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Gary B.I have this baseball book from the mid-70's that talks about all these different records it states will never be broken. Funny thing is, most of those have been broken since, some of them up to 3 or 4 times.
There are certain records people said will NEVER be broken - Ty Cobb's hits, Lou Brock's stolen bases, etc., but many of these have already been destroyed.
As far as I can guage, the only records that CAN'T be broken, are ones where the game has changed to prevent it from happening again. The most obvious example is Cy Young. For someone to break his wins totals, they'd have to average over 25 wins per season for 20 straight seasons. With the amount of pitching time pitchers receive these days, it's just an impossibility - it will NEVER happen barring moving back to a 4-man rotation. Same goes for Jack Chesbro's single season wins - it's just NOT gonna happen. Even winning 30 these days is a minor miracle.
Other records seem as impressive and unbreakable, but are they really? Ty Cobb's lifetime average, Rickey Henderson's lifetime stolen bases, Nolan Ryan's lifetime strikeouts - these seem pretty far out of reach, but it's possible, given the right superhuman player coming along at the right time. 73 home runs would have seemed like dreamland 10 years ago, but now that 70's been reached twice, it's easy to imagine it happening again. No one's reached George Sisler's single-season hits or Hack Wilson's single-season rbi's, but people have flirted with it - it COULD happen. How about Dimaggio's 56 - impossible? How about Hornsby's single-season average? Too far out of reach? No one's even hit .400 for over 50 years, but will it never happen again?
Are there any other records besides the single-season and lifetime wins you think are completely unobtainable?