Ken Rappoport - Baseballs Top 10 Home Run Hitters

BASEBALL'S GREATEST SLUGGERS!

Who are the greatest home run hitters in the history of baseball? What separates the all-time sluggers from the merely great? From legendary figures like Babe Ruth to today's more controversial stars, Ken Rappoport looks at ten of the greatest home run hitters to ever play the game of baseball.

About the Author

Ken Rappoport is a professional sports writer with dozens of books to his credit. Titles he has previously authored for Enslow Publishers, Inc., include LeBron James: King On and Off the Court and Tim Duncan: Star Forward.

Since Babe Ruth started drawing big crowds with his big bat in the 1920s, the home run has meant more to baseball than just about any other individual achievement. What can be more exciting than the crack of the bat and the ball flying to the far reaches of a baseball stadium?

Ruth came along at a time when baseball really needed him. Fans had lost faith in the game following the Black Sox Scandal. In 1919, eight players from the Chicago White Sox had made a deal with gamblers to purposely lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

With the New York Yankees, Ruths explosive bat and colorful personality helped to revive the sport following the scandal. Ruths home run battles with Yankees teammate Lou Gehrig were memorable, adding more glory and goodwill to the sport. Fans came back to the ballparks, beginning to forget the cheating scandals of the past.

Many years after Ruth helped to save the game, baseball was again in need of goodwill in the 1990s following labor problems that canceled the World Series. This time, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in a stirring battle for the home run crown in 1998. Unfortunately, this took place during the Steroid Era. There were investigations into the use of drugs by playersdrugs that built up their bodies and strength and helped them hit more home runs.

The federal government has linked Barry Bonds to illegal, performance-enhancing substances beginning sometime around the 1999 season, while Alex Rodriguez has admitted to using the steroid boli between 2001 and 2003. The full extent of the use of performance-enhancing substances by other record-setting players during this era remains uncertain.

Through the years, things have changed in baseball. But the home run remains the most exciting element of the game. Now, from the Babe to Bonds, meet some of the games all-time greatest sluggers.

Hank Aaron had ended the 1973 season two homers shy of breaking baseballs most hallowed record. It was not a pleasant off-season for Aaron.

He received death threats and hate mail from racists who did not want to see an African-American player surpass Babe Ruths home run record.

Following an off-season that seemed to last forever and then spring training, the Atlanta Braves star wasted little time in tying Ruths record of 714 with a homer against the Cincinnati Reds in his first at-bat of the 1974 season.

Aaron failed to homer in another game against Cincinnati, then sat out the third game of the series before returning home. He hoped to hit the record-breaker in front of the loyal Braves fans in Atlanta.

The road to the top was not easy for Aaron, a native of Alabama who played both baseball and football as a youth. He faced racial discrimination while playing for a Boston Braves farm team in the South during the 1950s. That made him all the more determined to succeed in the sport he loved best.

By the 1953 season, the Braves had moved from Boston to Milwaukee. Meanwhile, Aaron was moving up swiftly in the Braves system. In 1954, Aaron was promoted to the major leagues.

Aarons consistency was amazing: He is the only player in major league history with at least 30 home runs in each of his first fifteen seasons. In 1974, the player known as The Hammer was now forty and nearing the end of his career with the major league home run record within his sights.

Aaron faced pitcher Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 8, 1974. It was the fourth inning. Downing threw his first pitch to Aaron in the dirt. Ball one. Then Downing wound up and fired a fastballdown the middle of the upper part of the strike zone. The crack of the bat told the story: the ball sailed 400 feet, carrying over the left-center field fence in a misty rain at Atlanta Stadium for Aarons 715th homer!

The record-breaker touched off one of the biggest celebrations sports fans had ever seen in Atlanta. Aaron was celebrating, tooinside. As he made an unemotional trip around the bases, as was his style, he remembered, I just wanted to make sure I touched them. Then everyone wanted to touch Aaron, who was escorted to home plate by a couple of teenagers who had broken from the stands.

Aaron would hit 40 more homers, finishing his career with 755 after moving on to the Milwaukee Brewers. None would compare with No. 715, though. Now I can consider myself one of the best, said Aaron in a rare moment of self-praise.

BORN:

February 5, 1934, Mobile, Alabama.

PRO CAREER:

Milwaukee Braves, 19541965; Atlanta Braves, 19661974; Milwaukee Brewers, 19751976.

RECORDS:

Ranks No. 2 on the all-time home run list with 755. Among numerous other achievements, Aaron is the all-time leader in runs batted in with 2,297 in his twenty-three-year career.

Batting for San Francisco... Barry Bonds! A cheer went up at AT&T Park in San Francisco as the Giants slugger stepped to the plate.

It was the night of August 7, 2007 and Bonds needed just one more home run to break Hank Aarons career record of 755. The chase for baseballs most cherished record had made Bonds the center of attention everywhere.

And now, at the age of forty-three, he was nearing his goal. Just one more home run would do it, as he had done 755 other times in a long and controversial career. In came the pitch from the Washington Nationals Mike Bacsik. Out went the balla drive to the deepest part of AT&T Park, 435 feet into the right-center field seats.

Bonds home run chase had been a distraction to his Giants teammates. Now the media could focus on the pennant race instead, and on baseballs investigation of a drug scandal that had rocked the sport. Bonds was one of several players called to testify before a congressional committee investigating steroid use in baseball.

Born in Riverside, California, Bonds came from a baseball family. His father, Bobby, was an All-Star outfielder with the Giants, among other teams. Between them, Barry and his father hit more than 1,000 home runs! That was more than any other father-son duo in baseball history.

Some players in Major League Baseball underwent dramatic physical changes in the 1990s, becoming bigger and stronger. Bonds was one of them. When he made his major league debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986 following a great college career at Arizona State, he weighed 185 pounds and hit only 16 home runs in 113 games.