Top 10 All-Time Home Run Hitters Options

[impala454]

1. Barry Bonds*
2. Hank Aaron
3. Babe Ruth
4. Willie Mays
5. Sammy Sosa*
6. Ken Griffey
7. Frank Robinson
8. Mark McGwire*
9. Harmon Killebrew
10.Rafael Palmeiro*
















*CHEATERS

[Oasis]

This was posted by my friend on another board a few months back.

I remember so vividly the day that Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's streak.

My oldest son was an infant, asleep in my lap. I turned on the TV and watched the event unfold, and watched Ripken do his thing, give his speech when the game became "official," and I even welled up a little. I remembered the commercial where the dad was showing various things to his little baby, and grabbed a baseball and whispered reverently to the baby "...and THIS...is a BASEBALL."

So I propped the little guy up and showed him the TV and said "This is history, what we're seeing here. We're sitting here together watching something we'll never see again."

He was sound asleep, but the moment wasn't lost on me.

Never mind that my opinion of Ripken at that point was not very high. I always felt that Ripken was never the superstar everyone made him out to be; his top achievement was the mere act of being really lucky for a long time, taking advantage of modern medicine, and not getting the debilitating disease that Gehrig had. I felt he was unbelievably egotistical, insisting on making management decisions, traveling alone without his teammates, and even being so bold as to take pitch-calling duties away from his catcher and calling them from home plate.

I did not like Cal Ripken.

But none of that took anything away from the fact that he was breaking an unbreakable record. In the era of 162-game seasons, coast-to-coast travel, hyper-competitiveness, weight training, and baseball at light speed, Cal Ripken had played every game, every day, and played HARD. It was huge.

I felt similarly watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa embracing after McGwire broke the record. Even then, there was no question in my mind that McGwire was juiced up on steroids. He had gone from being a muscular but skinny kid to being a bloated behemoth with bad tendons and ligaments all over his body, barely even human anymore. But when the line drive shot into the left field stands, it didn't matter - he was TODAY'S player, playing TODAY'S game with TODAY'S rules and TODAY'S advantages (and disadvantages), and he managed to shatter a record that had stood for years and years.

Baseball, as a game, is rarely different from what it was in the 1890s. Sure, there have been some subtle changes, and over history there have been trends that have changed the style of play slightly, but essentially, it's the same game. What's evolved more dramatically than the game itself have been the things AROUND it. Society, for example, evolved to the point where dark-skinned people were permitted to play. Medicine evolved to the point where you could take a dead-armed pitcher, remove a tendon from his leg and put it into his arm so he could pitch another 10 years. I mean, would Tommy John be an "on the bubble" HOFer if he pitched in 1908? Of course not - he would have blown his arm out, and we'd talk about him the way we talk about Smoky Joe Wood today.

Nutrition has evolved as well. And weight training, which was once taboo in baseball, is now normal. Players take advantage of technology, biology, and whatever else they have at their disposal to get better. Does the fact that John McGraw didn't have a huge coaching staff make Jim Leyland any less of a great manager? Does the fact that Ty Cobb didn't have access to stacks of videotape make Rickey Henderson any less of a great base stealer? Does the fact that the 1954 Indians didn't have a team of advance scouts make the 1986 Mets any less of a great team?

I don't think so.

So yes, Barry Bonds injected his body with anything he could think of to make his muscles bigger. But he still had to step into the box and hit the ball 755 times. And he had to do it against pitchers who were equally doped up. And he had other things making it tough for him that Aaron and Ruth did not have. Babe Ruth never had guys like Bruce Sutter or Trevor Hoffman waiting to shut him down in the late innings. He didn't have to deal with relief specialists designed to come in and get one batter out. He didn't have to finish a game in Texas at 2AM eastern time, fly to Los Angeles and play an afternoon game the next day. He didn't have to have his joints take a pounding on artificial turf. He didn't have split-fingered fastballs, nose-to-toes curveballs, or nasty sliders. He didn't have 24-hour news and sports networks following him around, reporting on his every transgression. He didn't have twice as many teams in the league - and twice as many pitchers to get to know.

None of that makes Babe Ruth any less of a player, and in my mind, it makes Barry Bonds and his approaching record just as legitimate as Ripken, McGwire, Aaron, Gehrig, and Ruth.

I don't know how I'm going to articulate my position on this any better than above paragraphs. The game hasn't changed, but everything around it has. And because of that, I think today's playing field is just as level as it's always been. Almost every record in baseball will eventually be broken by somebody, whether they have a likeable personality or not.

So I'll watch Bonds blast #756 with my son, who is now 11 years old and better able to understand what he's seeing. And when the next guy breaks Bonds' record, we'll sit and talk about the day we watched Bonds break it, and we'll reminisce, and we'll talk about all the great baseball history that's happened between now and then, and how many great players we've seen. And of course I'll have to yammer at him about the great home run hitters from my childhood - guys like Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt - and the guys who came before them, like Killebrew and Robinson and Mays and Ruth and Gehrig.

Baseball will never change, and I can't WAIT for Bonds to break the record.