A little over a month ago, New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez hit the 600th home run of his career, becoming the youngest player in Major League Baseball history to reach the milestone and only the seventh member of the 600-home run club.
Currently, Rodriguez has 605 home runs on his ledger, which places him 4 behind Sammy Sosa on the all-time home run list, 25 behind Ken Griffey, Jr., 55 behind Willie Mays, 109 behind Babe Ruth, 150 behind Hank Aaron and 157 behind Barry Bonds.
Assuming he doesn’t hit another home run this season and averages 32 home runs per year over the next five seasons, Rodriguez will become the all-time home run king in 2015 at the age of 40.
In Monday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium, Rodriguez drove in two runs to claim sole ownership of a record he shared with Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig by becoming the only player in baseball history with 14 seasons of 100 or more RBI’s.
In addition, Rodriguez tied Foxx (1929-1941) and Gehrig (1926-1938) for the most consecutive seasons (13) with 100 RBI’s.
Speaking of RBI’s, if he continues to drive in runs at a clip of 100 per season over the next five seasons, Rodriguez will also become the all-time leader in RBI’s; a record that has been held by Hank Aaron for the past 34 years.
So potentially, in a span of less than a decade, the baseball world could helplessly watch the all-time home run record fall for a second time and the all-time RBI mark take a tumble; and the sole man responsible will be none other than Alex Rodriguez.
However, since his 2009 admission to using performance-enhancing drugs (PED’s) from 2001-2003, Rodriguez is no longer viewed as the player who will bring legitimacy back to the baseball record books, especially when it comes to the all-time home run record.
"All my years in New York have been clean,” Rodriguez said in an interview with ESPN where he confessed to his use of PED’s, adding he has not used banned substances since 2003 following a spring training injury while playing for the Texas Rangers.
“Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all-time. I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."
The quandary for Rodriguez is the closer he moves to being considered one of the greatest players of all-time, statistically speaking, the more readily apparently it becomes that his career will be treated with the same indifference, respect and reverence as those of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
So in a desire to prove his worth by using PED’s, all Rodriguez did is highlight how far he truly is from being mentioned in the same breath as Aaron, Ruth, Mays and Gehrig, no matter how many records he shatters along the way, and that the size of his bank account will always dwarf his stature in baseball history.
Click here to read the original article on Examiner.com, which includes relevant links and a special video presentation on Alex Rodriguez's assault on the baseball record books.
Does MLB Care about Alex Rodriguez's Assault on History?
