The sports world is full of iconic records, both single-season and career totals, but none are were more holy than the single-season home run record. Babe Ruth held the record from 1927, when he hit 60, until 1961 when Roger Maris hit one more, 61. For the next 35 years, sluggers would flirt with matching or passing Marris from time to time, but nobody was able to hit more than Ken Griffey Jr’s 56 in 1997.
Then came the summer of 1998 when both Sammy Sosa (66) and Mark McGwire (70) blew past Maris’ magical mark (accidental alliteration right there) of 61. Then in 1999 both Sosa and McGwire surpassed 61 again with 63 and 65 respectively. Sosa paced the majors in 2000 with a measly 50 before hitting another 64 in 2001…the same year a 36-year-old Barry Bonds hit the 73, which still stands as the all-time single-season home run record*
As Aaron Judge sits at 60 home runs with 14 games left, it got me thinking about the home run record and what the “real” record is. Like most things in sports, its a matter of opinion, and historical context is hugely important. Let’s dive in.
As we all know, Major League was crawling with steroid use from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s. Once lean players like the aforementioned Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, who were once elite defenders (and base stealers in Bonds’ case) now looked like bodybuilders. It was clear to anybody who was watching that something wasn’t right, but Major League Baseball didn’t care because, for the first time in a while, casual fans were talking about baseball. The home run race of 1998 was exactly what the league needed to recover from the 1994-1995 strike.
Speaking of the strike…
On August 12th, 1994, the MLB Players Union decided to go initiate a strike in protest of a salary cap the owners were trying to impose, meaning the final month and a half of the 1994 regular season and the entire postseason were canceled. Although a slightly shortened 144-game season was played mostly as usual in 1995, baseball fans across the country were still bitter and attendance and viewership numbers were nowhere near where they were before the strike. Baseball had a real PR problem and steroids were the answer.
Back to home runs.
In the 97 years that Major League Baseball had been played before the 1998 season, a player had hit 60 or more home runs exactly twice. In the 4-year stretch from 1998-2001, it happened SIX times by three different players. While most fans loved the influx of home runs, especially the all-important casual fans, something was obviously off, and it was starting to tarnish hallowed records that were part of the American lexicon. Maris’ 61 home runs in one season and Hank Aaron’s 755 career home runs were numbers school-aged kids could rattle off as easily as their phone number, or their favorite player’s jersey number. These records were falling, and when many baseball fans took a step back, they didn’t like it.
In the 21 years since Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001, there has been much debate about what the “real” single-season home run record is. Should there be an asterisk next to Bonds, McGwire and Sosa? Should there be a separate record book for the steroid era, or should there be one record of 73? If you ask 10 people, you’ll probably get 20 different answers, but as of now, Bonds’ record stands alone, astrisk-free, as the all-time mark.
Assuming Judge finishes the season short of 73 home runs (he’s on pace for 66), but manages more than one more over his final 14 games he’ll have the American League record, but he won’t have the single-season record. That still stands at 73 until somebody can hit 74 in a season. Bonds may have been so ‘roided up that his ballcap was the size of a small tent, but so were all the players he was playing against, including pitchers. If Major League Baseball was willing to look the other way and encouraged let the players take PEDs for their own selfish (read: financial) good, that’s on them. Not the players.
Also, Aaron Judge is going to get PAID this winter. PAID.
