If Hank Aaron was chasing Babe Ruth's record in today's age of computer databases and baseball sabermetrics, I think a lot more attention would be paid to the peculiar career Aaron had as a baseball star. He held the career home run record for a long time, but he was never really much of a "slugger" in the traditional sense of the word. In his best season he hit only 47 home runs, and I believe he only won three HR titles in his long career.
Aaron was a line-drive hitter with strong wrists who hit a lot of home runs because happened to play most of his career in small ballparks. Oddly enough, his home run record has overshadowed the fact that he was a magnificent all-around hitter. He's still #3 on the all-time list with 3,771, and he has a higher career batting average than Pete Rose (who has very little to his credit beyond his records as a singles hitter).
And here's what I consider to be one of the most amazing baseball numbers of all time: Hank Aaron would still be a member of the 3,000-hit club even if you took his 755 career home runs out of his hit total!
(that's what she said)
Aaron hit one of the longest shots ever in the old Polo Grounds. He was no short hitter.