Although Hank Aaron is less a classic home run hitter than either Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds, his line-drive approach to the longball allowed him to hit 30 or more in a season 15 times. Surprisingly, Aaron is the only player with 600 home runs to never hit 50 in a single season, but you could make a case that he is the greatest home run hitter of all time.
Aaron, a complete player for most of his career, stayed fit and kept adding to his homer total on a consistent basis even as he approached age 40. At 37 in 1971, he stroked a career-high 47 home runs, one short of Willie Stargell’s major league-leading total, though no one other than them broke the 40 mark that summer. Aaron hit 40 in 1973, at that time a rare feat for someone his age, and he retired with 755 homers in 1976.
What is remarkable about Aaron’s total is that he played most of his career in a pitcher-friendly era that culminated in Bob Gibson posting a 1.12 ERA in 1968, the best single-season mark going back to 1914 and the dead-ball era.
A lowering of the mound and expansion in 1969 began to reverse the advantage that pitchers enjoyed, but by then, Aaron had collected 510 of his home runs. The difference in hitting home runs in the 1960s compared to the last 15 years can’t be underestimated.
During Aaron’s 23 seasons, only three players hit as many as 50 homers in a season. . . and Hammerin’ Hank wasn’t one of them. Roger Maris was, when he surpassed Babe Ruth’s single-season mark with 61 in 1961. Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle each did it twice. No one hit 50 longballs in a season during Aaron’s career after Mays stroked 52 in 1965.
In fact, after Mays’ MVP season in 1965, only George Foster hit the 50 mark (in 1977) until the onslaught of 50-homer hitters began in 1995, two years after the first of two rounds of expansion in the 1990s. Since 1995, 23 times players have delivered 50 or more home runs in a season. Six times the 60 plateau has been reached, which had been done only twice in the history of the game before Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa changed all that in 1998.
The latest rounds of expansion have made a significant dent in pitching depth on big league staffs. Adding two new teams in 1993 also introduced the hitter-friendly, mile-high altitude of Denver to big league hitters. The Arizona franchise joined the National League in 1997, giving hitters another place to hit at more than 1,000 feet above sea level.
Bonds also has benefited from the new ballparks of the last decade. Most of them have been built smaller and have inflated hitting stats. The new stadiums in Cincinnati and Philadelphia have been nearly as hitter- and homer-friendly as Colorado’s Coors Field.
No one can say for certain if Bonds is a beneficiary of the so-called steroids era. Even if he’s guilty as charged, steroids don’t hit home runs. People do. And those people probably were aided more by weaker pitching and small ballparks. The issue of whether players have been juiced also has detracted from another once-hot topic that hasn’t been addressed in recent years: are the balls juiced?
The issue was in the forefront when McGwire and Sosa began challenging the single-season home run record. And with MLB trying to regain its footing after the labor strife of 1994-95, the likelihood of a juiced ball seemed real, though getting a definitive answer was no easier than determining which players have indulged in performance-enhancing drugs.
For this writer, the 16 home runs that Rex Hudler hit in 1996, the only year in which he hit more than eight, drew attention to the juiced-ball issue. When the Wonder Dog began hitting balls out the opposite way around this time, it seemed the ball may have been as tightly wound as the gung-ho, all-out Hudler.
It’s a different era today, and regardless whether players or the ball have been juiced, hitting home runs clearly is an easier task in today’s game. I would find it difficult to make a case against Bonds being the greatest hitter of all time, but Aaron’s 755 homers didn’t come as easy as the 756 posted by Bonds. In my mind, Hammerin’ Hank still is the home run king.
--Thom Henninger
Barry Bonds is baseball's new Home Run King.
Get used to it--not neccessarily of Bonds being the Home Run King (that record could be Alex Rodriguez's in 10 years or so)--but of that uneasy feeling you have. Baseball is undergoing a a massive transition period in the hearts and minds of its fans.
This, I think, is clear: Performance enhancing drugs are here to stay. There is simply too much at stake and too much money being made by players for cheaters not to stay a step or two ahead of the testers. Testers can't test for drugs that they don't know exist. We are in the middle, maybe just the beginning, of the Steroid Era. Just as Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron were the Home Run Kings during their respective eras (and in the decades that followed) Bonds is the King of the Steroid Era, although it might be a much shorter time at the top.
I'm not going to make some head-in-the-sand claim that Bonds' either didn't do PEDs, or, that PEDs didn't help him significantly in his later years, but Bonds is probably the best slugger of his generation, and performed with an Aaron-like consistency throughout the '90s. In the '00s, we saw what the best slugger of a generation could do...with the help of technology. The achievement, without a doubt, is partially illusory. But you can't deny that Bonds worked very hard and walloped baseballs like nobody, ever, could.
Also, Bonds is catching much more than his fair share of heat for steroids in baseball. Start using the eye test. There's a lot of useful circumstantial evidence out there. Chances are, your favorite slugger has juiced, a big handful of power hitters and power pitchers on your fantasy team have juiced, and then there's the Rafael Betancourts and Clay Hensleys that you wouldn't have ever expected to have juiced, but did.
It's complicated. There's been a much more level playing field than anyone wants to admit, and Bonds lapped it. What you have to ask yourself is, do you still like baseball? Do you still like your favorite slugger? The "Romantic" period of the game has passed. It might not be possible to fairy-tale it to your kids anymore. Baseball has changed. It is not as pure. It is not as simple. It is a big industry. It's unrealistic for fans to think they can have it both ways. We're in a state of denial, and the realization of what's happening is slowly sinking in. We'll have to adjust our feelings towards the game, or disown it.
Hey, I like Hank Aaron. He was a more dignified and likable guy than Bonds.
But Bonds is going to clobber his record, with really only one obscene year of homers. He's going to hit 30 bombs this year, and isn't showing too many signs of a weakening power stroke.
Bud Selig hasn't made too many interesting comments, but when he stated, "Barry Bonds has done something noteworthy and remarkable," I thought that was about as accurate as you could put it. Bonds did something very remarkable, he hit the most homers in the most spectacular fashion ever. It's ethicality: questionable.
Aaron will maintain a place in history--he'll still be the Home Run King--before the Steroid Era.
But for now and in the near future, Bonds will hold that crown. And if you're thinking of yanking it away from him, think first about the conditions during which he played.
--Tom Koch-Weser
