Maybe it’s just me but didn’t it seem not too long ago that everyone who could hit the ball to the outfield eventually reached 500 career home runs? What was once a prestigious accomplishment back during my childhood had become a common sight to baseball fans.
The most recent member of the 500 Home Run Club was Gary Sheffield a couple of months back. That truly speaks volumes about the feat considering he now joins players like Babe Ruth & Mickey Mantle. Luckily, after him it appears that it will be quite sometime before anyone else can join the club. Carlos Delgado is close with 473 but he’s played in just 26 games this season and at 37 years old it might be too late.
Chipper Jones is next up on the list with 423 but he’s on pace for a career low in home runs this season and is also 37 years old. Still, even at his age I’d put my money on Chipper reaching 500 before Delgado. 90′s superstars Jason Giambi and Vladimir Guererro, 37 & 34 have little chance with 407 & 402 career home runs. Giambi was recently released by the Oakland A’s and remains unemployed.
After all those guys flame out (or make the club), the only legitimate star left is Albert Pujols who is 29 and has 358 blasts. Barring any sort of Steroid and/or age controversy, he will likely have the best shot to unseat baseball’s all-time home run king, Barry Bonds, in the near future.
It seems the days of every other player reaching 500 home runs in their career is slowly coming to an end and I love it. Hate Jose Canseco all you want but without his books, we’d likely see even more players reaching 500, 600, and even 700 career home runs each and every year.
Question: Which member of the 500 Home Run Club had the least impressive career?
Hands down, Sammy Sosa.
Like anyone else making heads or tails of this list between cheaters and non-cheaters, I’d have to split it along those lines. The least impressive natural on the list is Eddie Murray, who at least is a role model for longevity if not dominance. However, that being said, I like Murray as a player, and it’s a tough choice for least impressive.
However, the overall choice has to be Rafael Palmeiro. He’s another testament to longevity, but he is the most likely to have never reached the list at all without cheating with performance enhancers. In a way, characters who would have made the list naturally like Bonds, are more cowardly by cheating to make sure they 1) make the top, and 2) made more money on the way there.
I’m also encouraged by guys like Howard and Dunn. They seem to be legitimate shots to get to 500 while playing most or all of their careers in the current “testing” era.
Are we ignoring steroids and just going by the numbers? If so Scott, are you serious. Sosa is the only person in the history of the sport with 3 consecutive 60+HR seasons.
I’d say Sheffield
I’d have to say Palmiero, who managed to reach 500 HR without ever leading the league in HR or RBI, never finished higher than 5th in the MVP voting, and only made the All-Star team four times in twenty years.
The name that sticks out is Palmeiro. He had this reputation as this underappreciated, quiet, underrated guy and it turns out he was a cheat like everyone else. Unlike the others who (for the most part) were sluggers who had their totals boosted by ‘roids, Palmeiro was primarily a line drive/doubles hitter who all of a sudden developed power.
Vladdy (a favourite who I’m relieved has not shown up on any lists so far) is really off this year but is still young enough to reach 500. He can make it by playing another 5 year and averaging 20 each, pretty reachable assuming this year is an aberration.
I know Palmiero is a popular choice but only a handful of guys have had 500 HR’s AND 3000 hits. I do know what you are saying though.
I’m going to say McGwire had the least impressive career out of the 500 home-run club. The guy had less than 2000 hits in his career.
Related note – I’ll continue to hate Canseco as he is the self proclaimed “Godfather of Steroids”. He may be dead on with regards to the guys who were using but how many of those people were lead to steroids by Jose or one of his disciples (the guys who Jose taught to use steroids). In my mind nothing Jose can write and undo the damage he did to the game.
Wow, all these Palmeiros. He was underappreciated as evidenced by these responses. Sosa, McGwire and now Sheffield were much less impressive, mostly because they clearly relied on enhancers to make their marks, and the first two did not perform well over an entire career for different reasons, unlike Palmeiro.
I think adam dunn could also make the club. as long as he keeps hitting 40 a year he could make 600 hrs.
oh, and another thing, HOF voters should stop making the credentials 500 or even 400 homeruns… we all realized it was a scam and theres good hitters that didnt take it out of the park every 14 at bats.
Totally agree, petrosian! It would be nice for the hall voters get a collective backbone, and admit that the “Hall Voting for Dummies” book is way out of date, and that they need to consider how the game has changed, independently from PEDs.
Longer middle relief, pitch counts, 5-man rotations, increased Mark DeRosa / Ben Zobrist / Kevin Youkilis type of platooning / utility roles, and new ballparks will all affect what kind of reduced frequency we’ll see of those shorthand milestones in the future.
Focusing on a period of dominance, or role importance may need to become more elevated in status than the long, often selfish slog late in the process (i.e. Barry Lamar Bonds), to a key number plateau.
A career middle reliever elected to the Hall? The horror!
Well, certainly not as horrific as electing a common-sense-tells-you committed cheater, and plopping him in front of the podium, insulting our intelligence while insisting that he’s a “super guy”.
Out of everyone in the 500-HR club, I’d vote for McGwire as having the least impressive career. The only thing that McGwire was good at was hitting home runs, while most of the others were skilled in multiple facets of the game. That said, I think that most, if not all, of the recent 500-HR club members will get into the Hall eventually. The fact is that almost everyone was on PEDs during the era, so how can it be said that Bonds, Sosa, Ramirez or any other PED user really had an advantage over everyone else? Those guys are still the best of their generation.
Barry Bonds. What a louse. Impress me Barry please.
Has Sheff really done anything in his career other than win a World Series with the Fire Sale Marlins and wear out welcomes everywhere else? There’s the batting title I guess. He’s a great player and all, but most of the guys on that list were insanely huge players. Even Sosa and McGwire made a pretty big impact on the game. No problem, Delgado will underwhelm all of them once he hits his 500th.
I gotta say sheffield, but seriously Scott, Sammy isn’t even a part of the 500 home run club… he’s a part of the 600 home run club lol. All kidding a side seeing that there are only SIX players in the history of the game to reach 600 hrs kinda says a lot, steroids aside.
This sounds like a fun topic to take a closer look at. Check my blog later to see if I can reach any kind of statistical conclusion, performance enhancers notwithstanding, because they are way overrated.
I’m stealing from the Sports Guy here but how can we put any faith in any of the statistics ie black players only be admitted in the 1940s, war affected the careers of some of the players and what about the advances in medicine and recovery?
Thus we should be taking all numbers with a grain of salt.
Like look at the save – it is a contrived statistic.
Sheffield and Sosa.
Besides Pujols, I would like to nominate Ryan Braun as a potential to knock off Bare-Bo for HR king.
I’m not going to say that hitting a homerun is easy, however, a lot of this chaos is because we try to uphold a sense of glory about them. Take baseball as nothing more than the game it is. One of the rules of the game is that if you hit the ball over the fence in fair territory, all base runners may come around to score. Who cares it Rafael Furcal spends the next 5 seasons hitting 100 homeruns? Everyone is capable of hitting them. Forget about how many people hit and focus on who wins at the end of the day?
Steroids affects homerun hitting more than some may think. Hand-eye coordination and all that blah blah blah. It’s true. But you need hand-eye coordination to hit the ball period. The larger your arms are, the heaviert the bat you can hold, and the quicker you can swing it. That is where homeruns come from. It’s not a coincidence that the biggest homerun hitters in history all had considerable size to them.