Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
January 12, 2001, Washington Post

Spinning Unbreakable Records

They say that records are made to be broken. And that's true. Most of the time.

No one thought Lou Gehrig's consecutive-game streak in baseball would be broken, but Cal Ripken topped it when he played in his 2,131st consecutive game a few years back.

But I do think there are some sports records that really won't be broken -- not in the year 2001 or ever.

Here are a few of the unbreakable feats:

• Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game. In 1962, center Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors (now the 76ers) set a National Basketball Association record by pouring in an unbelievable 100 points against the New York Knicks. No one has even come close to that mark. The most Michael Jordan ever scored was 69 points. Most teams don't even score 100 points in a game.

• Wayne Gretzky's 215-point season. Nowadays, any hockey player who scores 100 points (that's goals and assists) in a season is called a superstar. So, believe me, the Great Gretzky's record of 215 points in the 1985-86 season is safe. He was a magician at helping his teammates score goals. That season, he had 163 assists -- more than two per game.

• Goalie Glenn Hall's 502 consecutive-game streak. Want a hockey record that is even tougher to break than Gretzky's? From 1955 to 1962, goalie Glenn Hall played for the Detroit Red Wings and then for the Chicago Black Hawks without missing a game.

In nearly 40 years, no goalie (besides Hall) has played every game of even a single season. Hall's record spans more than six seasons.

• Margaret Court's 24 Grand Slam tennis titles. The biggest tournaments in tennis are Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens -- known as Grand Slams. Martina Navratilova (18 Grand Slam titles), Chris Evert (18) and Steffi Graf (22) have come close to Margaret Court's record, but the competition among female athletes, including tennis players, has become really fierce. Venus Williams may be bigger, faster and stronger than Court, but so are Williams's rivals. So chances are that Williams will not reach Court's 24 Grand Slam wins.

• Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. This is one of baseball's most famous records, made by one of the New York Yankees' most famous players. The "Yankee Clipper," as he was called, smacked at least one hit in 56 straight games in 1941. Even more amazing, after DiMaggio came up empty in his 57th game, he immediately started another 17-game streak. So, he was only one hit away from an even more unreachable 74-game streak.

Bigger gloves, better fielders and tougher relief pitchers are making it harder for anybody to get a hit in any game, much less 57 in a row.

Yeah, they say records are meant to be broken. But maybe they weren't thinking of these records.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company