Alex Rodriguez hits a pinch-hit home run to tie Willie Mays at 660 home runs

NBC Sports ^ | 5/1/2015 | Bill Baer

[fhayek]

Alex Rodriguez, not in Friday’s starting lineup against the Red Sox, still managed to make history. He pinch-hit for DH Garrett Jones in the eighth inning, facing reliever Junichi Tazawa. He got ahead in the count 3-0, then slugged a 94 MPH fastball out to left field for career home run number 660, putting the Yankees up 3-2.

[fhayek]

Let the flaming begin...

[dfwgator]

*

[iowacornman]

Did I hear he was a steroid freak. I’m not interested in him.

[fhayek]

lol

[Steven Scharf]

It was his first ever pinch hit home run.

[yarddog]

I wish they would go back to 154 games. The season is just too long now.

[fhayek]

Uh, that was over fifty years ago. Talk about your traditionalists....

[Alberta's Child]

I think A-Rod -- and Major League Baseball -- would have been much better off if the trade to the Red Sox hadn't been overturned back in 2004. He would have been happier, he would have stayed at shortstop, and he wouldn't have played under such pressure in New York.

I'm not a big fan of the guy, but he was an amazing ballplayer even long before the steroid issues surfaced.

[be-baw]

Asterisk is right. There should be an official baseball Hall of Shame that lists all the players who were proven to have take steroids or other banned performance enhancing drugs

[Alberta's Child]

It’s not just the number of games that’s the problem. It’s the elimination of scheduled doubleheaders, which has extended the season even later into the calendar year.

[fhayek]

That’s the problem. Rodriguez was such a great player. So was Barry Bonds. And Roger Clemens. Future fans will not understand that. All they will see is PED’s.

[Sicon]

Wonder how many he’d have if it wasn’t for the “juice”. Pathetic.

[Straight Vermonter]

He gets a $6,000,000 bonus for that one too.

[Fungi]

Yes, as was the current leader from San Francisco whose name I do not want to mention. They make so much money, they spit in our face and than want back in. Worthless little children. When the mighty Babe made his sixty home runs, there were only 300 total home runs that year, so he had 20 percent of all home runs. Look at it now.

[yarddog]

I always loved minor league baseball. During the early 50s we watched the Panama City Flyers of the Alabama Florida League. It was inexpensive entertainment for the whole family.

During the 60s and 70s it was the Asheville Tourists, then the Asheville Orioles and it is back to the Tourists now.

The players still have a bit of a kid in them and the play is actually pretty good. You also see some future stars.

[The Antiyuppie]

As far as I’m concerned:

1. Babe Ruth and Roger Maris (depending on length of season) hit the most home runs in one year.

2. Hank Aaron was, and is, the Home Run Lifetime Champion.

There were some others involved, I forget their names, but they don’t even warrant an asterisk.

[Alberta's Child]

I hear ya. It’s been great to see a resurgence of minor league baseball in some of the bigger cities of the U.S.

[yarddog]

There was some talk in Panama City a few months ago of restarting the Alabama Florida League but I haven’t heard anymore about it. Probably not enough interest.

[RetiredTexasVet]

He like so many others are cheaters and in my book their records don’t count.

[Alberta's Child]

Aaron had quite a strange career for an all-time home run king. He hit 755 home runs in his career but never hit 50 in a season.

He wasn't a slugger in the classic sense, and benefitted a lot from playing in small ballparks. I always thought his career home run total made it easy to overlook other parts of his game. He had a higher lifetime batting average than Pete Rose, and would have had more than 3,000 career hits even if you never counted any of his 755 home runs!