Free Republic

TORONTO — When Aaron Judge hit his 60th homer of the season on Sept. 20 to tie Babe Ruth’s magic number, it seemed Judge would match Roger Maris’ No. 61 at any minute. Instead, it took eight more games, and two countries, along with Judge enduring his second-longest home run drought of the year- before the slugger finally tied the American League and franchise record on Wednesday night. Judge’s historic smash in Toronto came against the Blue Jays’ Tim Mayza on a 3-2 pitch in the top of the seventh inning. The two-run shot put the Yankees in front, 5-3,...

New York Yankees star Aaron Judge hit his 61st home run of the season Wednesday night against the Toronto Blue Jays, tying Roger Maris' American League record. It took Maris until Oct. 1, the final game of the 1961 season, to hit his 61st, which broke Babe Ruth's single-season mark of 60 home runs set in 1927. Judge did it Sept. 28, in Game No. 155 for New York. A day after the Yankees clinched the American League East title, Judge, batting leadoff as the designated hitter, took Toronto's Tim Mayza deep in the seventh inning with a runner on...

If I’m Giancarlo Stanton, I’d feel conflicted about the Steroid Era, too. I’d think Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in a season is the legitimate record, too. “Considering some things, I do,’’ he said Wednesday. If I’m Stanton, I’d note the only three players to hit more than 61 home runs – Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa – had more performance-enhancing drugs in them than an East German swim team. “But at the same time it doesn’t matter,’’ Stanton said. “The record is the record. But, personally, I do [think 61 is the record]... If PED users like...

If we weren’t a society that, even now, tends to think of defeat as a six-letter euphemism for mortal sin, for assorted perverse reasons, Tracy Stallard would be wearing a sweat shirt emblazoned thus: He had to hit a record breaker to hit me at all!!Come 23 September, the New York Yankees plan a golden anniversary celebration for the record nobody really wanted to see Roger Maris break. Poetically enough, the Yankees are scheduled to play the team against whom Maris achieved it, the Boston Red Sox. A postseason trip could still be on the line with that series, the...

A local sports radio station here in Denver mentioned this recently - Give it back to Maris Help restore the MLB homerun record to the rightful owner http://www.giveitbacktomaris.com/This website is designed for the sole purpose of setting the Major League Baseball Single Season Home Run Record straight. With the acknowledgement of an era of baseball where the legitimacy of every record is in doubt, we believe there is only one solution to the ongoing steroid controversy and mistrust that not only surrounds the game but has created doubt in the game for the last 16 years. That solution is for...

Barry Bonds, the Anti-Ruth December 9, 2004 Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. The howling mob is right; I was wrong. At the end of the baseball season, more than two months ago, I marveled at Barry Bonds’s preternatural batting statistics. Since then, countless readers have chidden me for ignoring the obvious role steroids have played in enabling Bonds to rewrite the record book from top to bottom. I can only plead that I was trying to give him the benefit of doubt. I should have saved my sympathy for Scott Peterson. I couldn’t believe that “performance-enhancing substances” could...

What do we offer the world? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern "So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well." Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison. Indeed, the filmed orgies among...