Alex Rodriguez, the New York Yankees’ slugging third baseman, hit his 599th home run on Thursday, July 22nd, off of Kansas City Royals relief pitcher Tejeda. He has gone one week without connecting again for another circuit clout, delaying his entry into one of the most exclusive havens of Major League Baseball: The 600 Homer Club.
A-Rod is notorious for failure when he is at the brink of a milestone. It took nine games between home run #499 and #500, during which he had an anemic .107 batting average. He hit #500 on August 4, 2007, almost exactly three years ago.
When A-Rod finally does go yard for the 600th time in his major league career, he will join Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Willy Mays, Babe Ruth and Sammy Sosa in the 600 Home Run Club. Like Bonds and Sosa, A-Rod’s career has been tainted by the revelation that he has used performance enhancing drugs.
All of the retired players who have hit 600 home runs are enshrined in Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. While it is unlikely that Sammy Sosa will enjoy that honor, A-Rod and Barry Bonds probably will make it due to the enormity of their skills and accomplishments. Both were Gold Glove winners and won multiple Most Valuable Player Awards, with Bonds racking up three of his seven before he started taking PEDs. A-Rod has three MVP awards.
600 Homers + Beyond
Babe Ruth, the fabled “Sultan of Swat”, established the 600 Home Run Club on August 22, 1931, when he hit a four-bagger off of George Blaeholder of the St. Louis Browns at Sportsman’s Park in the city on the Mississippi River. Babe was also the charter member of the 200-, 300-, 400-, 500- and 700-Homer Clubs.
The Babe hit his 200th homer on May 12, 1923 and his 700th homer on July 13, 1934. At the time he established the 700 Homer Club, only Lou Gehrig and Rogers Hornsby had hit 300 home runs during a career.
Babe Ruth retired on May 30, 1935 with a total of 714 home runs, a record that stood for 39 years, until it was broken by Hank Aaron on April 8, 1974. Hammering Hank’s new career home run record of 755 dingers, in turn, was broken by Barry Bonds on August 7, 2007.
A-Rod likely will join Aaron, Bonds and Ruth in the 700 Homer Club One Day, and has a chance of establishing the 800 Home Run Club, if he holds up physically. He has been plagued by a bad hip the past two seasons.
600 Homer Club Membership
Here are the list of members of the 600 Home Run Club, in ascending order of their career home run tallies:
Sammy Sosa: 609
Ken Griffey, Jr. (active): 630
Willie Mays: 660
Babe Ruth: 714
Hank Aaron: 755
Barry Bonds: 762
Jim Thome, who at 39 years old has hit 576 homers and has 12 dingers this season with the Minnesota Twins, and 38-year-old Manny Ramirez, who has tallied 554 taters (including eight with the 2010 Los Angeles Dodgers) may one day join the 600 Homer Club.
Albert Pujols, who at 30 years old has already connected for 389 homers, likely will join the club too. He has blasted 23 home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals so far this season, and led the National League with 47 last season, when he won his third MVP award.
