A-Rod and 600

A-Rod and 600

 

 

Alex Rodriguez hit his 599th home run on Thursday and needs one more home run to reach the once sacred total of 600 for his career. (Getty Images)

 

 

There was no 600 homer club. No. The “club,” everybody knew, was for 500 homers, and it was exclusive. As of 1990, there were only 14 players in the 500 Homer Club… and everyone could more or less name the guys in it.

It really was exclusive. Only two players — Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson — had joined the 500 club in the 1980s. And at the end of the 1990, there was no active player anywhere near 500 homers. Eddie Murray had 379 and was still young enough that it was thought that he MIGHT have a chance at 500. Andre Dawson had 346 homers, and the feeling was that maybe if his knees held up, maybe, he might pull it off (but probably not). The other big power stars of the decade — Dale Murphy, Dwight Evans, Jack Clark and so on — well, it was apparent that they were not going to get to 500. Heck, they might not even reach 400.

Then again… the FOUR HUNDRED homer club was still very meaningful in 1990. This is hard to imagine in an era when 400 home runs gets you a handshake and a gold watch, — but up to 1985 every single player who hit 400 home runs in the major leagues ended up in the Hall of Fame. Every one. Four hundred homers* was considered then a full-fare ticket to the Hall — it was such a powerful number in the mid-’80s that I distinctly remember in 1985 there being some hand-wringing because Dave Kingman hit his 400th home run that year. What to do? Kingman, based on his general inability to do anything well except hit home runs, was not a Hall of Fame-caliber player. And yet with 400 home runs… well, it was a conundrum! The Baseball Writers Association came up with a radical but inventive solution — they did not vote for Dave Kingman — but it was touch and go there for a while.

*I had forgotten this until I watched a preview of Ken Burns’ “10th Inning” documentary — which will premier on PBS on Sept. 28 and 29, more on this as we go — but Barry Bonds hit his 400th homer in 1998, the year of the McGwire-Sosa chase. I don’t want to give too much away, but the documentary runs with the popular theory that Bonds was so furious after watching lesser stars Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pump up and win America’s heart with a summer of home runs that he decided to pump up himself, obliterate their numbers and show the country what REAL power looked like.

And the impetus, according to the documentary’s visuals, was how little attention Bonds got for his 400th home run. Of course, it was no ordinary 400th homer… it made Bonds the first and still only player in baseball history to hit 400 homers and steal 400 bases in a career. By then, though, nobody really cared about puny number like 400 homers. Bonds hit his 400th homer at Pro Player Stadium in Florida on the same day that Mark McGwire hit his sixth homer in six starts (and 53rd for the season), and the same day that Sammy Sosa hit two homers off Jose Lima (51 for the season). Bonds was barely worth a blurb. And, the documentary’s narrative suggests that’s when Bonds turned super villain and decided he was going to take over the world.

Anyway, it was called the 500 Club, and even through the strike and the return, there were still only 14 members. Eddie Murray did join in 1996. And it was right about then that the home run started to feel a bit different.

• Mark McGwire joined the 500 Club in 1999… the year after the year when his home run total fell all the way to 65.

• Barry Bonds joined in 2001… in fact that year he passed Murray, Mel Ott, Eddie Mathews, Ernie Banks, Ted Williams, Willie McCovey, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson. ONE YEAR, he passed all those guys. Well, 73 homers will do that for a guy.

• Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro joined in 2003. Fair or unfair, there was something galling about Palmeiro getting into the club — he became for many a symbol of the cheapening home run.

• Ken Griffey joined in 2004. People had been talking about Griffey being the one who could break Hank Aaron’s home run record… but because of injuries and such, by the time he got to 500 homers, he found a crowded room.

• Alex Rodriguez, Frank Thomas and Jim Thome all entered the club in 2007, and by now, nobody really cared. Manny Ramirez entered in 2008. Gary Sheffield wandered into the treehouse in 2009.

So, yes, The 500 Club started to feel an awful lot like the Columbia Record Club — send in your penny, get your 12 free records and then simply buy five more records over the next three years. But the SIX HUNDRED CLUB… well, like I say, that wasn’t even a club. That was a trio, like the Musketeers, the Stooges, the Chipmunks and Ben Folds Five.

There was Hank, Babe and Willie.

There was Aaron, Ruth and Mays.

There was the Hammer, the Sultan and Say Hey.

That was it. There was no club. Six hundred home runs was unimaginable… you had to hit 40 home runs for FIFTEEN YEARS to get to 600 homers. You had to hit 30 home runs for TWENTY YEARS to get to 600 homers. You had to lead the league in homers 10 times like Ruth did, or average 45 homers a year in your young-to-mid 30s like Mays did, or inexorably march, averaging 36 home runs every year from 21 to 40, the way Aaron did.

The path to 600 home runs was strewn with great players not quite strong enough to make it. Frank Robinson had 496 home runs on the day he turned 36… he had a chance. But he had 90 home runs left in his body.

Eddie Mathews had 477 home runs before he even turned 34… it’s fascinating to compare Mathews and his teammate Aaron through the years. Mathews was a couple of years older, so it was hard to see this at the time.

Age 30
Mathews: 399 homers
Aaron: 366 homers

Age 31
Mathews: 422 homers
Aaron: 398 homers

Age 32
Mathews: 445 homers
Aaron: 442 homers

Age 33
Aaron: 481 homers
Mathews: 477 homers

Age 34
Aaron: 510 homers
Mathews: 493 homers

Age 35
Aaron: 554 homers
Mathews: 509 homers

And so on. Mathews only hit three more homers from there. Aaron hit 201.

Harmon Killebrew hit his 500th homer off Mike Cuellar on August 10, 1971… he had just turned 35 in June. And he hit his 501st the same day against Cuellar. He had 515 homers by the end of the year and certainly had a chance. But he hit only 58 more.

Mickey Mantle had 496 homers by the end of his age 34 year, but it was already apparent that his knees and hard-living had taken its toll. He hit his 500th in May of ’67 off Stu Miller and seemed revived enough to hit seven more over the next two weeks. But that was really the last home run burst for the Mick. He hit only 28 more after that before limping into the sunset.

Six hundred homers… it was too titanic for even the greats to think about. Jimmie Foxx hit his 500th homer when he was 32… he hit only 34 more. Mark McGwire hit his 500th and 501st off Andy Ashby in 1999, as mentioned, and considering that he hit 65 that year, he seemed a lock for 600 and who knows how many more? But he, too, faded at the finish line, ending up with 583. Six hundred home runs wasn’t a club, no, it was Father Time’s checkered flag, and only three men had finished that race.

And then there was a fourth… Barry Bonds reached 600 in 2002. There was something wrong about it, of course. Many things. The steroid story was exploding in baseball, and people didn’t like Bonds, anyway, for any  number of reasons. But, more than anything, I think, it was that Bonds hit his 600th home run less than 16 months after he had hit his 500th. That part was just too absurd to comprehend… Bonds had hit 100 home runs in 230 games. It was coming at us too fast. Chris Jones has a great story in this month’s Esquire about the guy who made the perfect guess in The Price is Right, and the guy’s wish is that he had not guessed it PERFECT — he could have just missed it by a few dollars. Bonds had become too perfect a player. He was a comic book hero. For most of America, it just wasn’t believable anymore.

When Sammy Sosa hit his 600th home run on June 20, 2007, the public tolerance for home run records had more or less collapsed entirely. Bonds was in the midst of the most joyless record chase in the history of professional sports — he was only seven away from catching Aaron at that point — and Sosa had long before lost the innocence and joy that had made him a national sensation.

And then, less than a year later — June 9, 2008 — Griffey hit his 600th home run. And for the second time, it felt like he was late to the party. This time, people TRIED to get excited, because it at least felt like Griffey had gotten to 600 the hard way, the real way, without bending rules or breaking laws. But, nobody really knows, and anyway everyone was home run numb. When Griffey hit his 600th, it was already clear that Alex Rodriguez would get there soon, plus Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez were on the path. The moment passed.

Well, here we are again: Alex Rodriguez has 599 home runs. He will almost certainly hit his 600th home run sometime this weekend, because the Yankees face the Royals… and the Royals like giving up A-Rod homers. He hit his first home run against Kansas City and also his 500th. In fact, if he can hold off until Saturday, he will face Royals starter Kyle Davies, who surrendered that 500th home run. No pitcher has ever given up a player’s 500th and 600th home runs before, so there’s that.

Hitting 600 home runs is still amazing — and for Alex Rodriguez to do it before his 35th birthday (July 27) is beyond amazing. What does this 600th home run mean, though? A-Rod has, of course, admitted to using steroids during his home run prime. So to many, his 600th home run won’t even count, won’t even exist, a record-book mirage.

But even to those who have come to grips with the Selig Era and the simple fact that all the numbers in the record books are distorted by one queasy fact or another, the 600 home run number STILL feels used up. It is like someone struggling to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, reaching the peak and finding that people had already built a McDonald’s, a Home Depot and a Best Buy up there. Steroids are not the only thing that caused the home run explosion of the 1990s — I’ve long suspected that they weren’t even the biggest thing. Smaller strike zones, harder bats, body armor, smaller ballparks, weight training (not even including performance enhancers), money incentives, expansion… all these things and more pointed toward bigger power numbers. The game did not tilt… it was tilted. A lot of people wanted more home runs. And the men running baseball had to give people what they wanted.

One of my favorite parts of the Ken Burns documentary — one of the things Burns does so well — is laying things out simply. Baseball was in huge trouble in the mid-90s. The strike and canceled World Series destroyed something inside baseball fans. The embarrassment of the replacement players made things even worse. It’s common thought that Cal Ripken’s streak helped reconnect fans and baseball… and it probably did for some. But I always thought that was overplayed. Attendance was stagnant, television ratings stagnant, the game felt stagnant. The common theory is that home runs — Babe Ruth’s home runs particularly — helped save baseball after the 1919 Black Sox. When players started hitting home runs at a preposterous pace after the strike, well, nobody really wanted to ask too many questions.

And here we are, 15 or so years later, and the bills are coming in. The 400 Club has more than doubled since 1990. The 500 Club has 25 members… few people can name them all now. A-Rod is about to become the seventh man to hit 600 home runs. And none of it feels all that special anymore.