Longest-Evity

“Sixty!” Babe Ruth chortled after belting his then-unfathomable 60th home run of the 1927 season. “Count ‘em, sixty! Let’s see some other SOB match that!”

The Babe, of course, has had his bet called and then some, as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa remind us every time they step into the batter’s box. “Sixty” has been matched and surpassed, first in 1961 by Roger Maris. Now, it has been reduced to a virtual grease spot in 1998 by a double-barreled, long-ball barrage that has yet to relent.

The Babe miscalculated, but then again, what did he know about androstenedione or creatine or any other muscle-building supplement beyond his nightly steak-and-stein dinner? How could he have predicted the effect expansion would have on major-league pitching, or that one day they’d be playing big league baseball a mile above sea level, or that the Florida Marlins would be allowed to continue sending amateur arsonists to the mound every day?

Babe’s words didn’t stand the test of time, or pharmaceutical innovation, but they still apply today, the day Cal Ripken sets out to begin a new consecutive games streak:

Two thousand six hundred and thirty two!

Count ‘em, 2,632!

Let’s see some other SOB match that!

Mission impossible has just been given a number, and baseball will be waiting a long, long time--can you say forever?--to see this ticket punched.

Ripken took Lou Gehrig’s supposedly unbreakable record of 2,130 consecutive games played and broke it by three years. Now you want to see if someone can catch Ripken?

Gentlemen, start your engines.

Keep running for the next 16 1/4 seasons, day in, day out.

Check back around May 2015.

Ripken’s 2,632 is now in the book alongside the few other baseball untouchables: Cy Young’s 511 victories, Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits and Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 strikeouts.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak is often cited as The Record, the Mount Everest of all statistical sporting achievement. But, as a concept, hitting safely in 56 consecutive games is something that can be pictured in the mind’s eye. Rose toyed with the imagination in the 1980s when he hit safely in 44 consecutive games, falling 12 short.

Twelve games.

One long homestand.

It is unlikely, it is almost other-worldly, but it is conceivable.

Not so with Ripken’s 2,632. Not in the present-day environment of resting a tired hamstring to prepare for the free-agent contract stretch run. Not with the current ballplayer’s mentality of getting mine and getting out. How many big league careers even last 16 years any more? To catch Ripken, you’d have to play all 16 and change . . . and not take one day off for a twisted ankle, a hangover, a flu siege, a bad connection in Dallas.

It is off the charts, the same way Young’s 511 career victories are. (To break it: Win 26 games a season for 20 seasons.).

Or Rose’s 4,256 lifetime hits. (Average 205 hits a season for 21 seasons.).

Or Ryan’s 5,714 career strikeouts. (Fan 301 hitters a season for 19 consecutive seasons.).

As Rose himself has conceded, when it comes to longevity records in baseball, “Ripken’s will be the last.”

Even Hank Aaron’s career standard of 755 home runs--41 more than Ruth’s, well, Ruthian record of 714--looks tame when contrasted with Ripken’s streak. McGwire may be 35, but suppose he begins cranking out 50 home runs a season by force of habit and plays as long as Aaron did. He’d have a shot. What about Ken Griffey Jr., still only 28? Or the next generation of major leaguers, now in their pre-teens transfixed by the McGwire-Sosa homer derby, driven already to the weight room and extra batting practice to determine just what’s possible?

Ripken’s streak looks as durable as any in professional sports.

Wilt Chamberlain once scored 100 points in a single basketball game, but suppose the NBA expands again--assuming it plays again--and Shaquille O’Neal gets really focused one night. Say Kobe Bryant passes him the ball every time down the floor, in the clinical pursuit of science.

Those 100 points are vulnerable.

How about Johnny Unitas’ streak of 47 consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass?

Put Brett Favre in the NFC West and it could happen. Give him a steady diet of Rams’, Saints’ and Falcons’ cornerbacks. Or maybe Mark Brunell.

(Question: Why hasn’t Steve Young already made a serious run at this one?)

Byron Nelson’s 11 consecutive victories, Sam Snead’s 81 career triumphs and Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major championships are the Holy Trinity of golf, but Tiger Woods is still a pup.

Rod Laver’s two tennis Grand Slams seem chiseled in stone--Pete Sampras’ boat appears to flounder each year at the French Open--but who knows what future prodigy might suddenly grab a racket and master the coming Titanium Age?

Ripken is right there with hockey’s Wayne Gretzky, up to 885 goals, 1,910 assists, 2,795 points . . . and counting. Ripken’s streak is the individual equivalent of UCLA’s 88-game winning streak in college basketball and Oklahoma’s 47-game winning streak in college football--except UCLA needed parts of four seasons to get the job done and Oklahoma can be had with four perfect seasons in a row.

To get to Ripken will take 16 seasons of the full 162. Then play 40 games more.

In the sporting dictionary, that is as good a working definition of unbreakable as you’re likely to find.