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Three names from baseball’s past that every home run lover should know.

Baseball is a numbers game, arguably more so than any other major team sport. Think otherwise? OK then, ask the average fan to name the career leader in NBA points or Nflyards rushed and the totals in his respective sport. Count the number of blank stares you get. If someone were to query a baseball fan as to who’s tops in home runs, he’d likely say Hank Aaron’s 755. Something about the digits 7-5-5 simply resonates.

If all the finger-pointing from the steroid exposé Game of Shadows hasn’t rattled him, controversial San Francisco Giants’ star Barry Bonds should have Aaron’s career mark squarely in his sights. (For those wondering, if Bonds’s average over the past five years of a homer every 7.8 at bats holds up, he’ll be swinging for number 756 around September 10 or 12.) Hammerin’ Hank isn’t bothered by any inevitable record book rewrites; he’s long believed that totals were meant to be toppled and that his 30-plus years of owning the home run mark were quite enough.

Who knows if Roger Connor felt the same way? A 19th-century star of the Troy Titans, Connor was professional baseball’s first home run king with 138—including the first recorded grand slam— when he retired in 1897. That total probably won’t blow away folks who still vividly remember Mark McGwire’s 167 tape-measured shots from just 1998 to 2000 but one has to consider during that era that stadiums were much bigger and less emphasis was placed on balls reaching the stands. After World War I, however, things changed. Balls got livelier, fields shrank and Ruth, Rogers Hornsby and Hack Wilson started swinging for the fences. Of course, the Babe would surpass all others and finish his career as the greatest long-ball hitter of all time to many.

Those who don’t see it that way might reserve the space on their roster for Josh Gibson, a brilliant catcher for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords of the Negro League. Universally regarded as the overlooked league’s best home run hitter, Gibson smashed an unofficial 800 home runs and garnered the tag “The Black Babe Ruth.” Unfortunately for Gibson and other black stars, segregation kept them from regularly playing against the likes of Babe and Lou Gehrig. But on those rare instances when the grass was shared, Gibson usually sparkled. Numerous written accounts say he clobbered a ball over the third deck in left field at Yankee Stadium in 1934, a feat no one since has duplicated.

Thankfully, the many achievements of Japan’s Sadaharu Oh— baseball’s all-time homer leader with 868—are well documented. A pitcher when he started pro baseball in 1959, Oh switched to first base and honed his skills at the plate. Something worked, as Oh (who managed Japan to the inaugural World Baseball Classic title in March) went on to lead his league in home runs 15 times, 13 of which were consecutive. While these numbers certainly sound Ruthian enough, most diamond experts compare Oh and his keen senses at the plate to famed Boston slugger Ted Williams.

Words by DeMarco Williams

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