Alex Rodriguez will break Barry Bonds’ career home run record—and he won’t need to hit 73 in one year to do it.
If he can play seven more years and average 30 home runs each year (he’s averaged 44 so far), that’s all he’ll need. Even assuming he’ll decline a bit in his 30's, he still looks a good bet to get there.
Keep in mind that from age 33 to 39, Bonds averaged 47 home runs per season. Rodriguez would break his record by averaging 17 fewer over the same period of his career.
Rodriguez won’t be a third baseman in his late thirties either. The Yankees will eventually move him into a DH role to help preserve his body and maximize his chances of breaking the record.
They’ll do everything possible to keep him in New York, as well. They know he’s got the best, and probably the only, shot at getting the career home run record back into pinstripes again for a long time.
And we’ll sweep the steroids under the rug as much as possible.
Was it good for baseball when Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record? Just looking at that question, yes, it was.
Aaron took about 30 years to break Ruth’s mark, and Bonds took around another 30 to break Aaron’s.
This is a significant record, an almost sacred number to baseball fans, and the hype that surrounds an attempt on it generates so much buzz and attention that it only serves to promote the sport.
But then the downside comes into play.
When Bonds passed Aaron, the accomplishment was so tainted by allegations of steroid use that there were suggestions of adding the dreaded asterisk to the record book. The very idea undermines all the good that the chase for 756 did for baseball.
What took 33 years of buildup for Bonds to finally accomplish will take less than 10 for A-Rod. The numbers indicate that Rodriguez should take the career home run title by 2015—and when he does, the memory of Barry Bonds will fade.
When malcontents bring up the fact that Rodriguez tested positive for steroids, we’ll look down at them and say, “Yeah, but that was back in Texas. Before he was great.”
We’ll forget that 2001-2003 were three of his biggest home run-hitting years and point out that he would have broken it without performance enhancement anyway.
We’ll choose to remember “clean Alex” in those pinstripes, that symbol of this beautiful game, rounding the bases after number 763.
No asterisk needed.*
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