Barry Bonds Is the Home Run King, and Aaron Judge Is Pretty Cool, Too
73 home runs is the record, no asterisks necessary. But there's more than one way to fetishize baseball statistics.
Aaron Judge hit his 61st home run of the 2022 MLB season last week and, this being a baseball household, I was inspired to gather my brood for a home screening of 61*—the made-for-HBO movie directed by Billy Crystal that dramatized Roger Maris’ often-painful 1961 season, when he broke Babe Ruth’s single season home run record of 60.
The film, which premiered in April 2001 and holds an 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is bookended by footage of the 1998 season, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa gripped the nation as they both broke Maris’ single season home run record of 61 (McGwire finished the 1998 season with 70, Sosa with 66).
The “archival” footage is meant to demonstrate to the viewer the profundity of what Maris accomplished, in a different era.
Maris was a homebody and family man who didn’t enjoy being thousands of miles away from his wife and young kids. Lacking his teammate Mickey Mantle’s natural charisma and years of experience in New York, he came off as sullen and aloof by comparison. It was in this environment where he made history, despite cruel and unfair hostility from fans and the media, death threats from psycho Babe Ruth obsessives, and a MLB commissioner who was plainly rooting against him breaking Ruth’s record.
That last bit is why there’s an asterisk in the film’s title, because then-Commisioner Ford Frick decreed that if anyone broke the record after the 154th game (the length of a season when Ruth played, as opposed to the 162-game season Maris played), it would be considered a separate record in the “record books.”
However, the film leaves out the fact that there was no “record book,” and that Frick was essentially ordering baseball writers to consider them distinct records, which he had no authority to do—but which they complied with anyway.
It turns out Maris needed those few extra games to break Ruth’s record, and for three decades the baseball gatekeepers typically added an asterisk to Maris’ tally.
In 1991, six years after Maris died of lymphoma at 51, Commissioner Fay Vincent decreed the removal of the asterisk—which never really existed anyway—stating that a season is a season, and Maris held the single season home run record.
Asterisks, everywhere there are asterisks
Five months after 61* premiered, and three years after the McGwire/Sosa derby, Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s home run record, eventually finishing with 73 (the single season record that stands to this day).
But to say that the joyful hype which accompanied McGwire and Sosa’s chase was muted when Bonds broke the record would be a gross understatement. And there were a lot of reasons for it.
In 1998, they were going for a record that had stood for almost four decades. And, at the time at least, the record-chasers were easy to root for. McGwire’s media-created persona was the strong, silent, everyman slugger, while the effervescent Sosa was always smiling, sprinting to his position, and skipping out of the batter’s box when he hit a home run.
Bonds, by 2001, was a sixteen-year veteran and three-time MVP, already considered a first-ballot Hall of Famer on par with Willie Mays. But he had a reputation for being a complete asshat to the fans, media, and teammates. He was also going for a record that was only three years old. And when he hit number 71, it was mere weeks after 9/11, and the celebration was muted.
Yes, the return of baseball definitely provided a balm and distraction to a dazed and traumatized nation, but Bonds wasn’t the hero anyone was looking for.
And while reporters in 1998 largely turned a blind eye to the giant bottle of Andro that McGwire kept in plain sight in his St. Louis Cardinals locker, just a few years later the flagrantness of the “steroid era” was becoming too much to ignore—especially after previously light-hitting players like Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs and the 60 homer mark had been obliterated several times over.
Whispers about steroid use—not just regarding Bonds, but McGwire, Sosa, and a host of other one-dimensional sluggers—were growing louder by 2001, which also tamped down on enthusiasm for Bonds’ epic season.
At this point, I’m going to make the editorial decision to not explain the full context of everything that happened over the next decade and a half regarding performance enhancing drug revelations, the beginning of PED testing in Major League Baseball, and the somewhat incoherent standards on PED use that have been set by the baseball media gatekeepers (a.k.a. the Hall of Fame voters) and by two MLB commissioners.
The short version is this: If you were surrounded by strong PED suspicions but are still popular, all is forgiven, while if you were (or are) unpopular with fans or the media—you’re exiled to Asteriskville.
Not an official asterisk, of course, but one that exists in the hearts and minds of the PED pearl-clutchers—who refused to put Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame, but who immediately inducted the architect of the steroid era, former Commissioner Bud Selig, upon his retirement.
A season is a season, and an era is an era
It’s a cliche, but no sport fetishizes its statistics and records like baseball—an institution that includes the fans and the media. And yet, it has never figured out how to measure its statistics in a context that recognizes certain eras of the game’s history vastly differ from others.
As Roger Maris (played by Barry Pepper) remarked to an obnoxious reporter in 61*, Ruth never had to play in night games (or worse, day games after night games), nor did he have to travel to the west coast for road trips.
Left unsaid in the film is that Ruth also didn’t play against Blacks, Latinos or Asians—who were barred from MLB by a “gentleman’s agreement” among owners and the commissioner—which would seem to indicate Ruth never played in a fair league that featured the best competition in the world.
And that’s why the records should just be the records. There aren’t (and shouldn’t be) multiple record books. But there’s nothing at all wrong with comparing the weird quirks of each era against another, and judging the stats accordingly.
The numbers, however, are the numbers. Barry Bonds is the home run king, period. Mark McGwire was briefly the king before that (Sosa was king for an even briefer time during the waning weeks of the 1998 season, before McGwire ultimately passed him for good). And the record before that belonged to Roger Maris—after he beat Babe Ruth’s record fair and square.
A few years back I was reporting on a story in Fargo, North Dakota and came across a billboard that touted the city as the hometown of Roger Maris, “the legitimate home run king.”
And that’s how some people see the number 61—still the American League record (those filthy National League juicers! I keed, I keed), now held by both Maris and Judge with four games to go in the season. To these purists, that number is the one true record, and everything that happened during the “steroid era”—mostly consisting of the 1990s to the mid-2000s—is memory-holed.
I think that’s silly.
But I, too, think it’s silly that so many killjoys roll their eyes at Judge’s home run tally, dismissing him as merely the eighth player to reach the “record.” (I’m sure some of it is just Yankee-hating pettiness—which, fair, it comes with the territory.)
There’s a middle ground here, baseball fans.
Bonds’ 73 will probably never be broken. His 762 career home run total is also probably safe—for a while, at least.
But we *should* measure eras against each other, bringing context that makes the numbers mean more than just where they reside on “record book” lists.
Ruth played in a segregated game, where a charming alcoholic slob could be perceived as the premier athlete of his generation.
Maris played a much more physical game than Ruth, but sports medicine and athletic therapy were still in their infancies. Most players were making barely middle class salaries, still a decade and a half away from being able to earn their market value through free agency.
McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa played in an era with state of the art training facilities and regimens, multi-million dollar salaries for merely average players, and comically inflated offensive numbers.
Judge plays in an era of even bigger money and better training, but it’s a strikeout-or-home run era. Offense is in the doldrums—it’s a pitcher’s game for now. And yet, not only has Judge hit 61, he’s leading in every other significant hitting category, and is one of the best defensive outfielders in the game.
Sure, he’s wearing the hated pinstripes, but is there really anything to dislike about the guy’s public persona or on-field comportment?
There are rule changes on the way (I’ve been screaming for a pitch clock forever), but we’re still mired in a thuddingly dull era of overly-analytical baseball—with games still taking excruciatingly long for no good reason, and providing minimal action.
Aaron Judge hitting 61 home runs (and possibly a few more) is breathing some life into a barely conscious game.
That’s why it doesn’t have to be 73 home runs or bust. This still-incredibly rare achievement ought to be appreciated for what it is, both in historical context and what it means in the current era of the game.
Yes, asterisks are dumb—73 is the real record, and Aaron Judge won’t break that record.
But this is fun. It’s genuinely exciting. It’s good for the game. Both sides of the “it’s not the real record” divide ought to mellow out and argue over truly important baseball issues—like whether Rob Manfred’s “ghost runner” is the dumbest gimmick in baseball history or merely the lamest.