Records are meant to be broken. However, some of them from the WBSC Men's Softball World Cup look like will remain forever in the record books since they are numbers from another era in the sport.
Taking a look at the most outstanding individual and team performances in the history of the WBSC Men’s Softball World Cup, it's clear to see there have been some incredible performances, which will prove to be hard to beat..
The VII WBSC Men’s Softball World Cup 1988 in Saskatoon, Canada, saw players and teams setting most of the individual and team offensive records. Mainly due to the reason that the tournament was played as a single round robin, with each team playing 13 games.
USA’s outfielder Brian Rothrock and Canada’s Marty Kernaghan had a monster tournament, setting three individual records in the tournament. Rothrock and Kernaghan hold the record together for the most number of home runs with eight, and most stolen bases in a tournament, with six. Rothrock, who helped USA to win the world title, also set a record with 23 RBIs in the tournament, while Kernaghan also set a record with 19 runs scored.
The 1988 edition also saw two players setting a world record with 21 hits in the tournament. They were the Bahamas’ Crestwell Pratt and Canada’s Bob McKinnon, who also set a record with seven doubles in the tournament. In 1988, Canadian Clark Bosch posted a .647 batting average, the highest in the history of the event.
Also the most number of triples (four) was established in 1988, with Redelio Cruz from Cuba; matched four years later by Mark Sorenson (head coach of the Black Sox in the 2022 event) and Taifau Matai, both from New Zealand.
Five team records were also established in 1988 and remain unbeaten to date. Canada posted a .404 batting average, and tallied 142 runs, 125 RBI and 37 home runs, all of them world records. However, USA established the most hits record with 142.
On the pitching side, USA’s great Ty Stofflet holds five WBSC Men’s Softball World Cup records, all of them hard to be beaten in the modern era. Stofflet was astonishing in the 1976 World Cup in Lower Hutt, setting records of most innings pitched (59), total strikeouts (98), most strikeouts in a game (32) and most consecutive scoreless innings (59). His USA team also set the lowest ERA record, with a microscopic 0.19 (three earned runs in 111 innings pitched).
Will any of these records be broken at Rosedale Park in the next nine days? Only time will tell.
