Friday, April 8, 2011

Hank Aaron


On this date in 1974, Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run breaking Babe Ruth's record.

"I don't want them to forget Babe Ruth, I just want them to remember me."

We do!

(Well there is ONE GUY who is not "down with it" but nobody much cares about him anyway)

5 comments:

Fuji said...

Lol... I was going to post about this today... but looks like you covered it. I'm not a Bonds hater... but it's a shame that we'll never know if Bonds could have broken his record without PED's.

It's a great day to honor Mr. Aaron and everything he went through to break Ruth's record. I was only a baby at the time, but I've read and heard many stories about the death threats and acts of racism against Mr. Aaron as he closed in on the record.

Contrary Guy said...

Fuji,

I see I am a bit older than you and was 12 years old when this happened. My friends and I followed it daily and I remember we were thrilled when it happened and watched it live on tv. (Downing did throw him a meatball though)

Barry might have been able to do it without the drugs. One thing people forget is that if he remained "normal size" he would not have had that aura of invincibility to him and would not have been getting 200 walks a year which would have given him more (official) at-bats to hit home runs.

Kevin

Spankee said...

I fully believe Bonds would have had MORE homeruns w/out steroids. Given the probability of fewer walks and the fact that teams wouldn't have colluded against him in his '40s, he would have tacked on another 50-100. My question about HRs is: would Babe Ruth have hit 714 if he had to play against black players?

Contrary Guy said...

How many did Josh Gibson actually hit? Wikipedia says approximately 800. How many less if he faced white pitchers (regularly)*?

So many unanswerables.

*I know they barnstormed agsinst white teams from time to time.

Fuji said...

I never factored in the number of walks he received into the equation. It definitely makes sense.

Either way...I think the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that he was an amazing hitter (by far the best in my opinion during his generation) without PED's... but unfortunately he'll always be tied to them, which tarnishes his reputation (to at least some people... although time tends to heal most wounds).