ANDREWS AFB, Md. –
Editor's Note: This article is the second of a five part series counting down the 10 most unbreakable records in sports from 10 to 1.
8. Barry Bonds single season home run record - Barry Bonds captivated the baseball world in the summer of 2001 by hitting 73 homeruns, breaking Mark McGwire's three-year mark of 70. So let's just cut to the chase - this record will never be broken, not to say that it will always be acknowledged as the single season mark. I'll get to that.
Baseball's image has taken a beating the past few years and Bonds, along with the other misfits McGwire, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez, etc., are the main reason. Once baseball made cleaning up its act a top priority, many baseball observers wondered how that would affect on field performance. Baseball fans wondered if the recently set marks of Bonds could ever be challenged by "clean" players. I feel that question has been answered.
Since Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001, a player has hit more than 50 homers only seven times, with nobody hitting more than 58. To put that into perspective, in the four seasons leading up to Bonds' 73 homer campaign, players topped 50 homers 11 times - six of which finished with 60 or more.
The game is different now. Ryan Howard is arguably the best pure power hitter in baseball right now. He also is fortunate enough to play in a hitter's ballpark and be in a good lineup to protect him from getting intentionally walked an obscene amount of times. With that being said, if everything went his way for a single season, Howard could probably crack 60; 13 short of Bonds' record.
Perhaps some time down the road, the records will go back to their rightful owners (Maris-61 and Aaron-755), but, until then, Bonds has the record, and an unbreakable one at that.
7. John Stockton 15,806 career assists - Please excuse my brain freeze in last week's column where I said Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game would be here. I forgot to listen to two of my own guidelines for formulating this list which were "no single game marks" (eliminates Wilt's record-100 point game and also his 55 rebound game), and each record would have to be from the "modern era of the respective sport." This eliminates his record 50.4 points per game in a season which occurred prior to the ABA-NBA merger in 1976.
Here's my case for why John Stockton's assist record will stand the test of time: Longevity.
Last year, only two point guards in the NBA averaged more than 10 assists per game. They were Chris Paul and Deron Williams; two of the best young guards in the league. They are both off to great starts to their respective careers, but would it surprise you that in order to pass Stockton, they'd each have to keep up that same 10 assists per game average for the next 15 seasons without missing a single game?
Stockton played 19 seasons in the NBA, and, during that time, missed a grand total of 22 games. That amazing ability to stay on the court and produce consistent numbers for such a long period of time is the main reason why no active point guard will break his record.
Also, let's be honest, playing 18 seasons with the second leading scorer in NBA history, Karl Malone, didn't exactly hurt Stockton's cause. No elite young point guard in the league right now has a teammate with the potential to be a dominant scorer like Malone.
The series will take a break for a week and continue July 24 with #6, Nolan Ryan's career strikeouts; and #5, Bruce Smith's career sacks.