Records and Asterisks
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
The quintessential asterisked record was Roger Maris’s single-season home run record. In 1961 he broke by one Babe Ruth’s longstanding record of 60, but in a season that was eight games longer. Whether the asterisk was real, metaphorical, or not deemed relevant depended on which reference you consulted. Maris’s record stood until Mark McGwire (in a race with Sammy Sosa) hit 70 in 1998. Barry Bonds, the current record holder, hit 73 in 2001. In the steroids era, Bonds’s single-season and lifetime home run records face the asterisk, as McGwire’s single-season record would have, had it not been superceded; as it was, the home-run prowess of McGwire and Sosa came under heavy suspicion in 1998. And then there’s Roger Clemens…. None of this is news. Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver notes in the August 1 New York Times that “players in a previous era used amphetamines to get an advantage.” Surprisingly, Guinness World Records 2009 (I’m looking at my paperback edition) does not even list the single-season home run record, although it does cite Bonds’s career home-run record and several less-than-iconic home run records (oldest player to hit a home run, most home runs by a player under one manager, etc.). You will have no trouble locating the longest distance traveled underwater by pogo stick.
Forty-three world records have just been set at the World Swimming Championships in Rome, most due no doubt to the especially buoyant polyurethane suits that will be banned starting January 1. In the swimming world, there is as much controversy over records set in these suits as there is in the baseball world over records set in the steroid era. Swimming has had its own drug scandals, going back to the East German women swimmers of the 1970s. As a former competitive swimmer, I know that changes in training, swim gear, pool technology, and the rules have always affected some swimmers disproportionately. When swimmers began to use goggles in training, they could train for more hours in chlorinated pools. Weight training provided strength advantages to swimmers that were unknown decades earlier. Some pools are simply faster due to superior gutter and lane-line technology. And changing rules about legal starts, turns, and strokes translate to faster or slower times in different eras. I remember when the butterfly stroke could be done with a frog kick or a dolphin kick (the latter won out). There are rules for the point by which a backstroker or breaststroker must surface after a start. And there was a time, not so very long ago, when top swimmers had to be (at least technically speaking) amateurs.
Is there any sport immune to the dreaded asterisk? Seriously, I want to know.
Finally, the June 14 New York Times Book Review reported that James Patterson “now holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Entries on the New York Times Best-Seller List.’ Patterson, working alone and with co-conspirators, has sent a whopping 45 books onto the list.” I am glad that the reporter, Jennifer Schuessler, appended her own sort of asterisk with the “co-conspirators” comment. How many bestsellers has Patterson written alone? Seriously, I am not that interested.
