Are sports’ most sacred records safe for now? YEA: Reality check proves records secure

When you want to recognize someone for standing head and shoulders above the rest of us mortals, one good way to do it is with a statue. Thus Paul Revere riding past the Old North Church ? Jackie Robinson outside Le Stade Olympique in Montreal ? and John Harvard, the brains behind the college, in Cambridge (though the statue ain’t really Johnny H. – ask an undergrad for details).It was particularly apt to create the statue of Ted Williams that stands near Fenway Park. For Williams – who homered in his final at-bat for the Red Sox 50 years ago yesterday – was mythic in stature, not just for baseball but sports in general. His achievements were Bunyanesque: a .344 lifetime average ? 521 career home runs ? and, most notably, a .406 average in 1941, which remains the last time a major-leaguer has hit over .400 for a season.Williams’ achievements rank him right up there on the pedestal of achievement in sports with fellow greats like George Blanda in football (who died at 83 on Monday), Wilt Chamberlain in basketball and Wayne Gretzky in hockey. And given the state of sports today, it is unlikely that anyone will surpass these greats on the podium anytime soon, based on three factors: the big business of sports, increased media scrutiny and a shift in how players are evaluated by GMs and fans.Sports today are a much bigger business than they ever were in Williams’ day, and with millions of dollars at stake, team owners and general managers are pressuring players to devote their lives to their profession. In his spare time, Williams was an expert fisherman, but it is difficult to imagine his counterparts today having spare time at all with the endless training camps, exhibition games and (if they’re lucky) round after round of playoff matchups (those who did find a way to have fun include our beloved Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens). All of this extra time puts a drain on the body, provides more chances for injury and generally contributes to physical attrition not conducive to athletic excellence.As such, when athletes and teams try to break records, they do it on the cheap, i.e., illegally. When Williams retired from the game in 1960, baseball’s single-season home run leader and career home run leader were the same man: George Herman “Babe” Ruth. Roger Maris broke the Bambino’s single-season mark (a year later, in 1961) ? and Hank Aaron surpassed the Babe on the career list. Decades passed. Then, in the nineties and aughts, the records came crashing down thanks to Messrs. Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds. However, due to the steroid charges against Big Mac and Barry, baseball’s reputation also came crashing down. It would be reasonable to suppose players are wary of standing out too much and inviting scrutiny from Williams’ old enemy, the sports media. Similarly, in the wake of Spygate, it doesn’t seem that too many NFL coaches would try to break the 1972 Dolphins’ perfect record like Bill “Prometheus” Belichick did in 2007.Lastly, and most unfortunately, fans don’t seem as interested in the records that greats like Ted, George, Wilt and Wayne once set in such basic categories as batting average and points scored. Their interests are, shall we say, more nuanced, and this dovetails with the interests of the general managers who put together rosters. What fans and GMs are looking for are players whose strengths are not found in “basic” categories, but rather in more amorphous ones with charming alphabet-soup-style names: OPS, GIDP, WHIP, IHOP, TGIF. In the future, we may breathlessly follow “The Great OPS Chase” on the sports pages to see who can set a new record in this category. Call it the Billy Beanification of sports.It would be wonderful to see a contemporary player join Williams and his fellow stars in the sports pantheon someday. But with the world of sports ever more embracing fantasy-league stats at the expense of real-life mythological players, this doesn’t sound like a reality.Rich Tenorio is The Item’s sports copy editor.