All three players, though, haven’t been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I don't even recognize Maris' HR record as legit, IMO, my dad has the home run record.

The "evidence" against Sammy Sosa is in the same general range as that.

I'm just not sure why so many people are so certain Judge isn't juicing. His physique isn't notably svelte. There's every likelihood that he just hasn't been caught.

I suspect 99% of the crap we're seeing is due to Judge being a Yankee. As others have said, if he was a Royal would anyone have given a damn? It would've been 'wow, 61 HR, very nice but call me when he gets to 73'. Also a good point is all the * we could put on Maris - did it in 162, not 154 games, a very good chance he was on amphetamines (aka "Greenies") as many MLB players were at the time (and right up until they were tested for) among other things given no testing was done back then. Heck, Ruth broke every rule in the book when he played and was proud of it, safe to say if he had access to steroids he'd have been super-pumped up on them.

Should we say Gaylord Perry didn't win 300? He did it with the spitball which was illegal in MLB at the time he played and he was caught too. Bonds wasn't. Sosa wasn't. McGwire had stuff in his locker but never was punished for it.

#20 - Yes, a Royal on the verge of passing Maris AND potentially winning a Triple Crown while leading the majors in homers by a margin not seen in 90+ years would get plenty of media attention, I believe.

He’s clean, he’s a Yankee, he plays the game the right way

FWIW Judge has also surpassed Mickey Mantle's Triple Crown year TB total (384 to 376), and matched his 130 RBI in spite of batting 1st or 2nd for much of the year.

Mantle tended to bat a little behind Bobby "The Outmaker" Richardson, who from 1961-66 finished 1st, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, and 5th in the category.

Then in the next three seasons, .345, .274, and .206

There’s no actual evidence for this asserted ‘likelihood’, just PED-McCarthyism.

The Yankees' overall OBP in 1956 was .347, even with pitchers batting. In 2022 it's been .325 with the DH, and without Judge's .425 it'd been a fair amount lower than that.

Why should I care what Roger Maris Jr. thinks about anything?

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the Maris family embrace Mac and Sammy in 1998?

"When he hit it, I felt like I'd been electrocuted," said Roger Maris Jr., 39. "I had goose bumps the size of baseballs in my body. Tears came to my eyes watching him go around the bases.

"I think he signaled to us when he pointed up to the sky as if to say, 'I know your dad is watching.'"

As much as I don't give a rat's ass about what Lil' Maris has to say, I don't think the fact he once embraced Sosa and McGwire says a whole lot. Most of baseball fandom was operating under the assumption these guys were clean (when Wilstein [I think that's who it was] ID'd Androstenedione in Mac's locker, the reporter was the one who faced criticism). That Raj jr. now considers Mac and Sammy as big, mean cheaters just puts him on par with about half of the baseball-watching public.

Bonds, et al, receive a Hall of Fame process that treats their numbers is legit, and consequently (obviously) inducted them into the HOF, while treating their statistics as official records

What it pretty plainly says is that his opinion meant little then and it means little now.

So whose opinion about "the 'real' home run record" does matter?

So whose opinion about "the 'real' home run record" does matter? Show me someone who claims objectivity on this topic, and I'll show you a liar.

but plenty of baseball fans do care what he thinks, even while recognizing that he isn't exactly an unbiased source.

That anyone ever thought there was an asterisk is at least as much the fault of the New York Daily News’ Dick Young as of Commissioner Ford Frick. Frick worshiped Ruth and was at his bedside the day before he died (and made much of that in interviews and after-dinner speeches). Maris had the bad luck to have his greatest season in 1961 at a time when Frick was commissioner of baseball. As early as July 17, when Maris and several sluggers were ahead of Babe Ruth’s 1927 pace, Frick, apparently distressed that the new 162-game season would give someone an unfair crack at Ruth’s record, called a press conference and issued this ruling:

‘Any player who has hit more than 60 home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after this club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark on the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule.'”

In his biography of Maris, 'Roger Maris, A Man for All Seasons', my late New Jersey neighbor Maury Allen got it right. Dick Young, he said, called out loud “Maybe you should use an asterisk on the new record. Everybody does that when there’s a difference of opinion.

‘Any player who has hit more than 60 home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after this club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark on the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule.'”

#8 Never was an asterisk. Just something Happy Chandler Ford Frick discussed as an option.

 61. sunday silence (again) Posted: September 30, 2022 at 11:30 AM (#6098460)
#8 Never was an asterisk. Just something Happy Chandler Ford Frick discussed as an option.


BUt there kind of was. As Andy touched on, just above. If you read the World Almanac back in the 60s it clearly made note that Maris's record was set in a 162 game season and Ruth's season was 154. I dont know if an asterisk was used, but they clearly mentioned both records so there was some sort of special treatment given to the subject.

63. Mefisto Posted: September 30, 2022 at 11:51 AM (#6098464)

It's pretty silly to create a line in the record book based on "number of games in the season" rather than "number of PAs the player got".

Maris was only 3 when his father broke Ruth’s record, and said that he remembers nothing of it. He does recall growing up around people who constantly asked his father about it, so he heard plenty of stories. Now, it is time for a new story to be told, and Maris is enthusiastically pushing for Judge to write it with his bat, and soon.

The Yankees have three more games at Yankee Stadium against the Baltimore Orioles this weekend and then four in Arlington, Texas, against the Rangers. Maris is confident the A.L. record will be broken before the team heads south.

“You can tell he’s back and he’s ready to go,” Maris said. “I think it will happen in New York and it’s where you want it to happen. It’s where I want it to happen. The city of New York deserves it. The fans deserve it. It will be great for baseball if it happens in New York. Like I mentioned to Aaron, ‘Get to New York and hit 62, and knock the top off Yankee Stadium.’”

Weather CHannel's Jim Catore hit by tree.

Jeezus ####! What the hell is he doing out there anyways? Reads the story. He was hit by a tree BRANCH.

IMO Gwynn's .394, Brett's .390, and Carew's .388 are all more impressive than all the .400 avg's of the 1920's, but they're still rightfully placed lower on the single season lists because...well, they are lower, and that's indisputable. No numbers should be asterisked for any reason.

Right now the AL record for a 154 game season is jointly held by Ruth and Judge with 60,

Right now the AL record for a 154 game season is jointly held by Ruth and Judge with 60,

Is that how it works now? Because I don't think that's how it works.

Is it too much to ask that we simply enjoy a player having a really great season?

Judge only hit 1 HR in his first 13 games this season, so he's got 7 more games to hit 61 in 154 anyway. Why the bias towards the first week of the season rather than the last? The whole thing is idiotic.

Each team played one tie, so it was really 155 for the '27 Yankees, 163 for the '61 Yankees.

I don't see your point. Maris had 162 games to hit his 61. Ruth had 154. Maris had more opportunity to hit HRs in a season than Ruth did.

The only easily quantifiable thing is the opportunity. Maris and forward had/have more opportunity that Ruth did, in any season.

Using "games played by the team" makes no sense to me as the measure of opportunity. The measure of opportunity is PAs.

It's one thing to quibble with the definition of "season" as Jolly did above, but I thought that there was consensus that "opportunity" = PAs.