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How do today's sluggers compare against yesterdays?
Posted by John Dewan on Dec 16th 2015
March 23, 2005
61...70...73. That's a lot of homers, but how does it compare to the Babe?Roger Maris, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds set their own home run records, but Babe Ruth will always be the standard. Not only did the Babe lead his league in home runs twelve times, but in two different seasons (1920 and 1927) he had more home runs than any other team as a whole in the American League.
He also holds the seven highest percentages of total home runs hit in a season in baseball (since 1919). Here is the top ten list along with rankings for Maris, McGwire and Bonds:
| Year | Player | Home Runs | Percentage of Total MLB Homers | |
| 1. | 1920 | Babe Ruth | 54 | 8.6% |
| 2. | 1927 | Babe Ruth | 60 | 6.5% |
| 3. | 1919 | Babe Ruth | 29 | 6.5% |
| 4. | 1921 | Babe Ruth | 59 | 6.3% |
| 5. | 1926 | Babe Ruth | 47 | 5.5% |
| 6. | 1924 | Babe Ruth | 46 | 5.1% |
| 7. | 1928 | Babe Ruth | 54 | 4.9% |
| 8. | 1933 | Jimmie Foxx | 48 | 4.5% |
| 9. | 1931 | Babe Ruth | 46 | 4.3% |
| 10. | 1931 | Lou Gehrig | 46 | 4.3% |
| ... | ||||
| 43. | 1961 | Roger Maris | 61 | 2.2% |
| 72. | 1998 | Mark McGwire | 70 | 1.4% |
| 74. | 2002 | Barry Bonds | 73 | 1.3% |