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spt_MLB_Bonds_club700[i-1].body = "THREE DIFFERENT ERAS, three different styles, three members of one of baseball’s most exclusive fraternities – the 700 Home Run Club.Babe Ruth (714) was a perfect Roaring 20s icon – symbolizing all of the wretched excesses of that pre-Depression Era and helping baseball regain its popularity after the Black Sox Scandal of 1919.
Hank Aaron (755) was the anti-1960s superstar – quiet, unassuming, consistent, never in search of the spotlight in that Age of Aquarius when rebels of all causes cried out for attention and many flamed out quickly.
Barry Bonds (757) represents all that’s good and bad of 21st Century baseball, aka, the Home Run Era. Fans, the media and, apparently, team executives, love the long ball, but perhaps all of us turned a blind eye towards the steroid crisis that has gripped the sport and surely helped the power surge.
Here is MSNBC.com’s category-by-category comparison of the three greatest home run hitters in baseball history.";
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Before the Babe had the Gut, his barrel chest and strong arms helped launch high, majestic home runs, of a type never before seen. Until the 1920s, home runs were a rarity and teams played “inside baseball” – bunting, stealing and using the hit-and-run to score in an era that featured dead balls, huge stadiums and dominant pitchers. But Babe, who began his home run binges at 6-2, 215 pounds, changed that, skinny legs and all.
Aaron did not look like a classic home run hitter. At 6-0, 180 pounds, he was wiry, but surprisingly strong -- especially his wrists. Observers said he didn’t generate his power until the last instant, lashing out with those quick wrists and belting line drives to all fields.
Bonds was built more like Aaron during his years with the Pirates, when he was a 30-30 player combining speed and power. His was 6-2, 205 until he became enamored with hitting more home runs in the late 1990s. Now, at 6-2 and 230, the debate rages on whether it was intense weight training and nutritional supplements that helped Bonds pile on the upper-body muscle, or did he have help? And while all sluggers use their legs to provide the weight shift necessary to drive the ball, it’s clear that Bonds’ power gets a big boost from his muscular chest and arms.";
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Nothing about Babe Ruth’s game – or his life – was small, and that included his swing. Once he became a fulltime outfielder with the Yankees – leaving his pitching career in Boston after the famous trade – Ruth took healthy cuts, swinging for the fences every time. He was a pull hitter with a pronounced uppercut, which is why his home runs mostly were high fly balls. When Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, it was dubbed the House That Ruth Built – partially for the Babe’s popularity and partially for the so-called Pennant Porch in right field, where modest dimensions have tempted left-handed sluggers for generations.
In contrast, most of Aaron’s homers were line drives, some of them barely clearing the fences. Early in his career, Aaron sprayed the ball to all fields, though when his 44 homers produced a pennant for the Braves in 1957, he realized his greatest value to the team was as a slugger. So he became more of a pull hitter. His swing was compact and quick, thanks to those wrists. He later benefited from the high altitude and heat of Atlanta, that made the ball carry. So Aaron started to uppercut the ball a little more in the final decade of his magnificent career.
Bonds used the whole field during his years in Pittsburgh, with a more level swing than he features now. There was no uppercut and rarely did he stand in the batter’s box to admire his homers. But when his game and his body changed, so did his swing. Now, he has a slugger’s classic uppercut, though his swing remains incredibly compact and his bat speed astonishing. The hundreds of fans who chase his home runs into McCovey Cove beyond the right field stands at SBC Park can attest to that.";
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It seemed as if Ruth was built for the biggest stage of all – New York City. In his first season as a Yankee, when the team was second banana in the city to John McGraw’s Giants, Ruth exploded for 54 homers. That still ranks as the most remarkable home run season in history for this reason: Ruth became the first player EVER to hit 30, 40 or 50 homers in a season with one incredible year. Naturally he homered in the first game ever played at Yankee Stadium in 1923, and he was a star in the World Series, too. Whether he called his shot in 1932 or not, the fact remains he crushed a home run to dead center field that crushed the Cubs’ spirits and sparked a Yankees’ sweep.
Aaron hit a game-winning homer off the Cardinals’ Billy Muffett in the 11th inning of a late-September game in 1957 to give the Braves their first pennant in Milwaukee. He batted .393 with three homers against the Yankees in the 1957 World Series, leading the Braves to seven-game triumph, and batted .333 in the Fall Classic a year later, when the Yankees reversed the outcome in seven games. Aaron starred in the first-ever NLCS in 1969, hitting .357 with three homers in a three-game loss to the Mets.
Bonds was an abject failure in the postseason until 2002. To that point, in 114 LDS and LCS at-bats, Bonds batted .210. But in 2002, one year after his record 73-homer season, Bonds was electric in October. In the LDS, he hit three homers in five games, added another homer in the LCS and then tore up the Angels in the World Series, belting four homers in 17 at-bats, with 13 walks for a .471 batting average and .700 OBP.";
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If ever a sports personality was larger than life, it was Babe Ruth. In the pre-television age he was still a mega-celebrity, with his on- and off-the-field antics. He endorsed products, chased women, drank and ate to excess and, oh by the way, saved baseball with his prodigious home runs. When it was pointed out to him once that he earned more money than President Calvin Coolidge, Ruth replied, “I had a better year!”
Hank Aaron shunned the spotlight, was a quiet leader and earned headlines strictly for his baseball accomplishments, with one notable exception. As he approached Ruth’s magic number of 714 in the early 1970s, he was a victim of blatant racism, receiving thousands of nasty letters and numerous death threats. He kept most of that to himself until later in life and conducted himself with restraint and class through it all. Only in recent years has he been more outspoken about baseball and race relations.
Barry Bonds may be Willie Mays’ godson, but he never played the game with the same unbridled joy of the Giants’ Hall of Fame center fielder. Or even with the exuberance of his father, Bobby. Bonds sneered or ignored the media and alienated teammates even before he became the most feared slugger in the game. His record-setting season of 73 homers in 2001 did not capture the nation’s fancy the same way the Sosa-McGwire chase did in 1998. Bonds’ surly demeanor had something to do with that.";
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The measure of Ruth’s greatness is how much better he was, statistically, than the others players of his era. We’ve already noted how epic his 1920 season was. That was also the case in 1927, when he hit his record 60 home runs. That total was higher than every TEAM in the American League. Ruth won the home run title a record 12 times, led the league in RBIs six times and walks 11 times. In the more esoteric statistics, Ruth was the on-base percentage leader in the AL 10 times and had the highest slugging percentage 13 times. Considering that he spent nearly five years as a highly successful big-league pitcher before becoming a fulltime outfielder, there’s little argument that he’s the greatest slugger of all time.
Aaron was like a metronome, cranking out solid seasons like clockwork, but never having a spectacular 50-plus season like Ruth, Bonds or other great sluggers of his era like Mantle or Mays. But he became baseball’s home run king despite never hitting more than 44 in a season because he was a model of consistency. For 20 consecutive seasons, he did not hit fewer than 20 homers and in 15 of those years he exceeded 30. Aaron led the NL in homers and RBIs four times each and won two batting titles while banging out 3,771 hits. And guess who is baseball’s all-time leader in the critical RBI category? That’s right, Hammerin’ Hank, with 2,297. That’s 84 more than Ruth and 444 more than Bonds.
For Bonds, the eye-popping numbers occurred in the full seasons after he turned 35 during the summer of 1999. Here are his single-season home run totals from 2000-2004, when he was age 36-40 (an injury sidelined him for all but a handful of games in 2005): 49, 73, 46, 45 and 45. That’s 258 homers – an average of more than 51 a season. Consider this: Mickey Mantle retired at age 36; Bonds’ career was just getting started. He also shattered all the single-season walk records, drawing 198 in 2002 and a ridiculous 232 in 2004. He has won two home run titles and just one RBI crown. But he has been the NL leader in walks 10 times, on-base percentage eight times and slugging percentage seven times.";
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Ruth, plain and simple was the man who saved and changed baseball. The Black Sox Scandal could have destroyed the game, but Ruth’s home runs brought fans back to the ballpark and restored honesty in the sport that was America’s national pastime until football became No. 1 in the 1970s. Ruth, to the chagrin of titans like John McGraw and Ty Cobb, also transformed the game from small ball to power ball. And while baseball has gone in cycles, the home run has never been out of favor ever since Ruth started hitting them in record numbers in the Roaring 20s.
Aaron’s legacy is that he quietly became the owner of baseball’s most hallowed record, overcoming overt racism along the way, and never making a big deal about it. His baseball life has been classy and dignified, his opinions respected by all. He is a beacon of integrity in a sport that has suffered from scandals ranging from betting to corked bats to steroids.
Which brings us to Bonds. The court of public opinion has already found him guilty and his 756th home run was greeted with reluctant applause everywhere but in San Francisco. Steroids may not have been banned by baseball when Bonds allegedly began using them, but they were certainly scorned upon. His records will forever be tainted and that’s a shame, because Bonds was on his way to the Hall of Fame as a legitimate five-tool player before his fascination with the home run and who knows what else."; // END editorial data