New York Yankees' Aaron Judge reacts after striking out during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, in New York.

Image Credit: (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

What used to be one of baseball's most magical numbers — 61 home runs — now sits buried, eight lines deep, in the Major League Baseball record book.

The number now at the top of that record book — 73 home runs — is steeped in a steroid-addled purgatory, but it remains there nonetheless. These days, breaking that record is more of a wild-eyed aspiration than a realistic goal in a game that has largely been cleaned up and transformed.

“It’s good to dream, good to hope and always good to shoot for those goals, but I think that one’s a little untouchable,” said Aaron Judge, the Yankees slugger whose 62 homers in 2022 represent the closest anyone has come to breaking the record since the so-called “steroid era” ended in the early 2000s.

Baseball's popularity these days has little to do with home run chases

Baseball has returned to being more relevant on the sports landscape in 2024 but it has little to do with what brought eyeballs to the game a generation ago — notably, home run chases that placed Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in the headlines almost daily in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Since baseball began the long, not-so-direct path toward ridding performance enhancers from its clubhouses — an effort that started meekly in 2002, a year after Bonds set the record — only Judge has eclipsed Roger Maris’ once-hallowed record of 61 home runs in a season.

Even with his impressive season, Judge sits at only seventh on the list of single-season home run hitters, one spot ahead of Maris, whose record stood from 1961 until 1998, the year Sosa and McGwire took hacks during a wild chase to break the record. McGwire got there first and finished with 70 dingers. Sosa ended up with 66.

Judge saw Bonds as the ‘greatest to ever play’

Bonds surpassed them all in 2001. When Judge speaks of the former Giants slugger, he speaks not of steroids, but of the raw talent it takes to hit that many homers when all pitchers are trying to avoid you.

“He'd get one pitch to hit (in) a series and he’d hit it out of the ballpark,” Judge said. “That takes so much discipline, such a great eye. He’s just so consistent. I’ve been through this for eight, nine seasons now. It’s not that easy. He made it look a lot easier than it is, and that’s why he’s the greatest to ever play.”

Total homers trend up but individual totals have steadily decreased

The year 2008 was something of a tipping point for baseball. It was three seasons after MLB enacted much harsher penalties for using performance enhancers and only months after the release of the revelatory and damning Mitchell Report, which tarnished the reputation of dozens of players and bluntly assessed that illegal drug use “raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”

In the 10 years before 2008, six of baseball's single-season home run leaders hit 55 or more. In all the years since, that number has been eclipsed only twice — by Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who hit 59 in 2017. Reaching 74 has never been in the conversation.

“It’s possible but I just think the pitching is so good, and the specialty of pitching today,” said Rockies manager Bud Black, who pitched in the 1980s and '90s. "And what it takes for the hitter, the durability, the stamina, and getting those number of at-bats, going to the plate that many times to potentially hit a homer, it’s hard.”

While it's clear to see what the steroid era did to home runs — the top six single-season performances came between 1998-2001 — overall home run trends do not run in straight lines, in large part due to quirks of the game.

For instance, there were only an average of 11 more total home runs per season from 1998-2007 than in all the years since 2008 (not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 season).

Though the earlier period was viewed as a home-run hitter's heyday — Bonds hit 73 and Sosa cracked 60 three times — factors such as early-season weather, bringing in fences at some ballparks, manufacturing quirks with the baseball and even the use of humidors in Denver and elsewhere have played a role in the overall numbers.

Home runs have been up recently. From 2010-15, the number of total homers in a full season never exceeded 5,000, but since 2016, it has not been below 5,200. That includes 2019, when a record 6,776 homers were hit.

One factor in that surge is believed to be the baseballs themselves. Although there's no evidence MLB intentionally juiced its baseballs, the league did acknowledge in 2019 that balls were briefly flying further because they had less drag.

The recent uptick also follows an analytical push placing more value on lifting the ball and trying to hit home runs. Those changes to the baseballs and in hitter behavior haven't produced a 70-home run threat, but they are a reminder how quickly the sport can evolve.

Judge (58) and Shohei Ohtani (54) battled for the 2024 home run title, though in a sign of what's driving the game's popularity these days, Ohtani becoming the first player to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases made much bigger headlines than their home run chase.

To hit 74, Ohtani or Judge would need to have a once-in-a-lifetime year

Could a race to 74 by Ohtani, Judge or someone else someday be a September headline maker again in baseball?

Not everyone is giving up on the thought:

—“You never say never,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said.

—“I think if it’s been done before I think it could be done again,” Royals pitcher Michael Wacha said.

— Judge's manager, Aaron Boone, would like to think no record is unbreakable.

“It's an astronomical huge number but I wouldn’t put it past anyone as talented as Aaron or Shohei,” Boone said.

Many in baseball agree it would take a once-in-a-generation talent having a once-in-a-lifetime season to even think about approaching a record that, frankly, nobody much thinks about these days.

“I’d like to think no record’s untouchable, but I feel like the top home-run hitters in the world are still maybe 20 homers from that,” said Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker, who hit 36 homers in 2023. “That’s crazy to think about. I’d like to think someday it will be tapped into, but it’s one of those things that’s hard to predict. It’s such an anomaly and outlier.”

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AP Sports Writers Janie McCauley, Steve Megargee, Mike Fitzpatrick, Stephen Hawkins and freelancer Dennis Georgatos contributed.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024