The Big Fella Takes Flight

 

Best thing about this benighted season, it seems to me, is going to be seeing whether or not Aaron Judge can set the home run record.

I'm not going to say "the Yankees' club record" or any of that other folderol. The only players who ever surpassed Roger Maris' mark of 61 home runs in a 162-game season were known or confessed juicers, which to me invalidates what they did.

Hell, it's bad enough that we have to hear all about the thrilling question of whether Albert Pujols—yet another, obvious cheater—can "pass" the all-time home run mark of A-Rod, still another, known juicer, forcibly retired by the Yankees and MLB, lest he pass the all-time record of the all-time cheater, Barry Bonds. 

Nonsense, all of that—and when major-league baseball is eventually reduced to something that draws lower ratings than pickleball, you will be able to trace the start of its demise to when it began to degrade and besmirch its own records and traditions.

It won't surprise many of you here, I'm sure, to know that I am, for that matter, a pro-asterisk man. Not that the asterisk on Roger Maris' record—the one that so many sportswriters bewailed as so outrageous for so long—ever actually existed. 

There was simply a ruling by Commissioner Ford Frick that there be two lines in the record book, one stating the record for home runs in a 154-game season, the other for home runs in 162 games. As 162 games is just over 5 percent longer than 154 games, I never understood why this was widely regarded as a war crime.

Obviously, it seems to me, more games in a season, different record. Where would all those sportswriters have drawn the line? Ten percent more games? Twenty percent?

If you want to get into the weeds, you can raise all kinds of other reasons why this or that record is more impressive over time. Were endless train trips or flights across two-to-three time zones more disruptive to players? What's tougher: relief pitching, or awful woolen uniforms and no air conditioning? Etc. There's one obsessed chronicler of the Babe who claims that he would have hit 104 home runs in the 1921 season—instead of 59—playing with the fences and rules as they are today.

But that way, madness lies. As far as I'm concerned, if Aaron Judge hits 62 home runs in 162 games, he breaks ROGER MARIS' single-season, major-league home run record. Period. Breaking a 61-year-old sports record...that ain't nothin'. When did we see that last?

But if Judge hits 61 in 154 or fewer games...well then, he's broken the Babe's 1927 record. A 95-year-old sports record. It boggles the mind.

Right now, according to the good people at YES, Judge is even with Maris—and seven games AHEAD of the Babe. 

That is deceptive. While Maris had a strong September/October, finishing with 10 home runs in that month, Ruth's 1927 finish was staggering—these being the games in which many would-be contenders to the record fall by the wayside.

The Babe hit 17 home runs in September, 1927, 16 of them in the last 27 games of the season. 

It all started with a doubleheader split up in Fenway, on September 6. Up until then, Ruth was actually still tied with his young teammate, Lou Gehrig, who had been a little ahead of him all season in the very first, home-run race.

Gehrig homered once in those two games, to bring his season total to 45—a number exceeded by no one in the game to that time save for Ruth himself. The Babe—hit three, moving up to 47. He was never headed.

Ruth hit two more the next day in Boston, numbers 48 and 49, including the game-winner in the 8th inning, as the Yanks rallied from an 8-1 deficit to win, 12-10. He also had a double, and drove in five runs. 

From September 11-13, he hit home runs in three straight games, against the St. Louis Browns and the Cleveland Indians Traffic Statues, bringing him up to 52. But nobody was terribly excited. Ruth had already hit 54 and 59 home runs in a season, and there were just 15 games left to play. (The Yanks that year would play 155 games in total, because of a called game. Ruth played in 151.)

Only one home run followed over the next five games. 

Then there was another little string. A home run in three more, straight games, one against the White Sox and two against Detroit.

His home run in the second Tigers game came in the bottom of the ninth, after the Yankees had blown a 6-3 lead, even without Aroldis Chapman. Not to fear. In their last ups, Mark Koenig led off with a single, and Ruth homered "deep to right field." (Nearly all of his home runs are described as "deep to" somewhere, maybe Yonkers.)

The Babe now had 56 homers in 151 games. Still, 60? It seemed a tall order, four more in as many games.

Next came perhaps Ruth's most impressive feat in the whole skein. On September 27th, he belted what proved to be a game-winning, grand-slam in the seventh inning off the Philadelphia Athletics' Robert Moses "Lefty" Grove, the greatest pitcher of his era; 

according to some, the greatest pitcher who ever lived. The ball was hit "to deep right-center" in the Stadium.

(Ruth, incidentally, hit .311 lifetime against Lefty, tying Gehrig and Hank Greenberg for most home runs against Grove with 9, while his 33 RBI against the pitcher were topped only by Lou's 45. Thanks to Baseball Roundtable's "Who's Your Daddy?" series for those stats.)

Game 153 on the season, and the Yanks started a season-ending series against the Washington Senators. The Nats were not the tomato cans they usually were, in the midst of their one run of success which would see them take three pennants and a World Series in ten years, 1924-1933. In 1927, they were third in the AL with an 85-69 record.

Didn't matter. Ruth hit two home runs and a triple and drove in six runs, as the Yanks coasted to a 15-4 win over Washington. (In what must qualify as a contender for Most Great Pitchers' Names in a single game, the Nats' pitchers included Firpo Marberry and Hod Lisenbee, while Urban Shocker, who would soon die of heart disease, won his last game for the Yankees.)

Friday, September 30th. Next-to-last-game of the season. Washington pitched Tom Zachary, a good pitcher who spent much of his career with wretched teams (Traded to the Yankees the next season, he would win a World Series game, then go 12-0 in 1929.). 

Bottom of the eighth inning, Mark Koenig on third with a triple, the Babe hit a drive "deep" down the right field line, that just stayed fair. Ballgame, as it turned out. And sixty.

No one was all that excited, as the attendance suggested. (For that matter, only 23,154 fans came out to see Maris hit number 61, in the last game of 1961. Hey, they wanted The Mick to do it.)

As one sportswriter said, it was the Babe. For all they knew, he would come back the next year and hit 70. (No—only 54.)

Ruth himself quite enjoyed it, sitting around the locker room with a cigar, exclaiming, "Sixty! I'd like to see some son-of-a-bitch top that!"

Well, some son-of-a-bitch might just do that this year. Judge would be perfect, a good-natured, hard-playing individual who—at least as far as we know—is not cheating in an era of cheaters. 

It would be great to see him do it—if just for the look on Brian Cashman's face.