Cy Young – 511 wins. A pitcher would have to win 20 games a year for 25 seasons to do this… and he’d still be 11 short. And you have to do it for 25 years to catch Cy Young.
Cy Young – 749 complete games. Due to the drastically changed way in which MLB pitchers are now used, with all the substitutions, relief pitchers, and pitch counts, I will even go so far as to say that, as the game now is, this record is completely impossible to break. Doubt it? Then think about this: the current MLB leader in career complete games is Justin Verlander. Uh…he has 25.
Cal Ripken – 2,632 consecutive games played streak. With today’s pampered and coddled players and the big money invested in them, I don’t see anyone playing all 162 games in 16+ seasons straight.
Nolan Ryan – 5,714 strikeouts. No way anyone touches this record with pitch counts and the babying of starters today.
Rickey Henderson – 1,406 stolen bases.
Jerry Rice – 22,895 yards receiving; 197 receiving touchdowns.
Jim Brown – 8 rushing titles (in nine years). Barry Sanders, Emmitt and Payton also had eight… combined.
Wilt Chamberlain – 50.4 points per game in the 1961–62 season. The closest was Michael Jordan’s 37.1 PPG in the 1986–87 season.
Bill Russell – 11 NBA Championships
Boston Celtics – 8 straight NBA championship. With 30 teams in the league, and the era of free agency and salary cap, winning 2 or 3 in a row is hard enough.
Wayne Gretzky – 2,857 career points. 894 career goals. 92 goals and 212 points in 1981–82. 1.92 points per game.
John Wooden – 7 consecutive NCAA men’s basketball national championship.
Leicester City – Winning the English Premier League title in the 2015–16 season as a 5000–1 long shot. After that season, the highest odds to win EPL offered by the British sports book is 1000–1.
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.