I was initially going to devote today’s baseball history post to a different exclusive club as, on this day in 1971, Hank Aaron hit his 600th career homer in a Braves loss. At the time, there were only two other players in that exclusive club and one of them — Willie Mays — was on the team that beat Aaron’s Braves that day, the San Francisco Giants. The other, of course, was Babe Ruth.

The thing is, though, the 600-home run club isn’t as exclusive as it used to be. Since Aaron joined that club, six other men have joined him, the Bambino and the Say Hey Kid: Barry Bonds (762), Alex Rodriguez (696), Albert Pujols (656 and counting), Ken Griffey Jr. (630), Jim Thome (612), and Sammy Sosa (609).

A lot of that, obviously, is because of the differences between eras and, in some cases, the help of banned substances. More homers were hit from the mid-1990s through the present day, making a hyper-exclusive club into a somewhat less-hyper-exclusive club. It happens.

There’s a different club, however, that two of those men belong to which also has a history item tied to is on April 27: the 300-300 club, for guys who have smacked 300 dingers and stole 300 bases. On this day in 1996 Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants homered twice in a 6-3 victory over the Florida Marlins to gain entry. He had stolen his 300th base in 1994. Bonds, of course, would go on to become the only member of both the 400-400 and 500-500 club. He was pretty good.

Barry Bonds was one of the most dominant baseball players in history, but he believes MLB has tried to shut him out of the sport since he retired. 

“A death sentence. That’s what they’ve given me,” Bonds told Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic.

Bonds has fallen short of Hall of Fame induction in each of his first eight years on the ballot despite holding the all-time record with 762 home runs.

“My heart, it’s broken,” he added. “Really broken.”