No matter how you feel about Brett Favre, you have to give the man credit.
Whether you regard him as a quisling for leaving the Packers, or appreciate the great years he had in Green Bay, it is impossible to not stand in awe of his amazing record for longevity.
Favre started 321 consecutive games in the National Football League. This would be a remarkable feat if a punter did it. A quarterback staying healthy enough to start that many games in a row is unfathomable.
A throwback in a new-age world, Favre worked his way into the starting lineup and stayed there. His record for consecutive starts, a tribute to both toughness and skill, will never be threatened.
Favre thereby joins a short list of players, one that includes Cy Young and Wilt Chamberlain, who hold all-time records that will never be broken.
Young is the baseball pitcher for whom the eponymous award is given annually to the best arms in the National and American Leagues. Cy Young had 511 career wins, and also 749 complete games. With pitch-count limits and late-inning specialty relief pitchers the order of the day, starters today rarely get more than a handful of complete games a season, and maybe 20-30 decisions, tops. Cy’s records seem pretty safe.
The untouchable record set by Wilt “The Stilt” was scoring an NBA record 100 points in a single game. You may wonder, where was the double-team? This record, like those of Cy Young, came in a different era. Back in the early 1960s NBA they played what often looked like “gingerbread man” defense — mostly an arms-out, benign body language formality. No NBA team today would let an opponent drop a hundred on them. Wilt’s single-game scoring record is also safe.
Where he stacks up against the Casanovas of the world is another matter. In his autobiography, Wilt claimed to have romanced 20,000 women throughout his lifetime. In addition to putting a new twist on the “Big Dipper” handle that he went by in college, this racy return to the spotlight probably helped the 7-foot-2 Lothario move a few books.
Against seemingly long odds, Chamberlain died in 1999 with no children and — in another tribute to a bygone era — zero paternity suits ever having been filed against him.
Chamberlain was the big-numbers guy of his generation on and maybe also off the court, but he looks like a piker compared to the stud that brought international acclaim to Shawano.
A few weeks ago marked the six-month anniversary of the death of Toystory, the all-time heavyweight champion of dairy cattle artificial insemination whose product is used by breeders in more than 50 countries.
Toystory died at 13 years old last November having left a legacy of mythical proportions in the world of bovine reproduction. Two hundred and fifty-six gallons, to be exact. Out of the record-breaking 2.415 million units he contributed throughout his nearly 10 years on the job, Toystory would sire an estimated half-million high-quality offspring.
Going 500,000 for 2,415,000 makes him only a career .207 hitter, but the important thing to remember is that a half-million calves is about 25 times the output for a typical bull. He was the Babe Ruth of his generation.
“Toystory reached a level of production that might never occur again in history,” surmised the Genex press release following Toystory’s passing. “ … it is very possible that no other bull will ever surpass his record.”
To this wondrous quadruped I raise a glass — of milk — in toast of a performer who came to play and who, like the indestructible Favre, the redoubtable Young and the provocative Wilt, gave it all he had.
