 15 Yankees in a World Series game I will never forget. I hired a substitute teacher and watched the game on a big color TV at the old Morganton Hardware. Koufax retired at 33.
One of the all-time great records in any sport is Cal Ripken's record of 2,632 games played from 1982 through 1998 as a Baltimore Oriole. I believe this record, along with DiMaggio's hitting streak, will never be broken.
As a Yankees fan, I enjoyed two other record-breaking performances. Mickey Mantle hit a baseball over 500 feet. This hit was considered by many insiders as the longest hit ever.
The other unforgettable performance was from Reggie Jackson, when he hit three home runs in one World Series game in 1977. Reggie was an unlikely Yankee hero, but in his few short years in New York, her performed so well, he earned the tag "Mr. October." This is pretty remarkable for someone following Ruth, DiMaggio and Mantle on the winningest team of all time.
The greatest record of them all in this grand ole game may very well belong to the Yankees as a team. They have won far more American League pennants (39) and World Series titles (26) than any other team.
I think the greatest player in the game today is Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals. He started hitting a baseball like few others have right from the start. In his senior year of high school, opposing teams walked him 55 times in his 88 at bats.
In the 33 at bats he had left, he hit eight home runs, one of which traveled 450 feet. His rookie season with the Cardinals was like few others have ever had. He hit .329 with 47 doubles, 37 home runs, 130 RBI and 112 runs scored.
Because of those great stats, however, Pujols is playing under a cloud of suspicion because of admitted steroid use by other players. He denies any use of performance-enhancing drugs. I'm going to write more about him soon.
Father's Day
I read two great quotes on Fathers Day. Tiger Woods was asked what he was thinking while he was contemplating a certain shot. He replied that he was listening to his late Pop.
Retief Goosen, a two-time U.S. Open golf champion, was asked why he wasn't playing in tournaments anymore. He said there will always be golf tournaments but he will never get another chance to be with his children.
Roy Waters is a sports columnist for The News Herald. Waters was baseball and basketball coach at Salem High School from 1955-66, where his teams won 18 championships. In 2007, he was inducted into the Burke County Sports Hall of Fame.
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