Untouchable Baseball Records

Records, especially baseball records, are made to be broken, but there are some baseball records that will never come close to being topped. Everyone immediately thinks of Joe DiMaggio's baseball record 56 game hitting streak when the sport's benchmarks are discussed, but that baseball record is child's play compared to some of the others that have been standing the test of time. Pete Rose came relatively close to Joltin' Joe's most cherished of baseball records with his own 44 game stretch, but the baseball records that I am talking about will never be approached as closely as Rose eventually got to DiMaggio.

Let's start off with a pair of baseball records that Pete Rose does own, a pair that will live long after he is gone and the debate whether he should be in the Hall of Fame has died down. They are the two baseball records that help to make him a Cooperstown candidate to begin with; Rose's 4,256 base hits and his 3,215 singles. Neither of these baseball records is in jeopardy, ever. To accumulate that many hits, a player would have to average 200 hits for over 21 years. Rose himself played 24 seasons, and had 200 or more hits ten times while setting his extraordinary baseball records. He needed to play to age 44 to finally surpass Ty Cobb's baseball record of 4,189 base hits. The closest active player right now on the all-time hits list is 39 year old Craig Biggio of the Houston Astros. He has over 2,800 hits, still seven full seasons of 200 hits a year from the baseball record! As Rose piled up the hits, the singles mark was passed; Cobb also lost this baseball record to Charlie Hustle. To show how far out of reach the singles record is, the only player active since 1965 with more than 2,400 singles was Rod Carew, who smacked 2,404 of them, still 800 short of the baseball record. By the way, Rose also holds another baseball record that will not be touched, his 14, 053 total at bats. Biggio is the only active player with more than 9900, and would need to play about eight and a half seasons to top Rose.