Who is Baseball's Home Run King?
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
Comments
You guys are kidding, right?
Both of these men were great, great players. Bonds is the best I've ever seen.
But that's only because I never saw Babe Ruth, who is, and probably always will be, Baseball's Home Run King.
When he retired with 714 career Home Runs in 1935, the 60th year for Major League Baseball, only one other player had half as many--Lou Gehrig at about 358 (depending on how many Gehrig had before Ruth's retirement in May). Hornsby was third at 300.
Also, Thom mentions the two expansions in the 1990s, which added 4 new Major League teams, but not the two in the 1960s, which added 8, taking the game from 16 teams to 24. Aaron benefitted from those expansions to a much greater degree than Bonds from those in the 1990s. For the four new teams in the 1990s to get 12 pitchers each, they took an average of less than one (24 from the existing 26 teams), whereas the 60s expansions cost the original 16 teams 2.5 pitchers each, assuming 10-man pitching staffs in that time.
Interestingly, the first rounds of expansion in the 60s and 90s came when both Aaron and Bonds were 28 years old.
Posted by: Ron T. | August 11, 2007 3:38 PM
Correcting what I wrote earlier, the 4 new teams in the 90s would have taken a little less than 2 pitchers from each of the existing 26 teams, while the 8 new teams in the 60s would have employed 80 pitchers, or 5 which would have been under control by each of the original 16 teams if there had been no expansion.
Sorry for the confusion. What I'm trying to get at is that there were 50% more major league pitching jobs in 1969 (240) than there were in 1960 (160), while the 1990s expansions only increased available slots by 15%, from 312 to 360.
Posted by: Ron T. | August 11, 2007 8:00 PM
Mark McGwire
Statistically the greatest homerun hitter of all time!! Homeruns per at bat is all that counts here.
McGwire
• Hit 49 homeruns his second year in the league (NO DRUGS THEN, AND NEVER ANY THAT WERE NOT APPROVED BY MLB)
• Hit one every 10.6 times at bat in career – BEST RATIO EVER!!
• More than 50 four years
• More than 60 two years
• 70 in one year
• Without question the best homerun hitter in history!
Ruth
• Hit over 50 homeruns his 3rd and 4th full season (non-pitcher).
• Hit one every 11.7 times at bat in career – SECOND BEST RATIO!!
• Hit more than 50 four years
• 60 one year
• He spent 4 seasons as a pitcher and still has lowest ERA for a southpaw in a World Series…4 seasons average 40 homeruns – add 160 to 714 = 874!!! Over 100 more that Aaron!!
• Perhaps not losing two years to pitching, Ruth could have improved his ratio, and been first on this list.
Bonds
• Did not hit more than 30 homeruns until his fifth year and
• Hit one every 12.9 times at bat in career – THIRD BEST RATIO!!
• Never more than 49 in one year except he hit 73 in one year
Aaron
• Hit 44 homeruns his 4th year in the league
• Hit one every 16.37 times at bat in career – WAY DOWN THE LIST
• Never hit more than 47 homeruns in a year…ever.
• Hit 40 or more 8 times in career
• A real nice guy who was healthy and consistent – but no Homerun King…
Posted by: Jim Pagones | August 12, 2007 10:59 PM
I disagree about who benefited from expansion more, Aaron or Bonds. Both players spent the expansion years in the National League, so here are NL-wide slugging percentages and ERAs in the NL expansion years and the years prior to expansion:
1961: .405/4.03
1962: .393/3.94
1968: .341/2.99
1969: .369/3.59
1992: .368/3.50
1993: .399/4.04
1997: .410/4.20
1998: .410/4.23
Each player played through two rounds of NL expansion. Each benefited from one round, while the other round didn't result in a substantial difference in run production. The difference, however, is that Aaron got his boost in 1969, when he already had 510 homers. Bonds got his boost in 1993, when his home run total was 176 going into the season. And the league slugging marks were consistently above .400 after 1993, and the league ERAs were always higher than 4.04 since then, climbing as high as 4.63 in 2000. Six of the eight highest league-wide ERAs of the modern era have been posted since 1999. The same is true for seven of the top nine slugging percentages of the modern era. Those numbers also show Bonds' advantage over Aaron in terms of the eras in which they played.
Posted by: TH | August 13, 2007 11:47 AM
Surely, what's relevant is what Aaron and Bonds did in the expansion years, not what the NL did. The league averages would be affected by the increase in position players who would otherwise have spent 1962 and 1969 in the minor leagues.
In 1962 Aaron hit 45 Home Runs, a 32% increase over 1961 (when he hit 34), even though he had more AB in 1961. In 1969 he moved up from 29 to 44, a 52% increase. His slugging average improved from .594 to .618 1961-62, and from .498 to .607 in 1968-69.
Bonds improved from 34 to 46 Home Runs from 1992 to 1993 (when he left Three Rivers for Candlestick) a 35% increase, but dropped from 40 in 1997 to 37 in 1998, when the National League added one expansion team and one established (though poor) team, Milwaukee. He slugged .624 in 1992, .677 in 1993, .585 in 1997 and .609 in 1998.
To summarize, in his two expansion years Aaron hit 26 more Home Runs than in the previous years. In his two, Bonds hit 9 more. Aaron improved his slugging average by 24 and 109 points; Bonds improved his by 53 and 24.
Posted by: Ron T. | August 13, 2007 1:10 PM
When Aaron’s homers jumped to 45 in 1962, the first year of National League expansion, he surpassed his previous single-season high for homers by only one. He stroked 44 in 1957 at the age of 23, and he had 40 in 1960 before dipping to 34 the year before the NL added the Mets and Colt 45s. After Bonds’ homers jumped to 46 the year that Colorado and Florida joined the NL, easily surpassing his previous single-season high of 34 set in 1992, only four times in 11 healthy seasons did Bonds fail to hit at least 40 homers. Obviously he was reaching his prime in the expansion year of 1993, so it’s difficult to distinguish which variables -- reaching his prime, weaker pitching, smaller ballparks or perhaps performance-enhancing drugs -- had how much influence in Bonds averaging 43.9 home runs a season between 1993 and 2004. He had averaged 26.7 a year over his first six full seasons through 1992.
Posted by: TH | August 14, 2007 8:35 AM
THEY SHOULD BAN ALL OF BONDS RECORDS .THE REASON STERIODS.
Posted by: JOHN | June 26, 2008 9:25 AM
I agree with Ron T. McGwire is hands down the Home Run King. Before the P.E.D. era he was still hitting home runs, 49 his rookie year. He hit a home run every 10.6 times at bat. This is the best ratio ever. Give him as many at bats as Bonds or Aaron with this ratio and now he 1000 home runs. Just because McGwire chose not to play until he was old grey like Aaron or Bonds going into their mid forties, where might I add is around the age that places them past McGwire on the all time Home run list., does not mean that they were ever close to McGwire as a home run hitter. Bonds I would say is a better overall player, due to his 40/40 and all of his gold gloves, but no where close to a better HR hitter. The ratio of AB/HR is all that matters here and clearly hands down McGwire is the best.
Posted by: Bradly Moriarty | September 14, 2008 6:03 PM
If I had a baseball team and could pick only one person as a rookie and keep them for their entire career (performance enhancement drug free), I would with no reservations pick Hammerin Hank Aaron. He was the most consistent of the three as an overall baseball player. Look at their lifetime batting averages. McGuire isn't even close to the other two. Look at doubles, triples and stolen bases. How many of these did McGuire have? Bonds was closer to Aaron in these areas, but....why? I believe that one of the reasons is steroids. Some of you are right. McGuire and Bonds both hit more home runs per at bat than Aaron. If McGuire had the best average home run ratio per bat then why didn't he lead the league in home runs every year? Simple....HE COULD NOT STAY HEALTHY! Once he started taking steroids his body healed faster, he stayed healthier and was able to play more games. The same goes for Bonds. They both could hit home runs and often, just that neither one of them could stay healthy and missed a lot of games. That is why I believe Aaron was the best overall player and home run hitter for that matter. He did it naturally, without the help of steroids. Had Aaron taken steroids he may have been able to play until he was 50, then how many home runs would he have had?
Posted by: Jody Britt | February 10, 2009 1:19 PM