INTRODUCTION

You hold in your hands a dangerous book. Not dangerous for you; dangerous for me. Baseball, more than any other sport, reveres it records and its record-holders, which makes writing a book like this a dicey enterprise. Debate is inevitable. Simply selecting which 100 baseball records to include was a challenge in itself, but to take the next step and rank them in order of importance was a real mind-bender. There is no magic formula to all of this, no sabermetric gymnastics one can perform to arrive at a bullet-proof answers. Strict objectivity is impossible. However, there are some criteria which I employed as guidelines: the historical importance of a record, its longevity, its margin of domination, its likelihood of being surpassed and its level of difficulty were all taken into consideration.

In choosing the records, I tried to limit the number that would fall under the title of “fantastic feats.” So stuff like Ed Reulbach’s 1906 iron-man feat of pitching two complete-game shutouts in a doubleheader is not included. Also missing is Bobo Holloman’s feat of pitching a no-hitter for the St. Louis Browns in his first start on May 6, 1953. Amazing? Certainly, especially since it was the only complete game that Holloman tossed in his entire major-league career, but not exactly a record.

I also steered clear of including records set before 1901, when the majors became a two-team league. Players accomplished some remarkable things in the early years of baseball, but the rules were quite different. Hoss Radbourn won 59 games and struck out 441 batters for the National League’s Providence Grays in 1884. And he did it in a 112-game schedule! Of course, the mound was only 50 feet from the plate and you needed six balls to get a walk. That was also the first year that overhand pitching was allowed. In 1887, Tip O’Neill batted .485 for the American Association’s St. Louis Browns, but then base on balls were counted as hits that year.

You will find Barry Bonds’s name attached to several records in the book. Because of his personality and because of his association with steroids, Bonds may be the most unpopular superstar in baseball history. But whether you like him or not, he still holds a number of prestigious milestones. In fact, many of baseball’s biggest records are now owned by suspected, or in some cases, confirmed cheaters. Besides Bonds, the roster includes Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Eric Gagné and Manny Ramirez. Of course, hundreds of other modern-day players have also tried to elevate their game with a chemical boost. If you scan the list of the majors’ top 25 home-run hitters in 2001, the season that Bonds blasted 73 into the seats, you will find that virtually all of them have been accused or proven to have used some type of performance-enhancing drugs. If Bonds was on the juice, he was certainly not alone.

You will also find a few record-holders in the book whose names may not be familiar, such as Ray Grimes, Chief Wilson, Jack Taylor and Earl Webb. Yet, they all hold significant records, and so this a welcome opportunity to shine a light on their overlooked exploits. On the flip side, some Hall of Famers who one might suspect to see in a book like this, do not appear. For example, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, George Brett and Mike Schmidt may have put up some remarkble stats, but none of them has a record that rates in the top 100.

But enough with the preamble, let’s start at the top.