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| The List: Greatest individual streaks By Jeff Merron Page 2 staff | ||
Lance Armstrong has won his fifth consecutive Tour de France to tie the record held by Spain's Miguel Indurain from 1991-'95. Like our top 10 individual streaks listed below, if Armstrong can win six in a row, it may never be beaten.
1. Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak
Joe D. was bummed that the Indians shut him down on July 17, 1941. "Did you know if I got a hit tonight I would have made $10,000?" he said. "The Heinz 57 people wanted to make some kind of deal." The next game DiMaggio started another streak, getting at least one hit in another 16 straight.
2. Edwin Moses' 107 straight hurdles finals wins On June 4, 1987, Moses, 31, finally lost, defeated by 21-year-old Danny Harris in an early-season contest. "In 10 years, Moses faced hundreds of different competitors, but nobody beat him; some even quit the event out of frustration," wrote Juan Williams in the Washington Post. "Fashions changed, politics went conservative, the U.S. boycotted the Olympics in 1980 and participated in 1984. But none of it affected Edwin Moses, who just kept running away from the competition."
3. Orel Hershiser's 59 consecutive scoreless innings Here's what the rest of his year looked like:
Sept. 5: At Atlanta, 9 IP, 0 runs, 4 hits Hershiser had pitched 59 scoreless innings, breaking Don Drysdale's mark by 1/3 of an inning. At the end of the streak, his ERA was 2.26, more than half a run lower than it had been just a month earlier. In the first game of the NLCS, Hershiser blanked the Mets for another 8 straight innings, finally surrendering a score in the ninth when Darryl Strawberry doubled home Gregg Jefferies. On Opening Day, April 5, 1989, the Reds' Barry Larkin scored a run in the bottom of the first inning to end Hershiser's regular-season streak.
4. Cal Ripken's 2,632 consecutive games streak
5. Johnny Unitas's 47-game TD pass streak "While Unitas was putting up his amazing total of 47 in a row, there was little attention brought to what he was doing," wrote John Steadman in the Baltimore Sun. "The country has become aware of his rich natural ability, but there was only casual mention of how, game after game, he was firing touchdown passes." Unitas paid the streak no mind. "Records don't mean a thing to me," he said after his 40th straight TD pass game, against Green Bay. "Nothing is as important as winning … I imagine if I was record-hungry, the thing wouldn't have been extended this far. It makes no difference to me when it stops."
6. Rocky Marciano's 49-bout winning streak He retired undefeated. "Of all the heavyweight champions he came closer than any other to having lifted himself by his bootstraps," wrote New York Times columnist Arthur Daley the week after Marciano hung up his gloves. "Crude almost to the point of hopelessness, he slaved at his business with an intensity few men could match. And he won as much by the magnificence of a thoroughly disciplined body as he did by the thunder in his fists."
7. Bjorn Borg's five straight Wimbledon titles Borg had won his first Wimbledon title over Ilie Nastase in 1976, then defeated Jimmy Connors in the 1977 and 1978 finals, and Roscoe Tanner in 1979. Borg, 24, called his 1980 championship win over McEnroe "the best match I have ever played at Wimbledon." A year later, McEnroe finally ended Borg's Wimbledon streak, beating him in a four-set final.
8. Cael Sanderson's 159 straight college wrestling wins
9. Wayne Gretzky's 51-game scoring streak Gretzky had broken his own record, set in 1982-83, when he went 30 straight games with a goal or an assist.
10. Chick Hearn's 3,338 consecutive games broadcasting streak Also receiving votes:
Ted Williams, 16 straight times reaching base, 1957 |
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