Total Baseball said that Clemens had only tied the record because its researchers had located one more strikeout for Johnson in his rookie season, 1907. So, the baseball Clemens took from his fifth strikeout and presented to his mother as a souvenir wasn't such a big deal, after all. That raises an important question. Maybe Sam Crawford, who led the league with 102 runs scored. Or Nap Lajoie, one of the most accomplished hitters of his time.
Nobody knows the answer.
So the premier batters of that time, Cobb, Crawford and Lajoie included, have blanks in the strikeout column next to their names. That violates the basic checks and balances nature of statistics. If a pitcher is credited with a strikeout, then a batter must be charged with it. But statistics were treated casually in baseball's early days. Record-keeping was primitive at best.