Bonds, Barry With 762 home runs, Barry Bonds owns the major league baseball home run record. On August 7, 2007, he surpassed Hank Aaron, who had reached 755. Babe Ruth, with 714 home runs, is the only other player to have hit 700 or more.
In 2008, it was reported that baseball's ruling body, the BBWAA, was going to remove Aaron's record from consideration. However, an official announcement has not been made by the organization.
If this record is removed from competition, it will be replaced by Roger Maris's record of 61 home runs in 1961. This record is likely to stand for many years because it was achieved by a strong offensive team that year-the Yankees. The current leader in home runs is Jose Bautista with 52 homers. He hit his 50th on April 17, 2012.
It's worth mentioning that there are other records that could be considered when talking about baseball's greatest hitters. For example, there's Ruth's record of 449 career RBIs. This record has never been beaten and probably won't ever be because it requires contact hits to score runs. Another example is Ty Cobb's record of 997 career hits. This record is also unlikely to ever be broken because batting over.300 is often necessary to reach 100 hits.
Mark McGwire established a new MLB record with 70 home runs in 1998; Barry Bonds broke that mark with 73 in 2001. Maris still holds the American League record for most home runs in a single season. He hit 61 in 1961, which at the time was a major league record.
Maris's record has been broken several times since it was set. Jim Clark of the St. Louis Cardinals broke it by hitting #1 in both 1997 and 1998. Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs broke it in 2004. And now Mark McGwire is poised to break it again. If he hits more than 20 home runs during the remaining games of the regular season, he will have broken the record twice over.
The Yankees' Roger Maris celebrates after hitting a ball against the Dodgers' Don Newcombe in Game 1 of the 1957 World Series at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees went on to win, 10-9. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Roger Maris was an American baseball player who played first base for the Yankees from 1955 to 1962. During his eight years with the team, he became one of the top hitters in baseball history. His record of sixty-one home runs in a single season was broken three times (by Jim Clark, Sam McDowell, and Barry Bonds), but it is still intact today.
Barry Bonds has 10 hitting records, the most notable of which are the career and single-season home run marks. If he were to maintain his current rate of success, he would hit number 11 in 2009; however, MLB has no plan to honor this record since it is believed that it will not be broken.
Bonds' teammate Greg Anderson is second on the list with 75 home runs. He is also one away from tying Bob Meusel's record of 76 home runs, but he never got a chance to break it as he died at the age of 42 in a car accident.
Meusel, who was also known as "Big Daddy", led the league in homers eight times, including 1947 when he had 53 bombs. His record has never been beaten despite many attempts over the years.
After Big Daddy came Barry Bonds. In 2001, Jeff Bagwell broke Meusel's record with 77 home runs, but he was later found to have used performance-enhancing drugs during his time with the Houston Astros. As a result, all his stats while with that team have been removed from the record book.
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