Records are meant to be broken...sometimes.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

I started the morning by trying to a little hiking in the Metroparks. The snow was beginning to melt, but there was still 8-10 inches on the snow and a swamp beneath it. I tried climbing one ridge behind Squire’s Castle, but found myself slipping back on the saturated earth/mud just beneath the snow cover. It was pretty miserable hiking, but I kept at it until Jack called to tell me he needed to be picked up.

I came home and put an hour on the bike while watching a video on Baseball’s most unbreakable records. Baseball, unlike the three other major professional sports, is a game of statistics and its records are sacred. Like any records though…they are made to be broken though some, like Babe Ruth’s single season home run record of 60, was thought of so passionately by Major League Baseball that when Roger Maris broke it in 1961, baseball’s commissioner attached an asterisk to his new record because Maris had the advantage of playing in a regular season made up of 162 games, 8 more than the 154 Ruth had played in. Maris’ record breaking homer came in game 162…the last of the season (by the way…one of the great sports movies of all time is Roger’s 1961 season and the pursuit of this fabled record called simply “61”. Non-baseball/sports fans can enjoy it, too, as it is a great story about stress, society, the pressures of the press and the issues of challenging an American icon).

Roger Clemens…now tainted by the steroid scandal…narrates. The program was filmed in 2006…before he and Barry Bonds, among others, came tumbling down from their steroid inflated baseball statistical heights. It’s a great program for baseball purist and the top ten picks were selected by current and former major league players, some in the Hall of Fame, as well as managers and members of the news media. I don’t have an argument with any of their choices, though we disagree on the record most unlikely to be broken. The program identifies Cal Ripken’s incredible consecutive games played streak – 2632, where I’ve selected Cy Young’s 511 wins. I know it is unlikely that anyone will again be so good, injury-free, and have such longevity as to challenge Cal’s record, but it could happen. Cy Young’s record, on the other hand, is safe unless the way the game is played is changed. Pitchers no longer start 50 games a year. Pitching rotations are made up of 5-man rosters, not 4 as in Cy’s day…thus negating the chance to pitch in enough games to challenge his record. We’ll be lucky to see pitchers winning 300 games of the course of their careers in the future. Anyway…great program and it kept me going for an hour.

Our neighbors were having a pre-St. Patrick’s Day feast, but we couldn’t get over because of our own Sunday night family dinner. They stopped by after though, and brought us some fantastic soda bread, which I smothered in butter. I’d already eaten too much for the day and didn’t need the additional calories…but what the hell. They also informed me that the giant buck with the rack to die for still has his antlers. They’d seen him in their back yard earlier in the day. Looks like I’ve got some more neighborhood prowling to do.

Hike duration: 45 minutes. Bike duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 90 bpm hiking, 130 bpm biking.
Calories burned during workout: 225 hiking. 900 biking.