What 600 Homers Means
Posted: July 23rd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 114 Comments »
There was no 600 homer club. No. The “club,” everybody knew, was for 500 homers, and it was exclusive. As of 1990, there were only 14 players in the 500 Homer Club… and everyone could more or less name the guys in it.
It really was exclusive. Only two players — Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson — had joined the 500 club in the 1980s. And at the end of the 1990, there was no active player anywhere near 500 homers. Eddie Murray had 379 and was still young enough that it was thought that he MIGHT have a chance at 500. Andre Dawson had 346 homers, and the feeling was that maybe if his knees held up, maybe, he might pull it off (but probably not). The other big power stars of the decade — Dale Murphy, Dwight Evans, Jack Clark and so on — well, it was apparent that they were not going to get to 500. Heck, they might not even reach 400.
Then again… the FOUR HUNDRED homer club was still very meaningful in 1990. This is hard to imagine in an era when 400 home runs gets you a handshake and a gold watch, — but up to 1985 every single player who hit 400 home runs in the major leagues ended up in the Hall of Fame. Every one. Four hundred homers* was considered then a full-fare ticket to the Hall — it was such a powerful number in the mid-’80s that I distinctly remember in 1985 there being some hand-wringing because Dave Kingman hit his 400th home run that year. What to do? Kingman, based on his general inability to do anything well except hit home runs, was not a Hall of Fame-caliber player. And yet with 400 home runs… well, it was a conundrum! The Baseball Writers Association came up with a radical but inventive solution — they did not vote for Dave Kingman — but it was touch and go there for a while.
*I had forgotten this until I watched a preview of Ken Burns’ “10th Inning” documentary — which will premier on PBS on Sept. 28 and 29, more on this as we go — but Barry Bonds hit his 400th homer in 1998, the year of the McGwire-Sosa chase. I don’t want to give too much away, but the documentary runs with the popular theory that Bonds was so furious after watching lesser stars Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pump up and win America’s heart with a summer of home runs that he decided to pump up himself, obliterate their numbers and show the country what REAL power looked like.
And the impetus, according to the documentary’s visuals, was how little attention Bonds got for his 400th home run. Of course, it was no ordinary 400th homer… it made Bonds the first and still only player in baseball history to hit 400 homers and steal 400 bases in a career. By then, though, nobody really cared about puny number like 400 homers. Bonds hit his 400th homer at Pro Player Stadium in Florida on the same day that Mark McGwire hit his sixth homer in six starts (and 53rd for the season), and the same day that Sammy Sosa hit two homers off Jose Lima (51 for the season). Bonds was barely worth a blurb. And, the documentary’s narrative suggests that’s when Bonds turned super villain and decided he was going to take over the world.
Anyway, it was called the 500 Club, and even through the strike and the return, there were still only 14 members. Eddie Murray did join in 1996. And it was right about then that the home run started to feel a bit different.
• Mark McGwire joined the 500 Club in 1999… the year after the year when his home run total fell all the way to 65.
• Barry Bonds joined in 2001… in fact that year he passed Murray, Mel Ott, Eddie Mathews, Ernie Banks, Ted Williams, Willie McCovey, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson. ONE YEAR, he passed all those guys. Well, 73 homers will do that for a guy.
• Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro joined in 2003. Fair or unfair, there was something galling about Palmeiro getting into the club — he became for many a symbol of the cheapening home run.
• Ken Griffey joined in 2004. People had been talking about Griffey being the one who could break Hank Aaron’s home run record… but because of injuries and such, by the time he got to 500 homers, he found a crowded room.
• Alex Rodriguez, Frank Thomas and Jim Thome all entered the club in 2007, and by now, nobody really cared. Manny Ramirez entered in 2008. Gary Sheffield wandered into the treehouse in 2009.
So, yes, The 500 Club started to feel an awful lot like the Columbia Record Club — send in your penny, get your 12 free records and then simply buy five more records over the next three years. But the SIX HUNDRED CLUB… well, like I say, that wasn’t even a club. That was a trio, like the Musketeers, the Stooges, the Chipmunks and Ben Folds Five.
There was Hank, Babe and Willie.
There was Aaron, Ruth and Mays.
There was the Hammer, the Sultan and Say Hey.
That was it. There was no club. Six hundred home runs was unimaginable… you had to hit 40 home runs for FIFTEEN YEARS to get to 600 homers. You had to hit 30 home runs for TWENTY YEARS to get to 600 homers. You had to lead the league in homers 10 times like Ruth did, or average 45 homers a year in your young-to-mid 30s like Mays did, or inexorably march, averaging 36 home runs every year from 21 to 40, the way Aaron did.
The path to 600 home runs was strewn with great players not quite strong enough to make it. Frank Robinson had 496 home runs on the day he turned 36… he had a chance. But he had 90 home runs left in his body.
Eddie Mathews had 477 home runs before he even turned 34… it’s fascinating to compare Mathews and his teammate Aaron through the years. Mathews was a couple of years older, so it was hard to see this at the time.
Age 30
Mathews: 399 homers
Aaron: 366 homers
Age 31
Mathews: 422 homers
Aaron: 398 homers
Age 32
Mathews: 445 homers
Aaron: 442 homers
Age 33
Aaron: 481 homers
Mathews: 477 homers
Age 34
Aaron: 510 homers
Mathews: 493 homers
Age 35
Aaron: 554 homers
Mathews: 509 homers
And so on. Mathews only hit three more homers from there. Aaron hit 201.
Harmon Killebrew hit his 500th homer off Mike Cuellar on August 10, 1971… he had just turned 35 in June. And he hit his 501st the same day against Cuellar. He had 515 homers by the end of the year and certainly had a chance. But he hit only 58 more.
Mickey Mantle had 496 homers by the end of his age 34 year, but it was already apparent that his knees and hard-living had taken its toll. He hit his 500th in May of ’67 off Stu Miller and seemed revived enough to hit seven more over the next two weeks. But that was really the last home run burst for the Mick. He hit only 28 more after that before limping into the sunset.
Six hundred homers… it was too titanic for even the greats to think about. Jimmie Foxx hit his 500th homer when he was 32… he hit only 34 more. Mark McGwire hit his 500th and 501st off Andy Ashby in 1999, as mentioned, and considering that he hit 65 that year, he seemed a lock for 600 and who knows how many more? But he, too, faded at the finish line, ending up with 583. Six hundred home runs wasn’t a club, no, it was Father Time’s checkered flag, and only three men had finished that race.
And then there was a fourth… Barry Bonds reached 600 in 2002. There was something wrong about it, of course. Many things. The steroid story was exploding in baseball, and people didn’t like Bonds, anyway, for any number of reasons. But, more than anything, I think, it was that Bonds hit his 600th home run less than 16 months after he had hit his 500th. That part was just too absurd to comprehend… Bonds had hit 100 home runs in 230 games. It was coming at us too fast. Chris Jones has a great story in this month’s Esquire about the guy who made the perfect guess in The Price is Right, and the guy’s wish is that he had not guessed it PERFECT — he could have just missed it by a few dollars. Bonds had become too perfect a player. He was a comic book hero. For most of America, it just wasn’t believable anymore.
When Sammy Sosa hit his 600th home run on June 20, 2007, the public tolerance for home run records had more or less collapsed entirely. Bonds was in the midst of the most joyless record chase in the history of professional sports — he was only seven away from catching Aaron at that point — and Sosa had long before lost the innocence and joy that had made him a national sensation.
And then, less than a year later — June 9, 2008 — Griffey hit his 600th home run. And for the second time, it felt like he was late to the party. This time, people TRIED to get excited, because it at least felt like Griffey had gotten to 600 the hard way, the real way, without bending rules or breaking laws. But, nobody really knows, and anyway everyone was home run numb. When Griffey hit his 600th, it was already clear that Alex Rodriguez would get there soon, plus Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez were on the path. The moment passed.
Well, here we are again: Alex Rodriguez has 599 home runs. He will almost certainly hit his 600th home run sometime this weekend, because the Yankees face the Royals… and the Royals like giving up A-Rod homers. He hit his first home run against Kansas City and also his 500th. In fact, if he can hold off until Saturday, he will face Royals starter Kyle Davies, who surrendered that 500th home run. No pitcher has ever given up a player’s 500th and 600th home runs before, so there’s that.
Hitting 600 home runs is still amazing — and for Alex Rodriguez to do it before his 35th birthday (July 27) is beyond amazing. What does this 600th home run mean, though? A-Rod has, of course, admitted to using steroids during his home run prime. So to many, his 600th home run won’t even count, won’t even exist, a record-book mirage.
But even to those who have come to grips with the Selig Era and the simple fact that all the numbers in the record books are distorted by one queasy fact or another, the 600 home run number STILL feels used up. It is like someone struggling to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, reaching the peak and finding that people had already built a McDonald’s, a Home Depot and a Best Buy up there. Steroids are not the only thing that caused the home run explosion of the 1990s — I’ve long suspected that they weren’t even the biggest thing. Smaller strike zones, harder bats, body armor, smaller ballparks, weight training (not even including performance enhancers), money incentives, expansion… all these things and more pointed toward bigger power numbers. The game did not tilt… it was tilted. A lot of people wanted more home runs. And the men running baseball had to give people what they wanted.
One of my favorite parts of the Ken Burns documentary — one of the things Burns does so well — is laying things out simply. Baseball was in huge trouble in the mid-90s. The strike and canceled World Series destroyed something inside baseball fans. The embarrassment of the replacement players made things even worse. It’s common thought that Cal Ripken’s streak helped reconnect fans and baseball… and it probably did for some. But I always thought that was overplayed. Attendance was stagnant, television ratings stagnant, the game felt stagnant. The common theory is that home runs — Babe Ruth’s home runs particularly — helped save baseball after the 1919 Black Sox. When players started hitting home runs at a preposterous pace after the strike, well, nobody really wanted to ask too many questions.
And here we are, 15 or so years later, and the bills are coming in. The 400 Club has more than doubled since 1990. The 500 Club has 25 members… few people can name them all now. A-Rod is about to become the seventh man to hit 600 home runs. And none of it feels all that special anymore.
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Circle me Sadaharu Oh.
Hey, the 700 HR club still only has 3 members.
Two members in good standing. 700 is just as sour and corrupt as 600.
Barry Bonds seemed to get more press time during his home run bashing time than A-Rod has, no one seems to be talking about it. What’s sad is that the Yankees have had two highly lauded people put down in the last couple of weeks and that this might trump those?! Absurd.
Too bad there is not an actual “club” for the 600 HR guys to visit. I bet the meetings would be pretty entertaining.
As always, beautifully written, but I disagree with the premise that 500 homers has become cheapened.
25 batters have hit 500 homeruns. 24 pitchers have won 300 games. To me, this symmetry means something. There have been eras when the 300-win club expanded and it must have seemed less significant. The past decade have been fat years for power numbers; presumably, this will not always be the case.
There’s still not a single member of the 500 home run club I wouldn’t elect to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.
Great description of the past couple decades & how it’s felt along the way as we watched this. I hope Pujols ends up ahead of them all…at least so people can feel like the statistical HR king means something again.
Yep, one of the methods I used to use to go to sleep was to count down the HR list — Player, Number of HRs.
Can’t do that one anymore. Now I just do World Series results or AL MVPs or something.
You mentioned Babe Ruth’s post-Black Sox exploits in passing, but I’m curious as to how older fans reacted to Ruth in the 1920s. Did some feel that he was ruining the game and rendering it meaningless? There’s certainly a feeling today that perhaps Hank Aaron and Roger Maris were the real heroes (and yes, Ken Griffey Jr. gets ignored). I wonder who the purists in the 1920s looked back to as that upstart Ruth “ruined” the game?
Really? You are still arguing that steroids are not the biggest factor in the absurd explosion of home runs in that period. Right now the MLB leader in HR is Jose Bautista who at his current pace would hit 44. Which of the following factors has changed significantly since then: “smaller strike zones, harder bats, body armor, smaller ballparks, weight training (not even including performance enhancers), money incentives, expansion”? It is possible that the strike zone has changed a little and there may be a few more MLB quality pitchers available, but it is pretty obvious that the biggest difference is the testing for, and stigma surrounding PED’s.
Joe, how can you keep trying to convince yourself that steroids weren’t the “biggest” reason for the home run explosion?
Same balls, same bats, same equipment, same players, same everything as 10 years ago except… now there’s no more steroids (or at least better testing) and suddenly the home run leaders are on pace for 45-50 home runs again. Case closed in my book.
Love the article, though!
Give me Gibson, “Get off MY plate”. Strike One. Give me Grenkie, “Ever seen a 58mph, 12 to 6er in the Bigs?” (following a 96 gassed speeder). Strike Two. Phenom Strasburg. Increasing the tilt back to balance between offense and defense in baseball. Cheddar Sharp Slider. Oh yea, Strike Three.
It’s time to teach my 3 boys, 13 and twins at 12, that the era of pumped home runs was a bubble. Ivan Rodriguez just doesn’t look right with his sleek stance and high cheekbones now. Every bit the bubble that burst into oblivion on the back porch as toddlers.
Power to the pitchers. It’s about time.
BTW: It gave me tingles to see Pete Rose watching Strasburg pitch Wednesday evening on the tube. Obviously, it confirmed that all of baseball is “feeling” something that they are liking about baseball this year.
tom / basehor, ks
“I don’t want to give too much away, but the documentary runs with the popular theory that Bonds was so furious after watching lesser stars Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pump up and win America’s heart with a summer of home runs that he decided to pump up himself, obliterate their numbers and show the country what REAL power looked like.”
Joe, you aren’t giving anything away. Anybody who read the book about the BALCO case and Barry Bonds, called “Game of Shadows” knows that this was the case.
There’s this to consider: Steroid use wasn’t against the rules for too long in MLB. How can we retroactively condemn someone like Bonds? Oh, now I remember: Bonds LIED about using.
A-Rod fell on his sword and told the truth, willing to let the chips fall where they may. I’m one of those Americans who believe in second chances and redemption.
I for one will be happy for him when he hits 600, and when I’m an old man I will remember A-Rod was special. BTW: I hate the Yankees, but I love their players. Riddle me that.
“Same balls,”
Do we know this? Why would the lessons of the humidor revolution not have spread across the land?
Got your sinker-baller pitching today? Give the umps live balls.
Up by 5 in the 4th? Start giving the ballboy the balls from the humidor.
Any team not playing this game in this day and age just isn’t thinking.
MLB and umps need to be put in charge of the game balls.
At the close of the 1990 season, though other players were closer in number having had longer careers to that point, was anyone considered a more likely bet to get to 500 HRs than Darryl Strawberry? At that point he was 28 and had 252 HRs in 8 ML seasons, with no history of injury or off-field problems.
Also, though 400 was the HOF benchmark, I remember 300 HRs being a big deal and there being a 300-HR club and it generally being a big deal whenever a guy hit his 300th.
I’ve raised this issue before, but I still find it oddly interesting.
During his pre-steroid years, Barry Bonds treated the media with complete disdain. Now, in and of itself, that’s not a crime. Some people are just introverts and prefer to keep out of the spotlight. If Barry was merely a “lunchpail” kind of guy who just wanted to do his job and go home, without being bothered by reporters, most people outside the media wouldn’t have a problem with that. Most fans could bring themselves to understand a player who cried “I JUST WANT TO PLAY BALL AND BE LEFT ALONE!”
But if he took steroids because he envied the media attention being given to Sosa and McGwire, well, THAT excuse for Barry’s boorishness goes out the window. Obviously, he DIDN’T just want to be left alone. He craved media attention, and lots of it. If he just wanted the media to leave him alone and let him do his job, he should have been ecstatic that Sosa and McGwire were commanding all the media’s attention, right?
As counterintuitive as it seems, young Barry Bonds DIDN’T treat reporters like dirt because he craved solitude. He treated them like dirt because he ENJOYS treating people like dirt! He didn’t tell reporters to drop dead in hopes that they’d leave him alone- he told them to drop dead in hopes that they’d keep coming back so he could tell them to drop dead AGAIN!
There’s no other explanation- Barry Bonds LIKES being a jerk! He enjoys telling people to f*** off. But he HATES it when the people he tells to f*** actually go away. He NEEDS them to come back, so he can keep right on telling them to f** off !
It’s true that there seems to be a home-run-numbness amongst baseball fans, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the Year of the pitcher season baseball is having. It’s almost as if baseball is emphasizing pitching over HR-hitting. Such a funny thing.
That was an excellent piece Joe. I don’t know why this particular writing struck me more than all the other wonderful things you write, but I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks for all your great work.
Sorry but: Bonds*, Sosa*, A-Rod*
Congrats to Griffey for joining this prestigious club legitimately but those other three may not have ever reached this milestone without the help of PEDs. They just don’t deserve as much credit as the legitimate members of “the club” in my opinion.
“Baseball was in huge trouble in the mid-90s. The strike and canceled World Series destroyed something inside baseball fans. The embarrassment of the replacement players made things even worse. It’s common thought that Cal Ripken’s streak helped reconnect fans and baseball… and it probably did for some.” And, as pointed out, most people credit the HR chase between Sosa and McGuire as saving baseball in 1998.
I remember being incredibly disillusioned in baseball during the 1994 strike and cancellation of the World Series. I never thought I would see something like that in my lifetime. The Cal Ripken chase of Gehrig did help bring some fans back to the ballparks, yes.
However, I also remember trying my hand at a distance learning course from the U.S. Sports Academy in 1998. At the time, I thought I might want to go into teaching and coaching after leaving the Air Force. One of our first assignments was to turn in a paper on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. While I was doing research, there were the usual articles on professional cyclists using and abusing EPO. There were, of course, numerous articles on track and field stars abusing PEDs.
I also found articles even then on Mark McGuire’s use of androstenedione, which at the time was NOT on the list of MLB’s banned drugs. Which is laughable, when you consider andro is nothing more than a steroid precursor. But pro ball players were also using creatine in great amounts, so most people looked the other way when it came to the GNC supplements business.
I never did finish that paper, much less the USSA Masters program. But I do remember the warning signs were all there, and were there long before Barry Bonds. It always makes me angry when reporters forget to mention Ken Caminiti, who won a unanimous NL MVP in 1996 — and then admitted he did while pumped up on steroids. I’m not defending Bonds or any other doper by any stretch of the imagination. I’m just saying the problem was there long before McGuire and Sosa hit their home runs in 1998.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the tolerance of steroid use. Obviously the owners benefited and paid handsomely, no questions asked, for the players that produced. However, the players union absolutely shut down any testing and was willing to strike over the issue. But maybe the most disappointing of the culprits are the sports writers and sports media. These “journalists” have full access to the teams and are supposed to be objective in their reporting to the public. Yet not one story from a beat writer, not one breaking news segment on eyewitness/late breaking/investigation nightly TV , not one column in the paper denouncing this illegal practice during this time. There was no curiosity, not even when McGwire’s drugs were openly displayed. And you wonder where athletes get a sense of entitlement when those whose jobs it is to monitor the game becomes part of the entourage
At least one guy makes a pretty detailed and thorough case that it wasn’t steroids at all; he strongly suspects it was juiced balls, whether intentional or inadvertent.
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/
I’m conflicted about the “Steroid Era”, though like Joe I’m not sure to what degree steroids actually increased home run output. Also, I don’t find the rate at which the 500/600 home run clubs are expanding worrisome.
Consider this: as described above by Joe, 10 players have joined the 500 homer club since 1999.
From 1960-1971–also an 11 year period–8 players joined the club (one of them was Ted Williams, who if weren’t for WWII probably would’ve joined in the ’50s).
Still, 10 in 11 is not that different from 8 (or 7) in 11–certainly not so different that it couldn’t be explained by random statistical fluctuation. Plus, the league has expanded a lot since the mid-60s, and with more teams, there are more players, and more players means more players likely to hit a lot of home runs.
That’s not to say the achievement hasn’t lost a little of it’s luster. It’s only to suggest that that’s the nature of this kind of achievement, one where we value not the difficulty of the feat itself but it’s relative rarity. Someday the 500 home run club will have 100 members–that’s just how it goes. The 100th member may have been helped by small parks and expansion and probably bioinic upgrades–but she’ll still have hit 500 home runs. It won’t be her fault that 99 other players did it before her.
Shrug, I don’t see how Bonds & co.’s steroid-pumped numbers are any less valid than Aaron’s greenie-pumped numbers or Ruth’s racism-pumped numbers.
RE the same balls comment. I wish I could remember the details and at least one link, but a few years ago, some fine folks compared the balls used at that time to those used before the power surge and found the newer balls had much more bounce, sproingability, or whatever you call it when a ball travels further after being hit than another ball. The geniuses at MLB responded by comparing the balls to ones used the year before, finding no difference. Since this didn’t disprove the results of the first study, you would think more attention would be drawn to that study. Wouldn’t you?
Ryan Parker, in his infinite talent , says it much better than I ever could. So, take it away Ryan…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp4pcvWuojU
1996 was my first season following baseball from Spring Training to the World Series, and even I knew something was amiss when three teams broke the 1961 Yankees’ home run record. I was either too young or too uninformed to suspect steroids, but I knew I hated that “juiced ball” everyone seemed to blame.
Are you sure 400 homers used to be an automatic ticket to the Hall of Fame? Duke Snider hit 407 homers and didn’t get in until his 11th year on the ballot.
Circle me tired of nostalgia. There never was a garden of Eden and Aaron and Ruth didn’t play in it.
And I, for one, don’t care where Joe DiMaggio has gone….
@Jon (#25) … Exactly.
It would not surprise me if, 50 years from now, history looks kindly on Bonds. By that time most of the people who saw Aaron will be dead, and there will be no one to tell us how the good old days were so much better and today’s players are spoiled rotten cheaters etc etc.
In fact, I think that 50 years from now another hitter who hits even greater heights will have to defend himself against a society of Bonds sympathizers pining for the days when hitters didn’t get to use (insert whatever drug/technology/dubious strategy comes into fashion in 2060).
I think people are overstating things a bit.
In the about forty years from 1972-today, 14 people joined the 500 Club, and in the 43 years before that, 11 did. And of those 11, 7 were in a 6 years span from 65-71.
bigboid@21…sorry to pick on you for this, and this is not normally my thing, but how many times have you seen Mark McGwire’s name in print that you still can’t process that it’s spelled with a W and not a U?
“What do 600 homers mean” ?
Fame and fortune, unless you are Barry Bonds.
#17 – fabulous point on Bonds. Just perfect!
#25 and #30. I understand your point, but I believe that if Barry Bonds’ only act of cheating was the use of greenies, we would all be lauding him as the greatest hitter to ever walk the face of the earth.
Because he used steroids, he gets a different treatment. And this isn’t old-timey thinking I’m doing. Bonds actually tested positive for greenies in 2006, and nobody cared.
If I were Barry Bonds — and I’m not — I would have gotten royally pissed when MLB brought out its All-Century team before game 2 0f the 1999 World Series, and Ken Griffey Jr. and (especially) Mark McGwire were out there, and I wasn’t.
@34 – that’s the entirety of the problem. Greenies are WORSE than steroids, and yet people treat them like they’re not because they don’t understand how they help, and because they have a cute name that doesn’t make them sound like “crystal meth”.
I agree that it’s hard not to feel used, or duped, about home run records these days, but what’s even more troubling is that this feeling carries over to home runs themselves. I’d almost rather see a triple because I get to watch the batter run and, you know, maybe break a sweat and get dirty sliding. Some home run trots are almost embarrassing, like you’re watching a child pretending he just hit a big league home run.
By the way, I just posted a podcast on measuring dominance, including analysis of whether Ruth or Bonds was the more dominant home run hitter:
http://gameofchance.alexreisner.com/episodes/8
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To begin – I hate steroids – and what they have done to the game or what they are perceived to have done to the game.
That being said, there is something else we have to consider when we talk about these “clubs”… World War II.
I suspect, and I don’t have time to research it, that there are plenty of players who would have joined the 400, 500, 600, or 700 home run club if not for the war.
Many state that Ted Williams would have been the all-time home run king if not for the years he lost to WW II and Korea.
Will there be many more to 600 (any time soon)? Jim Thome would need two more years. At his current pace, Manny would need three more.
Nobody else with a chance has reached 400 yet, and a lot (bad) can happen while you’re trying to go from 400 to 600.
A-Rod started so early that he and the aforementioned Eddie Mathews are blanketed as the age-group leaders in their early 20′s (along with, for a while, Mel Ott). At age 25, Rodriguez had hit 19 more homers than anyone, 72 more than Hank, 124 more than Barry, 138 more than Babe.
Given 4.67 more prime seasons, Teddy Ballgame might have reached 700 (and he cared more about ob% than homers). Given 1.75 more, Willie Mays would probably have gotten there.
@36
Which is why no one cares that Aaron admitted to living on greenies.
At the beginning of the 1982 season, the 300-win club was special. Only eight players had joined it in the 20th century, and none in the past 19 years. Everybody could pretty much name all the members.
But then on May 6, Gaylord Perry won his 300th. Steve Carlton followed a year later. Then in 1985, TWO pitchers joined the club — Tom Seaver and Phil Niekro. The next year, Don Sutton, the Rafael Palmeiro of pitchers, reached 300, cheapening the milestone for some. Nolan Ryan followed in 1990.
All told, six pitchers joined the 300-win club between 1982 and 1990 — after only six others had reached it in the 80 years prior. And yet, the 300-win club somehow survived.
In defense of Bonds:
The media was critical of his father Bobby Bonds. Whether that criticism was fair or not , I dont know. But, I do know if any member of the media called out my Dad in print — I would be surly with them too (to say the least)
Also, Bonds on the sauce was beyond unreal. What always stands out for me are the walks. If they would have pitched to him he might have hit 100.
Yet, he will remain , for me , a classic story of human insecurity. For all his money , fame, natural talent — if we are to believe Game of Shadows — Bonds didnt start juicing until he was 34!! Thats a little late in life to pick up a drug habit.
Plus, defending steroid use on any level is absurd. I dont want to call out any names — but one guy on this board sounds like he is posting with a needle in his ass. Why dont you tell them about the ruthless depression roids bring on after the buzz is gone??
Truthfully , these suspensions — like juiceheads themselves — are all a big joke. When players test positive they should go to jail. Period.
PEDs are NOT to blame for HR surge of recent years. PEDs the logical extension of our growing knowledge that we can remain at our athletic peaks for a longer period of time by taking care of our bodies though diet and exercise. Modern players have both had the advantage of (1) the knowledge that nutrition and exercise and weight training can extend your peak past your early 30s and (2) the money to devote time and resources to maximize their athletic potential. Look at the numbers and the ages involved here. All pre 1980 hitters were finished by age 35. It’s the prevalence of older, valuable ballplayers that has changed. PEDs are a consequence of this knowledge and desire to remain youthful longer, but not the cause of advances in our knowledge of the human body and the explosion of player salaries to execute fine-tuned plans to maximize its potential
@25 Jon–You know you’re right…between segregation, greenies, collusion,the lack of a salary cap, and PED’s…baseball has never really been as pure as we wish(hope?) it should be. More and more I’m thinking I should become a soccer fan.
@Nevada Scribbler : “A-Rod fell on his sword and told the truth, willing to let the chips fall where they may. I’m one of those Americans who believe in second chances and redemption.”
No he didn’t fall on his sword. A reporter had the goods on him and, prior to his sword falling, he tried to slander her as a sycphantic groupie/stalker. After this grotesque behavior he issued a false confession, was called on it, and finally told some semblance of the truth.
I’m all for second chances not for this scumbag.
Jay@44, you make a good point. But not all pre-1980 hitters were finished at age 35. Aaron hit 201 dingers beginning age 36; Williams, 155; Ruth, 149. (Of course, Aaron was nearly as obsessed with his goal as Pete Rose was with Ty Cobb.) That they were exceptions may prove your rule.
@ Nevada Scribbler ….
You wrote: …when I am an old man…
You just turned 50 the other day…you are an old man!! haha ha
I cant spell, but my retention is…well, its ok.
Happy belated to a brilliant reader from a not so brilliant reader.
And, yes, I read every word you write. So be careful.
Anyone want to talk about the NBA? How scoring 15,000 points in a career used to be a big deal (up to 121 at this point)? Then 20,000 (39 now and Paul Pierce is only 111 away), then 25,000 (19 now). When Chamberlain got to 30,000, the feeling was that no one else ever would (still only 5). Anyone want to account for this by talking about steroids?
What about scoring in football? Five players now have 2000 or more points (and only one of them has ever scored a touchdown; the other four all have played in this century); 16 have scored 1500 (only one–in addition to the one scoring 2000+–of whom played before 1967); 45 have scored 1000 (only three more played before 1967)… (Why 1967? The Super Bowl, of course.)
Things have changed in every sport that I know of (hockey, anyone?); PEDs may or may not have played a role in some of all of this. But only in baseball have we decided to assume that everyone is guilty of something. Why is that?
Joe – thanks for this. It was the strike of course. I did not watch a MLB game – on purpose – for about 8 years. Funny, it was a ball park that brought me back, not a team. I moved to LA and my first fourth of July party involved a trip to Dodger stadium.
Watching the game then sitting on the outfield grass watching the fireworks brought me back.
I agree–the meaning’s no longer there. I wonder though, if the homer binge was fostered (along with PEDs) by the dropping of the mound in 1968. That’s rarely considered when the great homer binge is discussed.
David @ 47 – Williams, Ruth, Aaron, they are exceptions, hence why we have considered them (and the 500 HOUR milestone) exceptional. The phenomenon Joe is describing is 500 HRs becoming ordinary. And I think it’s becoming ordinary because players are taking care of themselves.
To all the people who are trying to refute Joe’s argument that steroids were not the biggest factor in the HR surge by pointing to the waning HR totals today, I suggest you go to baseball-reference and look at the data. Though HRs are down this year, HRs did not go down league wide after testing was implemented. Between 1999 and 2009, HRs remained pretty constant.
Mike in Hawaii @ #45
“More and more I’m thinking I should become a soccer fan.”
On the evidence of the recent World Cup, that’d be like an embezzler deciding to become a kiddie fiddler.
I for one treasure the level of play that Bonds reached in 2001 and 2002. No, it wasn’t “too perfect”, it wasn’t quite perfect, but it was as close to perfection at the skill of batting as anyone has ever seen. And batting a baseball is one of the most, if not the most, difficult skills in all of sports. I’m *glad* I had the opportunity to witness that. Bonds very nearly reached the point where the correct strategy was to walk him every time he came to bat. Not quite, but very nearly. Which is astonishing and wonderful. The way the strategy in the 2002 Giants-Cardinals NLCS revolved around Bonds and the Giants batting order, for example, was a marvel to watch.
Steroids didn’t make Bonds that good a batter. Steroids plus a lot of hard work made Bonds that good a batter. He used steroids like hundreds of other players. He denied it like everyone else did, if and when they were asked. The only difference is Bonds was vindictively and arbitrarily brought before a grand jury and the others weren’t.
The level of skill Bonds achieved in batting a baseball in 2001 and 2002 is still real. Some of us are still able to appreciate it.
One last word. Damn this posting on blogs stuff is addictive.
The only American athlete to serve steroid related time in jail was a black FEMALE.
Oh the humanity.
I’m guessing that a majority of MLB followers would quickly put down $100 to win $200 that A-Rod will surpass Bonds’ record of 762 HRs. I might also, but then I think about how Tiger was almost a sure thing to pass Nicklaus’ mark of 18 majors. That’s looking might iffy now and, as Joe has pointed out recently, Tiger is reaching the age where many golfers quit winning nearly as often. A-Rod will turn 35 in a few days (27th). He could pass 762 easily if he hits homers late in his career like Aaron or he might hit a wall in the coming few seasons and not surpass Ruth – doubtful, but who knows? I do expect that few, if any, MLB pitchers will be grooving him mediocre fastballs to help him get there.
An interesting exercise as to how much players in the 1940′s and 50′s lost to WWII and Korea. Check out Ted Williams’ numbers at the end, they are really amazing.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/war-begone/
So, there you stand, on someone’s Field of Dreams, and off in the outfield corn fields are every player who ever played in any major league. They’re choosing up sides, and you get to make the first pick. Anyone who ever played. Ty Cobb? Josh Gibson? Tom Seaver? Steven Strasberg? If you’re in it to win, there’s only one first choice. Hands down. Just Bonds. 100 home runs in 230 games. What else? Who else? When? Nobody like Ty Cobb, either. Take him second.
@17. IMO Barry wasn’t jealous of media attention at all. He was envious and angry at their assault on a record book (and history) of a game he cherished, that his father and Godfather played and that he played, naturally, at the highest levels for many, many years before seeing it trampled upon by lesser talents. I don’t the he EVER gave a crud about the media.
And it is simply astounding, PED’s or not – 100 HR’s in 230 Games?
I wonder how many BB’s he had over that period. Reee-diculous.
@49 Donald. I don’t really know or care about the NBA since it is the only sport I have zero use for, but it seems clear to me that the records in the NFL are directly attributable to the number of games played but could have a PED base as well.
Never did understand why baseball got the tough questions on PEDs while football essentially gets a pass, but I imagine that has a lot to do with attitudes – as well as the fact that records and stats have always meant more in baseball of course.
Larry #59: If your criteria is “nobody else like him” as you seem to be saying about Cobb, then you are missing the one greatest ballplayer of all-time because there was no one else ever like Babe Ruth. His pitching stats were top-shelf (94-46 w/2.28era) when he was just a youngster in MLB, then he began to play the outfield regularly (and occasional first base) so he could swing the bat a bit more often. How did that turn out?!
It amazes me that anyone, especially you Joe, would blame anything other than the actual players for the home run facade. Joe, the players were responsible for injecting drugs into their bodies. Not the owners, not Selig, not Bob Costas, not anyone but the players themselves.
Jeez, how can people be given the facts and STILL ignore them?
In all this “steroid-era-precursor” talk, I’ve seen nary a mention of what was going on in the background during the 1994 season, and how history might be starkly different had the strike not occurred.
Before I get to that, however – I must point out that 1994, of course, was the last season during which the Royals really had a chance to contend. Unlike 2003, when we were all eager to “Believe” in a team that was finally over .500, 1994 was quietly a season of great possibility for KC, as they were in a three-way race for the AL Central with the Sox and Indians.
The Injuns were absolutely loaded and selling out The Jake every night with Lofton, Vizquel, Baerga, Belle, Thome and ManRam …wow! That lineup would make Milwaukee’s 1982 “Harvey’s Wallbangers” blush. The Sox, conversely, were laden with pitching – Blackjack McDowell, Wilson Alvarez, Aaron Sele … and also had an offense anchored by a young Frank Thomas.
The Royals had their usual patchwork lineup – David Howard (damn, I loved his defense, though), Wally Joyner, Greg Gagne … and, of course, Bob Hamelin in his ROY campaign when he hit a whopping 24 homers. KC maintained their hopes for the postseason through the pitching staff, which included David Cone, Kevin Appier, Flash Gordon and Mark Gubicza. It was a bitter pill to swallow when the strike suddenly squelched all my hopes for the Royals in 1994 … and they’ve never been the same since.
What has seemingly been lost to history’s whimsy about the 1994 season, however – but something I followed daily at the time – was Matt Williams’ chase of Roger Maris. “What!” you say? Matt Williams? He – WHAT?
Indeed – through 112 games, Matty had 43 homers. He was on pace … for sixty-two! Four years before McGwire and Sosa would captivate us with the (now farcical) homer barrage of ’98 – there was quiet, unassuming Matt Williams – toiling in the shadow of Will Clark, and himself threatening to re-write the record books, presumably before computer manufacturers included an asterisk on the “8″ key. *
* OK, that’s not true. It is a good excuse to use an asterisk, though.
Ahem – back to the story. All right … now we have some questions to ponder. What would have happened if Matty had been the one to break Maris’ record? Subsequent history now tell us (thanks, Jose Canseco, you great historian) that PEDs were in use well before 1994. Could Williams have possibly been on “the juice” and had become the first to translate that enhancement into a power threat that would unseat Roger Maris? Had the strike not occurred, what sort of media build-up would we have seen in September of 1994 as he continued to approach (and possibly surpass) the magical 61?
Had the player and owners been in a little better mood at the time, and the serpentine vagaries of history produced a slightly alternate reality, would Matt Williams now be the antagonist in this great drama of PEDs? Might HE have been the one to not only break the records, but to also provide the impetus for all the investigations, debate and wringing of hands that has followed?
If so, then how might we now look at Bonds*, Clemens*, A-Rod*, Giambi* and so on? After all, if you were a witch prior to The Inquisition, you might not have much to worry about. How many players have we mindlessly “forgiven” after we’ve burnt the “original” offenders at the stake? (Oh, hi, Andy Pettite).
This missive is not an attempt to implicate Matt Williams by any means. Nevertheless, given the vast amount of information stored in the files of the ethereal “What We Know NOW” … one can’t help but wonder how baseball, its players and its characters might have eveolved since 1994 had the strike not occurred – and if Matty might have hit just 19 more homers that year.
For the apparently uninformed. Steroids don’t make you stronger/better/whatever. You do that by hard work–long hours in the gym day after day. The steroids give you the endurance to do that and the increased muscle mass from those workouts. Bonds, et.al. worked out unbelievably long hard hours–without PEDs, they could not have sustained those workouts.
#63: It always amuses me when someone makes reference to “the facts”, as though you have a monopoly on analysis of a whole lot of data. There’s a scene in “The Best Years of Our Lives” when someone tells Harold Russell (who lost both arms in the war) “the facts” about how the war was a mistake and a sham.
To me, “the facts” are that major league owners, not players, sell tickets to what they claim is a fair competition, completely honest and above board. If fans were aware they were seeing a contest as fake as World Wide Wrestling, they would make choices differently about whether to spend money on it. Major league ballplayers, on the other hand, don’t sell me anything. You might analogize between Milli Vanilli’s record label and Milli Vanilli.
Thus, if baseball owners are complicit in the steroid era by turning a blind eye to a phenomenon that is selling tickets, which I think the evidence clearly shows they were, they were selling a sham competition as a real competition. That is a violation of a large number of laws, the ones against unfair practices in trade or business. It doesn’t matter that the players were the ones injecting the steroids. I never bought anything from Barry Bonds; I was never offered anything by Barry Bonds. The ownership of the San Francisco Giants sold me tickets to watch Barry Bonds play, and it couldn’t have been more explicit in their marketing that they were offering tickets to watch Barry Bonds, specifically, play. Oakland’s and St. Louis’s owners were the same way with McGwire, and the Cubs wrapped their entire marketing around Sosa. They sold their product to the networks on that basis and the networks turned a blind eye, too; having made the investment, they went along and you haven’t seen Fox decide to get out of baseball after it all came out. The networks also sell me their product, directly through my cable subscription or indirectly through their sales of advertisements. The value of teams was changed by the steroid era, again in favor of the owners. I don’t know of anyone who sought to rescind a ball club purchase on the basis that a player included in the value of the franchise was a user.
Years ago, a local pawn shop chain was found to have stocked it stores with stolen goods. The owners, who were totally innocent of participation in the scheme, returned all the goods still in the stores to their owners, and paid back the value of stolen goods to those whose goods had already been sold. They then raised the money, putting their own net worths at risk, to restock the stores.
The day I get an offer from the Mariners to refund the price of my ticket to see Rafael Palmeiro hit his 3000th hit is the day the owners of baseball will be as moral as those pawn shop owners. I am not holding my breath.
#66 – It was the players who were cheating, breaking U.S. laws by using illegal steroids. The owners didn’t cheat at all. They didn’t ask the players to break laws, nor did they encourage it. The players, on their own volition, decided to lie, cheat, and steal the owners and the fans money.
There is no doubt that the steroid era affected career home run totals. One of the things I like to do is to see what the average top ten home run hitter would do over a ten year period. I take the top ten each year, and average them out, and give the fictional player that total.
1909-1918 (dead ball era-before Ruth changed everything) A great home run hitter would be able to put up 103 home runs in that decade.
1927-1936 (Lou Gehrig’s prime) the total rises to 322. It remains about that level for 5 years, and then goes in the toilet for 5, as many top home run hitters were in WWII.
1947-1956(post integration) 353
1959-1968(prior to mound being lowered, pre-divisional play) 374
1976-1985 (Royals Heyday) 340
1986-1995 (the next 10 years- more people are hitting home runs, but the top end is close to the same)370
1996-2005 (Steroid Era) 466
After integration, the average top ten home run hitters 10 year stretch would be within 10% for nearly 50 years, then would go off the charts.
Perhaps there are other reasons besides steroids, but a great home run hitter from ’96 to 2005 will have somewhere between 92 and 144 more home runs in that ten years than a similar home run hitter in the live ball era.
That is dilution.
Just for grins, the ACTUAL best home run hitter for each of those time frames.
1909-1918: Gavvy Cravath-105
1927-1936: Lou Gehrig-390 (Gehrig, Ruth and Foxx towered over this era.)
1947-1956: Ralph Kiner-346
1959-1968: Harmon Killebrew-386
1976-1985: Mike Schmidt-365
1986-1995: Joe Carter(!?)-299
1996-2005:Sammy Sosa-457
I sort of wish Brady Anderson would share the inside story of his 50-homer season.
Fantastic numbers #69. Is my math correct in that Sammy Sosa hit OVER FIFTY PERCENT more home runs than Joe Carter in his respective decade?
FIFTY FREAKING PERCENT MORE???!!!
This is all besides the poetry appreciation angle Joe has written about here; but I figure no one is really arguing over that.
All the why-I-oughta guff about exactly how big a jerk Bonds is, and what if he never juiced, and whether Teddy about-as-big-a-jerk Williams would now own the record but for things like, well, life and history, all reminds me of the only rejoinder to folks who refuse to accept the planet is not 6000 years old, or that global warming is a reality: All well and fine, but the planet does not care one little bit what age you believe it is, or whether you are able to accept that its temperature is too high to sustain your species as is.
Bonds may have somehow cheated his way into the #1 spot for career home runs, but frankly that it but a piece of evidence as to whether he was a great baseball player. Even by the Burns narrative, at 34 he was the first — the first — MLB player ever to get to both 400 homers and 400 stolen bases. By the career arc of say, Aaron, at 35 to 40 homers a year for just another 6 years, Bonds would have retired with upwards of 600 homers, and easily. Or he could have been tripped over his ego and fallen into an open manhole and expired at 35.
Either way, go ask anyone who ever played against him, or even who just saw him in action at any time in his long prime: the man could flat play at a level that, at best, only a dozen others could. That puts him in the club his talent deserved; the rest of it serves an essential, though somewhat limited purpose: lots of fantasies and trivia and other such pointless stuff to argue over in order to safely avoid facing up to reality.
My guess: Part of Joe’s feeling are the inflated homerun numbers. But another part is just that he’s getting older, and naturally getting more jaded.
What’s REALLY sad (to me) is the lack of day baseball, especially in the playoffs and series. What kids can stay up to the end of the games? West coast kids only. Baseball isn’t developing as many new fans to carry on (and be impressed by the heroes of their youth, and grow into old fuddyduddies saying how things were better back in their day).
It is well documented that the ball has not always been the same and that in the middle of the 1993 season MLB changed the ball. Tests of balls from before 1993 and after showed that the newer balls traveled farther and that if you subtracted the extra mean distance traveled by that ball from all HRs hit that you would get the pre-ball change HR rate. The newer balls had a springier core and were wound with synthetics instead of wool. The synthetics absorb less moisture, making the ball lighter. The primary reason for the change in numbers was the ball composition….unless you believe that mid-1993 all players started doing ‘roids.
Over a 7-season period from 1965 through 1971, 7 players hit their 500th HR. This equals the maximum for any 7-season stretch since the mid-90s. Did people back then think all of those occurrences were cheapening the 500 HR club?
A number of studies have tried to isolate the effect of steroids on power numbers and they have been unable to detect an effect consistent with perceived steroid usage patterns (based on anecdotal evidence, players sizes, etc.). Rather, they find over the history of baseball that major jumps in HR rates almost always are associated with changes in ball composition and that more minor jumps in HR rates are associated with events such as lowering the mound, expansion, or construction of new HR friendly parks.
The evidence of steroids as the primary driver of increased power simply isn’t there. Sorry to frustrate your urge to hate, but the data simply don’t support people’s assumptions in this case.
Are people still ignoring the fact that steroids seem to have helped pitchers more than hitters and the fact that more pitchers than hitters have been caught using steroids and that more pitchers than hitters appear in the Mitchell report?
Really? You just don’t care about all of the guys that were throwing 89 that all of a sudden were useful relievers throwing 95? That is of no consequence to you? Oh, relievers weren’t breaking records and invading your nostalgic reverie?
#64. Matt Williams was on the juice. He was named in the Mitchell report, and he admitted to using HGH, albeit he said it was to treat an ankle injury.
#53. Regarding HR rate. In all of baseball history, there were only two seasons prior to 1994 where AL teams averaged over 1 HR per game (1986 and ’87 at 1.01 and 1.16, respectively). From 1994 to 2006, the lowest average for team HR/g was 1.07 (peaking at 1.21 in 1996). The HR rate fell to 0.99 and 1.00 in 2007 and 2008. It jumped back up to 1.13 in 2009, but thus far in 2010 has fallen back to 0.95. This 0.95 rate in 2010 is the lowest since 1993.
So on one hand you have HR rates climbing significantly during the steroid era and dropping back down quite a bit after the steroid era fallout.
People are arguing that a juiced ball is the major reason for the HR surge of the steroid era. If so, then that means MLB has reduced the bounciness of the ball over the last few years. Or, more teams than Colorado are using the humidor. It seems more likely, to me at least, that it’s the relative lack of steroids that is the reason the HR’s have dropped back down a bit.
I remember distinctly when Bonds hit his 400 hr, and was the first man to have 4o0/400. I was not a Giants fan, and had been out of baseball following for most of the 90s. That was the wakeup call to me that this Barry Bonds I’d been hearing about was really extraordinary. That was when I started to pay attention to him.
What a fantastic post. I’m very excited for the Ken Burns 10th inning.
#62 NMarkW
I omitted the ‘d’. Nobody likeD Ty Cobb either.
Does change the meaning, don’t it?
I’m glad that you referred to this era of steroids and big spending as the “Selig Era” because that is EXACTLY what it is and should be remembers as. He is quite possibly the worst commissioner in the history of baseball or organized sports. He’s presided over the ’94 strike. He allowed the greed of the the owners to trump what was best for the game and lock the players out until the union was broken. He enabled the ridiculous spending sprees that have created 2 leagues in the sport (Major Leagues & AAAA). He looked the other way while the obvious was happening regarding steroids and the games most hallowed records were obliterated. The decisions regarding the All-Star game (ending in a tie & the ridiculous “winner gets home field advantage) were also poorly conceived. The game will suffer for years due to the damage he’s caused whether directly or by inaction.
As for A-Rod and his “enhanced” 600th HR, I find it amusing that all the Yank fans will fall over themselves to praise him (forgetting how he got here) but wonder if that praise would be drowned out by jeers if he were a Red Sox, Cub or a Dodger. The same goes for the Red Sox fans who have all but forgotten that just a year ago Big Poopy was in disgrace for being named in the steroid “list” but was lauded by all RS fans for his triumphant winning of the HR Derby at the All-Star game this year.
Hypocrisy.
@81
I’m a Yankees fan. I’m pulling for A-Rod to break the records.
I’m not a homer or a hypocrite. Sure steroids have ruined the “pure” image of the sport. But I don’t care. It’s still fun to watch and follow baseball. Steroids didn’t turn me away from the game. So I enjoyed watching Bonds play and A-Rod play now.
@9
You asked a long time ago in this thread what the purists thought of Babe Ruth in the 20s. Great question. They didn’t like him. They thought he was ruining baseball and they also thought that you couldn’t play winning baseball by hitting the HR. John McGraw and Ty Cobb were two of the biggest insider critics. I am sure you could easily find some writers who thought and wrote the same.
In 1921 and 1922 McGraw’s Giants beat (actually creamed) Ruth’s Yankees in the WS and there was definitely some people who took that as proof that McGraw’s way was the best way. (to rub salt in the Yankees wounds, the titleless Bombers were the tenants of the Giants in Giants Stadium). Then the House that Ruth Built went up, the Yankees won the WS over the Giants in 1923 (1st title) and the rest is history
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » What 600 Homers Means [...]
two things –
Baseball fans are psychotically protective of records – is it really so unlikely that there will never be any players better than those that have already played?
The other, and people forget, is that Bonds was vocally a black militant and voiced quite openly that the press treated him (and all black players) as chattel if they didn’t do the “Bull Durham” talk. That’s why the media hated him and why he avoided the press. In our white-washed rewritten history that seems to have been forgotten, he was just “a jerk” – why do you hear only that now? Because he wasn’t nice to the press. Is exhibit two really seriously having a barcalounger in the clubhouse?
He didn’t keep his mouth shut like Henry Aaron and so paid the price. I much admire Henry Aaron, who chose gentlemanly discretion always it seems, but Bonds made himself a target by speaking his mind – even if he toned that down post-2000.
Bonds will go to trial (if he does got to trial) coming up on 10 years after his 73 homers. Doesn’t anyone see the degree of complete absurdity in something taking that long for something that was so “obvious”?
If someone hit 100 home runs, I’d wonder. If someone hit .450 I’d wonder. If someone pitched 30 complete game shutouts I’d wonder. None of these things happened. The game changed for a time, and some records were broken – that’s been happening since 1876, folks.
I think its funny, and also kind of pathetic, that as great a writer as you are (and you are great) you love – LOVE – to write stories that belittle Yankee players while striving so hard to appear objective. It constantly happens with you, Joe. Jeter jokes all the time, George’s winning pennants and championships with the Yankees, and now Arod’s pursuit of 600.
I love reading your blogs. They are excellent. However, your anti-Yankee bent is so obvious that, as a lifelong Yankee fan, I don’t even get mad, I just chuckle to myself and say…”oh, that Joe”.
There are days in life you reach perfection.
Joe did so when he hit the “send” button on this post.
The conundrum for me is as a Yankee fan, I want Rodriguez to succeed. And I know he cheated. But at some point you begin to see he was one of many competing against others who cheated,a nd some-few?-who didn’t. Which doesn’t exonerate, but does explain.
Won’t defend him, but suspect the percentage of PED users in MLB is close to Canseco’s 90%. May be not every player, but how many like Any Pettitte cycled on to deal with nagging injuries. And further those numbers include pitchers like Pettitte.
Suspect the lack of power this year is going to be even more pronounced because of the banning of stimulants like greenies. Up until very recently, it was accepted that every MLB clubouse had a coffee machine with greenies loaded right into the coffeepot. It’s a long, grinding season and they play almost every day.
Also where does a drug cross from being a pain reliever to a steroid? Where is that line? Is it better to have a max dose of Advil or a small dose of some steroids?
Suspect in 2010 the bigger story is greenies, or the lack thereof.
So you’re David Arias, about to be dumped by the Twins. And suddenly you take the needle from the same trainer as A-rod back in the DR. And you transformed into Sawx legend Big Papi, David Ortiz, witha huge ass long-term contract to boot.
Or your could “be clean” and go back to obscurity and if you didn’t save up, may be being a poor guy in the DR.
I take the needle. ANd by all accounts Ortiz is a decent guy. The roids probably helped a bunch, but he still had to perform. And he did so against other players and pitchers who all took the needle too. It possibly wasn’t an edge, he was merely keeping up.
The Rays’ Gabe Kapler was as a rookie with the Tigers regularly featured in bodybuilding mags. His physique throughout his career screams ROIDS. Yet I see no one demanding he be dumped. If Andy Pettitte, The All American Boy doing Bible commercials , took the needle, any of them might have done it. Bad news-Santa and the Easter Bunny might be BS too.
The only problem I have ever had as Yankee fan is that the report Selig solicited from Sawx shareholder and board member George Mitchell obviously whitewashed the Sawx. We are to believe that with the likes of known and obvious like Ortiz, Mo Vaughan, Manny Ramirez, Kapler and others going into the Sawx clubhouse over the years Mitchell had no idea who the Boston equivalent of Macnamee or Radomski was. And that was crap; which does not exonerate Rodriguez or anyone else. When it finally came out last year that Ortiz did use, MLB tried ridiculously to cover for him. Again, Ortiz is a nice man and I wish him well. But MLB sticking up for one franchise and not others is crap. Bud Selig knew damn well in 1998 what was going on, and to pretend otherwise is a joke.
Only Worthwhile
Career Home Run List
1. 755 Henry Aaron
2. 714 Babe Ruth
3. 660 Willie Mays
4. 630 Ken Griffey, Jr.
5. 586 Frank Robinson
6. 575 Jim Thome*
7. 573 Harmon Killebrew
8. 563 Reggie Jackson
9. 548 Mike Schmitt
10. 536 Mickey Mantle
11. 534 Jimmie Foxx
12. 521 Ted Williams
521 Willie McCovey
521 Frank Thomas
15. 512 Ernie Banks
512 Eddie Mathews
17. 511 Mel Ott
18. 504 Eddie Murray
19. 493 Lou Gehrig
493 Fred McGriff
(*-Active)
Actives With Reasonable Shot at 500
427 Vladimir Guerrero (35)
388 Albert Pujols (30)
339 Adam Dunn (30)
I don’t question that Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, and Manny Ramirez would have hit at least 500 home runs without The Juice. But since no one has been able to determine how many of any hitter’s home runs were Juice-related and how many would have occurred as a natural course of events, I decline to recognize their efforts.
I also do not believe that Rafael Palmeiro and Gary Sheffield would have hit 500 home runs without The Juice. Yes, I acknowledge that Palmeiro now has more career home runs than Ramirez. I believe that Ramirez will surpass Palmeiro in career home runs before his retirement and that Ramirez is both a more talented hitter with a more consistent 12 years of production in the power departments than Palmeiro. It should be noted that Palmeiro hit more than 30 home runs in a season only once before age 30 and then ripped off nine consecutive seasons of 38 to 47 home runs between the ages of 30 and 38.
Jim Thome and Frank Thomas have been dogged by rumors of The Juice for several years. However, no one has brought forth any evidence indicating that Thome or Thomas used The Juice, HGH, or any other similar substance. As such, I recognize their career numbers until proven otherwise.
Regarding active players, I am well aware of the career home run totals of Ryan Howard, who’s again heating up after the All-Star break, and Miguel Cabrera. While it is quite likely that one or both will join The Only Worthwhile 500 Home Run Club, it is also possible that one or both will suffer an injury, become lazy, suffer a lapse or relapse (in Cabrera’s case) in the abuse of a narcotic or alcohol, or get hit by a truck. Neither player has yet reached 250 career home runs. Let’s just enjoy their efforts and see what happens in about, oh, seven or eight years.
Also, cut the crap and put Fred McGriff in Cooperstown. McGriff played the game the right way, didn’t hang around for his seven jacks as some sort of pinch hitter or twice-a-week bench bum, and never said much one way or the other about numbers. Some of the stat geeks, who have a valid place in this game to be sure, that knock McGriff are the same kinds of fools who moan about Andre Dawson’s on-base percentage being more than 4o points lower than Tim Raines’s.
The Expos and every team afterward asked Dawson to drive in runs – not get on base – and Raines to get on base – not drive in runs. Any idiot knows that the middle of the lineup hitter 20 and 30 years ago sacrificed contact, and free passes (unless named Ted Williams), for power and production, while the leadoff hitter (save Rickey Henderson) forgot about jacks and focused on getting to first base and then stealing second and third. The damn game changes and comparing a cleanup and leadoff hitter is like comparing an apple and a strawberry. Both are fruits. Both taste good in mom’s pies. Beyond that, any sort of comparison is worthless.
Also, Dawson, Raines, and Vladimir Guerrero all played on that 3/8-of-an-inch of padded concrete in Montreal for several years. All three have knee problems. All three saw their production decline in concert with their knee cartilage. One of the reasons Gary Carter made it out of Montreal somewhat functional is that catching, while the most grueling position in the game, spared him from running on that joke of an outfield at Olympic Stadium.
Carter’s in the Hall. Hawk goes in later today. Raines deserves a spot in Cooperstown. Guerrero’s already first ballot material.
I highly recommend reading through the two studies done on the baseball at the turn of the millennium. #23 gives a link to the website, but this link narrows it down to those studies:
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/changing-baseball.shtml
And this is a video on one of the study’s results:
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/GRAPHICS/baseball.mov
The home run rate jumped dramatically in 1993 and 1994. The rate it jumped to was in line with that of 1987′s, when everyone started talking about a juiced ball. I think this ball was temporarily abandoned after all the homers that year, then reintroduced in ’93-94.
In the five years between 1988 and 1992, hr per batted ball averaged 2.83% in the AL and 2.53% NL.
In 1994 the hr rate per batted ball was 3.89%; in the NL 3.42%. So the jump by ’94 was 37% in the AL and 35% in the NL.
Check out Tom Tango’s piece on home runs. All it would take to produce this size of a jump is to increase distance by 8 to 10 feet.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/changes-in-home-run-rates-during-the-retrosheet-years/
I believe a number of factors contributed to increased home run rates in the 90′s: thin-handled bats, stronger players, p.e.d.’s, body armor allowing players to stand closer to the plate. But if true, the changed baseball is the reason more so than all of those.
@bugg #87,
Interesting observation. I don’t doubt at all that Selig plays favorites. He works for all the owners (talk about a conflict of interest in what’s best for the game, but that’s a post for another day), but there are still some owners he likes better than others. I live in “Sawx” country and have witnessed first hand the venerable Mr. David “Big Poppy” Ortiz’s handling of his recent “outing” by the Mitchell report coupled with this own offensive struggles. He became combative and belligerent when reporters dared to question if his time might be over while he struggled last season and the beginning of this season. The guy was always the benefactor of hitting in front of Manny to begin with. It’s no coincidence that his number began to fall once the “Sawx” traded Manny to LA. Launching into a swear tirade at reporters mere months after the Mitchell report outed him certainly did no service to his reputation as another spoiled athlete that as long as things are going well, “Poppy’s” everybody’s friend. But when people dare criticize him after everything he’s done for them (winning 2 WS while on the juice & all) well they’re ungrateful “expletive.”
So I found it especially hilarious that “Sawx” Nation was uniformly singing Big Poppy’s praises by stuffing the ballot box for him to make the All-Star Game this year once he found that magic home run stroke in May and June. The day after the Home Run Derby the local sports shows were besides themselves with glee rejoicing at Big Poppy’s triumphant victory in the contest. But in April and before the talk shows and fans had him as just another steroid cheat that had been caught and the party was playing “Closing Time.”
Fans being fans, I guess.
@Mark #88
Nice post.
@64,
In addition to Matt Williams, juicer or not, don’t forget that Ken Griffey Jr., juicer or not (and I totally fail to understand the almost universal opinion that he was never a juicer; is there actually any evidence of this?), had 40 jacks at the time of the strike; and that he had cooled off from his earlier pace when, not long before the strike, people were thinking that he might end up with 80 or so. (Of course, sans strike he might have remained cooled off, but he also could just as easily have gotten hot again.)
So. If Williams appears to have perhaps been juicing in ’94, how about Griffey?
@89 – also, Denver came into the league in 1993.
Even as a Yankee fan, I am not too excited about A-Rod’s near achievement, I think it will be a big deal if and when Thome gets there because he is one of the most respected men in baseball.
Yes, good post Mark #88. While I disagree with some of your conclusions, you make the tremendously valuable points of context and perspective. IMHO, I think 20 years from now some of the home run records will be viewed kind of like Hack Wilson – a byproduct of a time and place.
Great article by Bill James re: steroids, for anyone who hasn’t read it:
http://www.actapublications.com/images/small/PressReleases/Cooperstownandthe‘Roids_F2.pdf
@92. The NL hr rates per batted ball (no bunt ab’s) in ’93 was 3.06% with Colorado and Florida home games included. Without these home games it was 3.03%. Not a huge difference.
In ’94 it was 3.42% with Col and Fla home games, 3.39% without. The huge jump at this time was not due to Colorado joining the league.
@95 chas,
Why are you excluding Col and Fla home games but not their road games? Seems arbitrary.
@96. The idea was to take the new parks out of the mix and see if the jump was just related to these parks or not, and if so by how much.
@97
Okay, but expansion isn’t just about new parks, it’s about a bunch of new players and possible dilution of pitching talent.
@ 98. Point taken. But I just don’t see the expansion of two teams (to 14) diluting pitching to the extent that the hr rate increases 30+ %.
The AL and NL expanded by 4 teams each in ’69 and also changed the k zone in the hitters’ favor. The hr rate per batted ball rose in both leagues, but only back to the same rate it had been in the mid-60s.
I began a study a while back and keep meaning to get back to it. I was looking at starting pitchers who’d pitched in both ’92 and ’93 and their home run rate change in ’93. I have a working list of 51 NL starters. Their hr rate on average increased 33% in 1993. (They weren’t chosen because of that; I’m just working through adding guys team by team.)
Only seven of the 51 managed to lower their hr rate in ’93, while 44 of them saw it rise. These were not new starters that were only pitching because of expansion; these were the established guys giving up more hr’s.
Ben Folds Five reference FTW!
@marc #85 –
So the media didn’t like Barry Bonds because he was a “black militant”? Really?
As someone who has been intimately involved in the civil rights struggle since the 60s (demonstrated, helped start a goverment agency in NYC for EEO, etc.), I find that statement to be breathtaking in its lack of connection to reality. I have never, EVER heard of Barry Bonds being mentioned in this context. What possible evidence do you have of this?
Once upon a time, athletes actually cared and did something about issues of race and war (just off the top of my head: Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tommy Smith, John Carlos, Curt Flood, etc.). That time passed a long time ago; the ruling philosophy among black atheletes nowadays, so far as I can tell, is the one so eloquently expressed by Michael Jordan: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
Barry Bonds was treated the way he was by the media because, basically, he was a jerk. astorian #17 best describes Bonds’ attitude towards the media; notice that it contains no mention of race at all.
Yes, Barry Bonds was a great player. Yes, he would have been a 1st-ballot HoF inductee without the PEDs. Yes, he was a complete jerk with the media. But most importantly here: NO, he was not an agitator for, or supporter of, anything that could remotely be considered civil rights.
I put it to you that the most boring play in baseball is the homerun.
The ball is hit and then… 1 man jogs slowly and 9 fielders stand there. I enjoy balls in play where runners and fielders and base coaches have to make decisions, plays executed and a tight call on a slide into the plate.
I understand that home runs are an impressive feat, and hitting 600 of them is more impressive still. But they just aren’t very interesting.
Hey, I understand a lot of this post but…I just want to toss something out there as a younger fan.
I started watching baseball for the first time last year after going to a Yankee’s – Philly’s game. A-Rod cranked a two-run shot to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, and the Yanks went on to win it.
Since that moment–the most exciting sports moment I’ve ever witnessed except, again, A-Rod’s game winning homerun in the bottom of the 15th against Boston–I’ve been a devoted baseball fan. I used to struggle to connect with my grandparents or parents, but now we have baseball to talk about which can springboard into any other conversation and that’s entirely due to A-Rod.
I know there’s a lot of much covering his name, but the fact of the matter is that I’m a baseball fan because of him and watching this achievement doesn’t feel cheap at all. I don’t remember all those other players hitting 600, he’ll be the first I’ve seen and there’s something special about watching a ballplayer as talented as he is.
Unarguably one of the most talented players to ever play the game, even if he is overshadowed by Pujol’s or was by Bond’s, he’s the link to a former age. When my dad talks about seeing Mantle, or my grandfather mentions seeing DiMaggio, all I can say is, “Well, at least I get to watch A-Rod.” Maybe my perspective is skewed because I don’t have the years of sports fandom to better encourage it, but that seems to be ok. Alex got me to watch baseball, and that seems like enough. 600 Homeruns is special for fans like me, for fans who haven’t seen anything else like this and want to someday tell their children and grandchildren about when Alex hit 600, and the Captain became the All-Time Yankee hit leader, about watching Mauer do the impossible as a catcher, and seeing the Machine keep chugging along in St. Louis.
I can’t talk about Hank Aaron, so they’ll here different stories and these players will appear just as large to them as Ruth does to us.
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Another key to getting to 600 homeruns, prior to the mid-1990s – not getting sent to multiple overseas wars.
The top 3 MLB home run hitters and where each stood in relation the others when each had the same number of at bats:
At 8399 at bats Ruth had hit 714, Aaron 493 & Bonds 619.
Further research shows that Bonds needed another 837 extra at bats to merely tie Ruth and Aaron another 2,890 to tie the Babe.
The whys & the wherefores, nee “yeah but” cries…bias as subjective opines be trumped by the only unassailables: stats themselves.
We can debate the pros & cons of playing in different eras to include the total # of MLB teams and players as well the size ballparks, steroids, pitching mound height & pitchers faced as well those not and other variables. Measured terms ‘prolific’ vs ‘best’, Bonds taps the former while Ruth wins the latter.
Mark McGwire was a bit better than Ruth hr ratio but Ruth hit more hrs- same argument as Bonds vs Ruth (for the record, I’ve found several former MLB players who had better at bats per hr ratio than McGwire, but also had far fewer hrs. Too, McGwire (like Ruth) was running on fumes end of his career, so McGwire’s ratio would’ve likely gone down had he continued, steroids or not. Sadaharu Oh hit more hrs did Bonds, but he played in Japan so that invalidates him… or does it?
If the league matters opposition talent level then so too it must in ANY era.
‘Whom’ each hr hitter faced (pitchers) is no different in essence/just as relevant ‘when’ they played (era) … in other words, though every era had/has its great pitchers, neither Bonds or Ruth for example faced an Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson or Steve Carlton et al – Aaron did (someone may argue this is why his at bats per hr ratio wasn’t as good as an Ruth or Bonds.)
In this way those who’d dismiss a player (an Ruth for not playing vs players of color and a Bonds who benfitted playing in the steroid era) must acknowledge comparisons be not easy & are fraught with variables… every era has its particulars. Upshot be, far too much wiggle room to draw definite conclusions on ANY player.
More grist for the mill: current player Alex Rodriquez has 599 hrs/soon 600 appears -maybe he’s ‘best’ since he’ll do so sooner agewise than anyone else has? Stay tuned, that fall off the cliff mid 30′s most players appends, medicinal assist aside. My opine, I don’t think he’ll pass Bonds, Aaron or Ruth.
No, many sports and many stars, various players X have more of this, that or some other than players Z, but the formers still cannot carry the shoes the latters; among them the latters I consider be Jim Brown, Gale Sayers and Dan Marino as examples (no Superbowl ring among the ‘slackers’.)
My own purview, this baseball traditionalist has lost faith in stats integrity due to events the last 20 some years. The adage ‘all things being relative’ (tho not necessarily equal) & each player measured vs ‘best’ their era per opportunity (productivity) instead of ‘most’ (prolific) – George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth in a (home run) trot, my opine.
When all is said & done, there is/will never be consensus- even were there, majority or consensus validates nothing, just as ‘more’ does not equate ‘best’.
Amen. That was fantastic Joe!
e@43, steroids are generally legal when used under a doctor’s care. I’m opposed to sending people to jail when what they did was not against the law. I’m opposed to making steroids illegal when they help so many people in so many ways. Baseball can ban the players that use them, but cannot send them to jail.
Joe – you have hit on exactly the wet blanket that the steroid era has caused for baseball fans and historians. The terrible message it sends to our children is bad enough (1. It’s okay to cheat and 2. It’s okay to cheat even if it’s something that is hazardous to your health.)
But for the fan the bloom is off the rose of many of the most beautiful flowers in Sport’s garden, and no sport is more tarnished from a historical perspective than baseball.
714 Home Runs was Everest, and for a single season 61 was the mark that even Mantle and Mays and Aaron, to name a few, couldn’t reach.
We ALL dug the long ball, and those marks were hallowed. Then Brady Anderson hit 50 homers. Then it seemed like every single team had a player who did – or came close. The year that McGwire and Sosa chased Maris I joined in the national elation – the strike-eliminated year left a very foul taste in this fan’s mouth, and the ill will generated by the boneheads who led to baseball being stopped and the World Series being cancelled was smoothed over by those friendly rivals who launched projectiles into National League outfield bleachers and beyond.
Then 60 home runs became commonplace and we became suspicious as the grumblings about steroids became a national shriek.
Then the player that only his mother and Giant’s fans could love cheerlessly obliterated the record that had delighted us when Sosa and McGwire pursued it – and we did not admire him for it.
Then he began closing in on the holiest of holies. He passed 714 with a sneer and when he also passed the elegantly humble and graceful Aaron, we vowed that The Hammer was still King in our hearts.
I collect memorabilia, and I have been fortunate enough to collect items bearing the signature of all of the players in “The Club” – those with 500 home runs.
I also own items signed by the infidels – but I am not certain how to display them. The thrill is, if not gone, as least lessened. Not only are their accomplishments tainted, but the lists of suspect names that are repeated somehow also leaves a trace of that foul residue on our heroes. Rafael Palmeiro should not be mentioned in the same company as Willie Mays. And Henry Aaron is still the Home Run King. Period.
If the general public is of the belief that the home run spike was a direct result of the steroids era, they are essentially stating one of two things:
A) No pitchers took steroids
or
B) Steroids are of much less benefit to pitchers than hitters
I don’t know how likely either of those statements are to be true, but I think you’re on to something Joe. After all, shouldn’t we be waiting for someone to blow Nolan Ryan’s 5700 K’s out of the water?
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@88 “Jim Thome and Frank Thomas have been dogged by rumors of The Juice for several years.”
Not true. Thomas was one of the guys calling for testing all through his career, and I have yet to hear Thome’s name mentioned as a user.