Great read. Thank you. I so agree. 755 or 762? Bonds took all those steroids to beat Aaron by a measly seven homes runs? Not impressed. Just as Roger lost his hair from the stress of challenging Ruth’s season record, Hammering Hank endured death threats for challenging Ruth’s career record. Aaron hit his 755 against a smaller set of opponents and a four man rotation that included Koufax, Drysdale, Gibson, Carlton, Marichal, Bunning, and Seaver. The ball was also less juiced back then. It was the golden age of baseball.
Aaron Judge home run debate: Roger Maris’ untainted 61 is real record
Roger Maris remains the real single-season home run record holder. In our hearts and minds, we all know that to be true.nypost.com
Aaron Judge home run debate: Roger Maris’ untainted 61 is real record
By Jon Heyman
If you believe Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are the genuine, honest-to-goodness home run champions, perhaps you’ll recall Ben Johnson as a great Olympic gold medalist, Lance Armstrong as someone to be celebrated and Rosie Ruiz as a rightful New York City Marathon winner.
Of course, Roger Maris remains the real single-season home run record holder. In our hearts and minds, we all know that to be true.
So, if Aaron Judge tops Maris this year, and Judge now has 50 homers, putting him on a record-breaking 63 home run pace, he is not only the Yankees and American League home run champion but the authentic major league champ.
Maris beat the Babe and Mickey with his hair falling out, the misguided commissioner of the time threatening an asterisk and everyone outside of the Maris family (and the rest of his home state of North Dakota) rooting on The Mick, the homegrown Hall of Famer who was everyone’s boyhood idol, including mine. More importantly, Maris did it without chemical assistance.
Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961, which also happens to be 61 years ago. So perhaps it’s fitting another great Yankee right fielder can break Maris’ home run record, which held for 37 years until both McGwire and Sosa combined with their respective drug dealers to captivate a naïve nation and cheat Maris out of his rightful record. Then Bonds, knowing he was better than McGwire and Sosa combined, and also that he had access to Balco and even better chemicals via Victor Conte, stole the record from Thieves One and Two.
That was a long time ago, back in the steroid era, and we’ve learned a lot since then. Bonds, McGwire and Sosa transformed their bodies into home run machines. Their numbers in those years are a mirage. Their game was a scam.
Everyone knows this, including my esteemed colleague Mike Vaccaro, who in Tuesday’s excellent column on Judge separated the “clean” 50-homer hitters from the “dirty” ones. It’s all in the open now, even if baseball’s powers that be don’t want to completely acknowledge it, and correct what’s obvious to all.
The debate about how Bonds turned himself into a better Babe Ruth in his late-30s, about how Sosa went from a skinny, base-stealing prospect traded for an old DH (Harold Baines) to a North Side hero (for a while, anyway) and about how McGwire transformed from aging and injury prone to a monster who made the old Busch Stadium look tiny ended long ago.
The inflated numbers of these three talented scoundrels are about as legit as Bernie Madoff’s accounting records. We’d be fools to continue pretending their dealers don’t deserve half the credit, or more.
Judge, like Maris, is doing it the old-fashioned way. While batting in the two spots historically reserved for table-setters, and shuttling between right field and center, and by playing in the most publicized walk year and with the pressure of knowing he left $213.5 million on the table, Judge is putting together one of the greatest seasons of all time.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, that’s for damn sure,” teammate Gerrit Cole said.
We’d never seen anything like the late-’90s and early-2000s either, before Conte and his ilk, and players who were anxious to hit more home runs, make more money and win more honors turned that era into what one other steroid user call the “loosey goosey” days. We can still recall that it happened, and that we all let it happen. But that doesn’t mean we have to honor the folks most responsible — the cheats themselves.
We know now their home runs came via chemistry, that they spent as much time perfecting their regimens as their swings, that they traveled needles (or pills or creams) as well as their uniforms and bats, and that their numbers are the saddest part of baseball history, certainly not something to be celebrated or honored. It’s somewhat ironic now that then commissioner Ford Frick wanted to place an asterisk on Maris’ record since it was done in a 162-game season, and not 154. If anyone should have had an asterisk, it is Ruth, who hit his 60 homers 20 years before baseball integrated.
Now, it’s about more than eight extra games, and a tiny little asterisk. It’s about a whole different ballgame that was played with PEDs.
History tells us the asterisk wasn’t real justice. Neither are the phony “records” set by three well-known cheats.
61 or 73?
- Thread starter Halldan1
- Start date
Stop. The hitters were playing against pitchers that were using. I’ma Yankee die hard but Bonds was an amazing player and would likely still have the HR record. Hat tip to Bonds. He’s the HR king until someone unseats him.
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Aaron had 12,364 at bats as compared to Bonds' 9,847. That's roughly four years worth of at bats. If they had equal numbers of at bats, Bonds would have hit at least 100 more HRs.
Add Bonds' 2,558 career walks (most all-time) to his at bats and you get to just over 12,400. He drew more than 1,000 walks than Aaron did.
My heart says Maris deserves the record but my head says it's Bonds all the way. Bonds probably would have won the all-time record without PEDs. The 73 HRs are ridiculous though.
According to Jose Conseco, PEDS were widespread among the players when he played. Only a few were caught because of happinstance (e.g. Balco). Both Jeter and Piazza came to the majors as skinny kids but added a lot of muscle in their careers. Big Poppy was an average player before landing in Boston. The point is no one knows how widespread PEDs was in Bonds' era.
According to Jose Conseco, PEDS were widespread among the players when he played. Only a few were caught because of happinstance (e.g. Balco). Both Jeter and Piazza came to the majors as skinny kids but added a lot of muscle in their careers. Big Poppy was an average player before landing in Boston. The point is no one knows how widespread PEDs was in Bonds' era.
not only did he draw walks, he got intentionally walked a ton. lots of at bats he didnt even see real pitches. harder to get in a groove that way. dont think this happened with aaron. i mean, bonds used to get intentionally walked with bases loaded.
Other than bonds I don’t know of any other player intentionally walked with based loaded. That’s pretty crazy to think about.
based loaded while the pitching team up 2. in the 9th so the move brought the winning run to 2nd base and that was more appealing than letting bonds do anything. and that was pre juice
I disagree. There were playing on Same playing field. Pitchers in the 60’s clearly didn’t throw as hard as they do today. Should we discount those home run records? You play against the competition your grade faced with. PED’s we’re wide spread. Put them all in.
Bonds average HR distance was 405’ that season. His shortest HR was 320’ 2x. His next shortest is 350’ and 360’ Once each.
Even if you take the shortest 4 out he’s at 69. The others, even if you shorten them by 50’ get out of any park.
61 all the way.
Bonds only struck out 96 times the year he hit 73HRs. For some context, Judge has already struck out 148 times this year. I guess when you are Mega Juiced you can just take a nice, controlled swing & let it soar. If a clean Bonds would have most likely broke the HR records anyway, why take steroids. Makes no sense.
Also, Jeter was always rail thin. Still is.
Bonds only struck out 96 times the year he hit 73HRs. For some context, Judge has already struck out 148 times this year. I guess when you are Mega Juiced you can just take a nice, controlled swing & let it soar. If a clean Bonds would have most likely broke the HR records anyway, why take steroids. Makes no sense.
Also, Jeter was always rail thin. Still is.
Bonds struck out 100 times once in a 22-year career -- his rookie year at age 21. He played in an era where batters striking out was considered bad baseball. Today hitters are taught strikeouts are the cost of doing business in the search for power.
That rookie year was the one season in Bonds' career he had more strikeouts than hits. Aaron Judge in parts of seven major league seasons, has never had more hits than strikeouts in a single season.
Making contact is almost always better. Putting the ball in play means mistakes can be made by the defense or at its simplest move a base runner along.
By the way Aaron Judge is listed at over 280 lbs -- well above Bonds' playing weight. He's no small man and he too can "take a nice, controlled swing & let it soar."
this is a board comprised of old yankees fans. of course theyre gonna answer 63.
You do know that the most Bonds ever struck out in a season was 102 his rookie year. He never got to triple digits in strikeouts ever. And back in the late 80’s and early 90’s he was thinner than Jeter.
Also—last time I checked Fernando Tatis isn’t Bonds’ size and he was just placed on the suspension list for illegal performance enhancement substances.
Here is a list of the many dozens of banned substances:
List of banned substances in Major League Baseball - Wikipedia
Here is one, for example, that manages pain and does not induce any weight gain:
Epidural steroid injections do not induce weight gain - PubMed
It appears that neuraxial steroids administration doesn't induce weight gain.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Just because certain players used specific steroids for muscle size doesn’t mean thin players didn’t use them to keep joints and connective tissue extremely strong and avoiding injury.
Jeter played at least 145 games in 16–yes 16–years of his 20 year career. At shortstop. Pretty remarkably durable at a high demand position.
Not saying he used any steroids at all. I don’t think he did.
But connecting a player’s muscular size to steroids isn’t a good argument. Because then Mickey Mantle and Frank Thomas would fit that criteria and David Ortiz would not.
well his head became about twice the size it was previously...lol....maybe he had some weird head-exercise machine and he grew muscles in his head...guess that could have been it.....
DiMaggio's record is safe...no one even PLAYS 56 consecutive games anymore!
Sorry, that makes no sense. How is it steroids if he’s taking an easy swing? I begin he was on a level playing field with all the pitchers that were on PED’s too. In do believe he works have still broken the record. He got better as a hitter throughout his career. He has no hoke in his swing. If it was in the strike zone he was going to hit it hard. He also never chased. He took 171 walks that season. That has nothing to do with PED’s.
Mickey beat Mickey. Oh what could've been.Aaron Judge home run debate: Roger Maris’ untainted 61 is real record
Roger Maris remains the real single-season home run record holder. In our hearts and minds, we all know that to be true.
Aaron Judge home run debate: Roger Maris’ untainted 61 is real record
By Jon Heyman
If you believe Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are the genuine, honest-to-goodness home run champions, perhaps you’ll recall Ben Johnson as a great Olympic gold medalist, Lance Armstrong as someone to be celebrated and Rosie Ruiz as a rightful New York City Marathon winner.
Of course, Roger Maris remains the real single-season home run record holder. In our hearts and minds, we all know that to be true.
So, if Aaron Judge tops Maris this year, and Judge now has 50 homers, putting him on a record-breaking 63 home run pace, he is not only the Yankees and American League home run champion but the authentic major league champ.
Maris beat the Babe and Mickey with his hair falling out, the misguided commissioner of the time threatening an asterisk and everyone outside of the Maris family (and the rest of his home state of North Dakota) rooting on The Mick, the homegrown Hall of Famer who was everyone’s boyhood idol, including mine. More importantly, Maris did it without chemical assistance.
Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961, which also happens to be 61 years ago. So perhaps it’s fitting another great Yankee right fielder can break Maris’ home run record, which held for 37 years until both McGwire and Sosa combined with their respective drug dealers to captivate a naïve nation and cheat Maris out of his rightful record. Then Bonds, knowing he was better than McGwire and Sosa combined, and also that he had access to Balco and even better chemicals via Victor Conte, stole the record from Thieves One and Two.
That was a long time ago, back in the steroid era, and we’ve learned a lot since then. Bonds, McGwire and Sosa transformed their bodies into home run machines. Their numbers in those years are a mirage. Their game was a scam.
Everyone knows this, including my esteemed colleague Mike Vaccaro, who in Tuesday’s excellent column on Judge separated the “clean” 50-homer hitters from the “dirty” ones. It’s all in the open now, even if baseball’s powers that be don’t want to completely acknowledge it, and correct what’s obvious to all.
The debate about how Bonds turned himself into a better Babe Ruth in his late-30s, about how Sosa went from a skinny, base-stealing prospect traded for an old DH (Harold Baines) to a North Side hero (for a while, anyway) and about how McGwire transformed from aging and injury prone to a monster who made the old Busch Stadium look tiny ended long ago.
The inflated numbers of these three talented scoundrels are about as legit as Bernie Madoff’s accounting records. We’d be fools to continue pretending their dealers don’t deserve half the credit, or more.
Judge, like Maris, is doing it the old-fashioned way. While batting in the two spots historically reserved for table-setters, and shuttling between right field and center, and by playing in the most publicized walk year and with the pressure of knowing he left $213.5 million on the table, Judge is putting together one of the greatest seasons of all time.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, that’s for damn sure,” teammate Gerrit Cole said.
We’d never seen anything like the late-’90s and early-2000s either, before Conte and his ilk, and players who were anxious to hit more home runs, make more money and win more honors turned that era into what one other steroid user call the “loosey goosey” days. We can still recall that it happened, and that we all let it happen. But that doesn’t mean we have to honor the folks most responsible — the cheats themselves.
We know now their home runs came via chemistry, that they spent as much time perfecting their regimens as their swings, that they traveled needles (or pills or creams) as well as their uniforms and bats, and that their numbers are the saddest part of baseball history, certainly not something to be celebrated or honored. It’s somewhat ironic now that then commissioner Ford Frick wanted to place an asterisk on Maris’ record since it was done in a 162-game season, and not 154. If anyone should have had an asterisk, it is Ruth, who hit his 60 homers 20 years before baseball integrated.
Now, it’s about more than eight extra games, and a tiny little asterisk. It’s about a whole different ballgame that was played with PEDs.
History tells us the asterisk wasn’t real justice. Neither are the phony “records” set by three well-known cheats.
Not a Baseball fan and did not know this, old Yankee stadium was a totally different animal
www.pinstripealley.com
The Land of Lost Homers: The old Yankee Stadium hampered power more than its reputation
Of the greatest Yankees, who among them watched the most would-be homers die in the original Yankee Stadium’s so-called "graveyard."
www.pinstripealley.com
No one lost more home runs than Joe DiMaggio because of the old dimensions.Not a Baseball fan and did not know this, old Yankee stadium was a totally different animal
The Land of Lost Homers: The old Yankee Stadium hampered power more than its reputation
Of the greatest Yankees, who among them watched the most would-be homers die in the original Yankee Stadium’s so-called "graveyard."
It's actually common sense. He could take his normal, controlled swing & the ball would go farther. Bonds weight swelled up to 230 when he hit 73 HR's, same as Ortiz. Frank Thomas weighed 275. For some context, neither Mantle, Marris or Aaron even weighed 200.
Not a Baseball fan and did not know this, old Yankee stadium was a totally different animal
eThe Land of Lost Homers: The old Yankee Stadium hampered power more than its reputation
Of the greatest Yankees, who among them watched the most would-be homers die in the original Yankee Stadium’s so-called "graveyard."
A lot of the old ballparks had insane dimensions.
The Polo Grounds, which hosted its last MLB game on September 19, 1963 and where the Yankees called home before moving to the original Yankee Stadium was listed at 279 feet to left field, 450 to left center, 483 to center, 449 to right center and 258 to right field.
Pittsburgh's Forbes Field was 365 to left field, 406 to left center, 457 to center, 408 to right center and 375 to right field -- although the corners were at times considerably closer.
Philadelphia's Shibe Park was 515 feet to center field when it opened and after subsequent alterations still measured 468 and 447 until a few years before it closed when the center field fence was moved to 410 feet.
Yup. Was gonna say Yankee stadium was no different at all from other stadiums of the time with dimensions.
I’m sure Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott and plenty of others can make the same claim of losing homers to the alleys and center field.
Enjoy.
Mickey Mantle: The American Dream Comes To Life® - The Story behind Mickey Mantle's 10 Longest Home Runs
Mickey Mantle: The American Dream Comes To Life® - The Stories behind Mickey Mantle's 10 Longest Home Runs, with photos, bar graph, diagrams, illustrations and video clips.
www.themick.com
There's nothing to debate, the record is 73. It happened, it's in the record books. 61 is good for 7th. If you want to erase the steroid era, Roger Clemens and Andy Petite have some rings coming off the books too.
To me it’s very simple as to whether Bonds holds the home run or not because I believe that cheaters should not hold any record whether it’s the Houston Astros stealing signs or Bond using performance enhancing drugs. We see records erased in numerous sports, including track and field , gymnastics, ice skating , swimming & diving to name just a few because illegal substances were used to enhance performance .
Bottom line is you can't just cherry pick one stat/record from the steroid era to not count. Known steroid users have broken records, hit statistical milestones, and contributed significantly to world championships during the era. Either you leave it all or you wipe it all. There's no in between.
Fair point. But Bonds never failed a drug test. Mind you, I'm not arguing that he was clean but that makes it difficult to wipe his records away.
The PED that Mark McGwire was using was neither illegal per federal law nor subject to MLB drug testing. Again, how do you erase his records if he did nothing that was against the rules?
You can believe what you want. I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong for believing that. Clearly MLB has a different view.
How ironic is it that the HR record has been set/broken by all Yankees? First Ruth sets the bar, Maris comes along and breaks it...Now 60 plus years later another Yankee is on pace to break it. The odds of that has to be slim.
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Jeter did not take PED's. Most of us were skinny as 19-20 year olds and Filled out as we aged. I was able to add way more muscle in my late 20's early 30's than I could at 20 due to ultra high metabolism. I think that's the case for most men. Jeter didn't put on 40 lbs of muscle in 1 year. It happened gradually over his career.
Buck Showalter paid Bonds the ultimate complement when he was manager of the Diamondbacks by intentionally walking Bonds with the bases loaded. His reasoning: "giving up one run is better than four",
TK
TK
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