by Ryan Gray

Created on: February 06, 2010

With all of the talk about performance-enhancing drugs and rule breakers these days, there has been more than one call for asterisks in the baseball record book.

But there won't be any reason for that when it comes to these records. They are the ones that will never be broken, so no changes are necessary.

There are two pitching records held by the same man that are in a dead heat for “hardest record to break”. When you have an award named after you, that signifies that you have done something special.

Cy Young holds the record for career pitching wins with 511. The active leader, Jamie Moyer, is more than 250 wins behind.

Many “experts” insisted that Randy Johnson was the last 300-game winner anyone would ever see. With five-man rotations and starters coming out of games earlier all the time, it is much harder to pile up victories.

Johnson is now retired and won't be winning any more games, so that means Cy's record is secure forever.

Cy Young is also the career leader in complete games with 749. No active pitcher has even reached 60. Bullpens are a huge part of the game these days, so starters rarely go the distance. That means Cy's other record is also secure.

As for the “hardest record to break” for hitters, that title has already been stolen by Rickey Henderson. The career stolen bases leader with 1,406, Henderson will never have to worry about traveling to a stadium to watch anyone break his record.

That's because the active leader in steals, Juan Pierre, has 459 – almost 1,000 fewer than Rickey. As was usually the case when Rickey was on the bases, there is no way they can catch him.

Another offensive record that will be very tough to break is the single-season total for Runs Batted In.

Hack Wilson drove in 191 runs in 1930, and the closest any hitter has come to that mark in the past 60 years was the 165 RBI by Manny Ramirez in 1999.

That was perhaps the most surprising statistic of this study. With all the talk about the “Steroids Era” and about how today's game is built around offense, it seems that hitters drive in runs by the bunches.

Further investigation revealed that although no individual has piled up a huge RBI total, the number of players who have driven in more than 100 runs has steadily increased in recent years.

In addition to Cy Young's untouchable marks on the mound, there is one other pitching record that is likely to stay in place for a long time – if not forever.

Nolan Ryan recorded 5,714 strikeouts during his Hall of Fame career, and that remarkable accomplishment put some distance between him and the rest of the pack.

Johnson finished his career with almost 4,900 K's and is in second-place all-time. But the active leader, Pedro Martinez, is more than 2,500 strikeouts behind the leader. In other words, the Ryan Express is out of harm's way.

It is likely that some of the baseball records in place today will stay where they are for a very long time. But while each of them is likely to be broken at some point in the future, the records mentioned here are sure to remain in place until the final pitch is thrown.

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