Eddie Collins and Tom Glavine

[Ytown Tribe fan]

Bored, I was going through career batting records, trying to find the most nearly unbreakable one. This has been done many times on this and other forums, but I tried a slightly different tack: I based my study on the percentage that the all-time record exceeded that of the current active leader.

Eddie Collins holds the all-time record for career sacrifice hits, with 512. The active leader (through 2002) is Tom Glavine, with 168. Omar Vizquel is second with 160. That means that Glavine would have to triple his career total to even come close to Collins.

This percentage gap exceeds nearly every batting record I could find and is dramatically affected by fundamental changes in the game.

Other records gaps exceed that percentage but are not so affected.

For example, Sam Crawford's 309 triples are not being approached by any active player. Only Steve Finley is even close to triple digits, with 98 (through the 2002 season). But a player COULD hit, say, 15-20 triples in a season over 15 seasons and exceed 200 in his career.

Not so with sac hits, unless small-ball makes a really big comeback.

[JamesI]

Interesting. Of course career sac hits is not a record likely to excite, well anyone.

[SmedIndy]

No one's going to touch Kilroy's K record either, unless Russ Branyan is cloned and is in an entire AL lineup.

[pathogan]

Originally posted by JamesI
Interesting. Of course career sac hits is not a record likely to excite, well anyone.