A pitcher collecting 300 career wins is an extremely rare feat. In fact, I would rank it as the second rarest feat in sports. No hitters? 256 of those. Cycles? Hundreds. 6 Hit Games? 50+. Even 4 strike-out innings are more common. There are 24 members of the 300 club. Only perfect games, 16 ever, are more rare. A pitcher attaining his 300th win is the cherry on top of a stellar, stellar career.
Yet, I feel that baseball fans hmm-ed and haww-ed at Randy Johnson’s accomplishment. Yawn, yawn. I’m not judging, just observing, but the enthusiasm for a rare and momentous was just not there. I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafeal Palmeiro, and Barry Bonds. We have become unimpressed by players achieving historic feats. Single season home run record? We’ve seen that broken twice in the last 10 years. Career home run record? Check. 500 HR club? In a big way. There are 23 members of the 500 HR club. Nine of them were active 5 years ago.
Sadly, some of these records and achievements have begun to loose their shine. Hopefully when the next 300 game winner comes around, and yes, there will be another, we will be more appreciative of the moment.
Bloggged The Records and AChievement Don’t Mean What They Once Did: – http://tinyurl.com/p7tulc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Bloggged The Records and AChievement Don’t Mean What They Once Did: – http://tinyurl.com/p7tulc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Bloggged The Records and Achievements Don’t Mean What They Once Did: – http://tinyurl.com/p7tulc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Bloggged The Records and Achievements Don’t Mean What They Once Did: – http://tinyurl.com/p7tulc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
I think your comparison of a career achievement to a single game or single season is unfair. Hundreds of players have the opportunity to do it on a regular basis if it’s a once-and-done thing like a perfect game. But winning 300 games is a different kind of great. Two completely different ballparks.
One reason that the feat is unexciting to lots ofis that a lot of the people who achieve aren’t the superstar, larger than life type. Except for a few of the group, nobody comes close to glory and fame of the big power hitters. Also, so many of the wins record holders are from waaay back in the day. Nobody recognizes the names. Who cares if Randy Johnson passes Mickey Welch (300th win: 1890) in career wins? Big whoop.
The final, and biggest reason, that nobody is getting pumped up is that career wins just isn’t that glorious. It’s not even really an individual feat, unlike something such as strikeouts. And the rules for getting a win aren’t as immediate or as thrilling as the rules for getting a home run. Just knock it out of the park.
It’s not the selectiveness of the record. It’s the lack of thrill and immediate glory in the stat.
I agree that comparing single game feats may not be the fairest comparison, but I think that the reason career achievements aren’t celebrated is that many times it is a forgone conclusion that the player is going to achieve the milestone; many times single-season feats have the same inevitability come July or August. It was pretty clear KRod was going to break the single season saves record from late July on, and thus it wasn’t a particularly celebrated feat either. But overall I still think that the combination of all of the records set in the last ten years, along with how quickly news gets stale these days, leads to much less appreciation for these achievements that back in the day.