05/31/07: DiMaggio's record will likely never be broken

It is in fact the record in all of sports that is least likely to ever be broken. The amount of luck required for something like that to happen boggles the mind. I'm still not sure why nobody's broken .400, though -- frankly, I wish Tony Gwynn would just unretire himself and go hit .400 already. I suppose if you want to argue that pitching's gotten better since the days of Ty Cobb and Ted Williams, then it becomes a little more difficult to explain how dudes from Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson and Hank Aaron to Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and the eventual all-time homerun champion Alex "Stray-Rod" Rodriguez all hit far more homers during their career or certain periods of their career than the guys (except Ruth and Williams) from the .400 era. It ain't all steroids!

I'm not worried about Bonds breaking the record, which is really just a longevity thing. If A-Rod doesn't get beaten so badly he can't hit anymore by some stripper, he'll break the record before he retires, probably by a mile. And Mark McGuire hadn't wimped out, he would have broken it already (he could still hit 30-40 homeruns a year at the time he retired). I will say though that what Bonds has accomplished at his age, steroids or not, has mostly been pretty impressive. A-Rod will have a significant age advantage on Bonds.

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