Record

The official record is the tabulation of everything that has happened in a baseball game. It is captured in the boxscore compiled by the official scorer, and the cumulation of all of these boxscores constitute the season's official record or statistics. This comes from the verb "to record".

A record is also the best performance in a particular category. For example, the record for most home runs in a season in 73, set by Barry Bonds in 2001. Records are often a marker of excellence, and a player breaking a prestigious record is often a matter of great interest which receives significant attention from fans and the media. Examples of record-breaking performances receiving national media coverage well beyond the usual baseball circles include Pete Rose setting a new all-time hit record in 1985 or Cal Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig's record for most consecutive games played in 1995.

Some records are well-known and others can be quite obscure, sometimes only being discovered years after the fact by researchers poring over the statistical record. This was often the case for 19th century records, a famous example being Charles Radbourne's record for most pitching wins: there is still some dispute over whether he holds the record with 59, 60 or 61 wins, as the rules for attributing wins were fluid at the time, and the statistic was only of limited interest to contemporary fans. More recently, it was only realized after the fact that John Wehner had set a record for most consecutive errorless games at third base between 1992 and 2000 because he played multiple positions during the period and was rarely a starter, so no one payed particular attention to the fact he was compiling such a streak.

One particular category of records that has gathered a lot of interest is that of records that are considered "unbreakable". This is usually due to a fundamental change in how the game is played that means that the conditions now prevailing make it impossible for a player to duplicate a feat that was accomplished at a time the game was very different. For example most pitching records set in the 19th century, when teams had only two or three regular pitchers, who usually pitched complete games, are now impossible to reproduce; in many cases, there is both an all-time record and a "modern record" listed, the latter more reflective of current playing conditions. Other records considered unbreakable are due to the sheer magnificence of the performance in question. An example would be Ted Williams hitting .406 in 1941 (which is not stricto sensu a record). In these cases, however, observers have often overestimated how unbreakable a record can be: for years, reporters would routinely say that Gehrig's consecutive games played record was unbreakable - until Ripken exceeded it!

Further Reading

• Douglas Jordan: ""That Record Will Never Be Broken!": How Many 'Unbreakable' Records Are There?", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 44, Number 2 (Fall 2015), pp. 15-24.
• Matt Kelly: "17 'unbreakable' baseball records", mlb.com, June 15, 2018. [1]
• Chris Landers: "Seven unbreakable MLB records you probably haven't heard of before", "Cut4", mlb.com, December 15, 2017. [2]
• David Nemec: Great Baseball Feats, Facts & Firsts, Signet, New York, NY, many editions.
• Lyle Spatz, ed.: The SABR Baseball List & Record Book: Baseball's Most Fascinating Records and Unusual Statistics, Society for American Baseball Research, Scribner, New York, NY, 2007.