The inside scoop on strikeouts: despite being an unproductive at-bat, going down on strikes adds excitement to game and is more common than ever in big league history.

IT'S CURIOUS, EVEN IF CONFIDENTAL, that one of the game's most celebrated batting feats and one of its most embarrassing registers of frequent futility were equally durable before yielding to more than three decades of determined onslaught.

Few fans noticed--understandably even an age of statistical overkill--that Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a season and Bobby Bonds' mark of 189 strikeouts in a campaign both survived precisely 34 years.

There is another notable difference, of course, besides that of the reverse impact on the outcome of games, between a batter swatting a home run to his contacting nothing but a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen.

Roger Maris achieved greatness with 61 home runs in 1961, surpassing Ruth's total of 1927 after it withstood 34 years of assault, most notably by Jimmie Foxx and Hank Greenberg, who each managed 58.

On the other hand, Adam Dunn had "greatness"--of an inverted fashion--thrust upon him when he struck out 195 times last season. He surpassed Bobby Bonds' achievement of 189 in 1970, which for an identical span of 34 years had resisted an even more relentless attack by such windmills as Rob Deer, Sammy Sosa, Reggie Jackson, Gorman Thomas, Dave Kingman, Pete Incaviglia and Jose Hernandez, to name a few suspects.

To Dunn's credit, he didn't squirm away from the opportunity to displace Bonds as the record-holder, unlike Hernandez who was spared late season Milwaukee Brewers games in 2002 to keep him a strikeout shy at 188. The risk was evident, as he had struck out 185 times the year before.

Dunn dealt with his historic accomplishment, which might have made smaller men touchy, like the big man he is at 6-6 and 240 pounds.