Sports Records

Celebrity gossip reporter, Perez Hilton, posted on his website that Alex Rodriguez broke a home run world record on Wednesday afternoon. (Sorry, I thought Perez Hilton breaking the A-Rod story is funnier and more entertaining then Peter Gammons doing so.)

Derek Jeter is a first ballot Hall Of Famer. There is no evidence that Jeter is even interested in the hit record. However, if he averages 188 hits per season for the next nine seasons (including this one), he can pull it off.

Jeter is ahead of Rose's pace now. It would be fun to watch someone challenge a great record like this. It also would be nice if the hit king was eligible to be inducted into the Hall Of Fame.

Here is why it won't happen.

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Sept. 11, 2009 will be a day to go down in the history books for the Yankees and the entire MLB.

This is because it is the day that Derek Jeter broke the Yankees' all-time hitting record. Jeter surpassed Yankee legend Lou Gehrig to become the Bombers' career hit king.

He tied the Iron Horse on Wednesday, Sept. 9, against the Tampa Bay Rays. After an off-day on Thursday, the Yanks began their series against the Baltimore Orioles.

I'm not trying to demean or diminish his accomplishment, I'm just saying that while Derek Jeter may have passed the immortal Iron Horse for career hits as a Yankee, he has a long way to go to catch Gehrig in terms of getting on base.

And shouldn't the ultimate goal for every hitter be to get on base?

With Gary Sheffield's 500th career home run last night at the new Citi Field, Sheff entered a group that includes only 24 other men - quite a feat considering the hundreds and hundreds that have played major league baseball.

It got us to thinking about what other baseball milestone could be achieved this season. By the way, props to Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye for not only hitting their 300th career home runs but doing it back-to-back. Now that is pretty awesome.

On Sept. 13, 2008, Rodriguez broke Bobby Thigpen's saves record for a single season with 58. The following day, I jumped onto YouTube to watch a video of the record-breaking moment and couldn't help but look at some of the comments people had written.

Many of the comments were along the lines of, "K-Rod is the best closer in Major League Baseball." As a huge Joe Nathan fan, I was a little ticked off. I rattled in my head a number of players who I thought were better, such as: Joe Nathan, Jonathan Papelbon, Mariano Rivera, Brad Lidge, and Joakim Soria.