by Bruce Bostwick

Created on: March 14, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Should it stay or should it go? It should stay especially if there are circumstances on obtaining the record in the first place. Look for instance just this past baseball season when Barry Bonds broke the record for the most Home Runs in a career. His total reigns at 762 and no one has signed him at all. Why would his fall into that category? Well, with the recent steroid scandal and pretty much everything going on in the baseball world, it sure would need to have one. An asterisk mainly serves as a tool to get some information regarding a record in tact. Take for instance, when Marris broke the single season record when it was 60 by one and it was done in a longer period of time, it was noted that Ruth's was during the 154 game schedule era. It pretty much separated the two records at the time until 1998 when the record was broken at a faster pace more so than Ruth's with Mark McGwire being the primary candidate.

In fact, look at the all-time Home Run Record set prior to Bonds with Hank Aaron breaking it at 755. When Ruth had the record, it was 714 under 154 game schedules and the question that would come to mind if add eight more games to each season, it's a wonder of how many would have been hit in a hypothetical approach. The point being is that it is something that can't go away. People have a right to know how the records were obtained if asked.

Let's talk about football shall we. Take for instance the New England Patriots made a perfect regular season at 16-0. The 1972 Dolphins went 14-0 and the schedule was slightly smaller but it does bring an interesting question. What if the 1972 Dolphins had two extra games added to their schedule at the time? Would they have gone 16-0 and ending the year at 19-0? Nobody will ever know as it is just going to be thrown into a what if machine.

Mainly this covers from recent history and also a little bit of past references with baseball and football. Major League Baseball is probably have to put an asterisk on everything the way it sounds with all this performance-enhancing drug usage. As far as football, the only problem they got are guys getting arrested it seems but that's another story. Keep it around especially if a record looks rather suspicious and the time frame of course of it being set.

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