Until someone does it without steriods, I’ll still consider Roger Maris as the single-season homerun leader and Hank Aaron as the all-time homerun leader.
The Babe did it on hot dogs and beer, not steroids.
Not only beer and hot dogs, which will slow ya down, but also the Babe hit his 600th in 2,044 games ... fully 223 games less than A-Rod, and still tops on the list as far as least games in hitting 600 HR's
As a comparison, A-Rod (2,267) and Bonds (2,395) games immediately follow the Babe, but old time non-juicers Hank Aaron (2,592) and Willie Mays (2,557) as well as current non-juicer (so far, hopefully) Ken Griffey Jr. took 2,440 games to reach 600 homers. Sammy Sosa is odd man out with 2,592 games and a juicer to boot.
Back to the old timers ... Ruth, Aaron, and Mays had to deal with pitching such as the aggressive 'brushback', 'scuffball', and in Ruth's case, the 'spitball' which was then still somewhat legal. Aaron and Mays had to deal with racism in the ranks of their fellow ballplayers and fans. I'd reckon these three had a much more difficult go at it in reaching 600 homers.
The general meme about A-Rod today is that he is the 'youngest player in history to reach 600 home runs' ... I say BAH to that, age means little ... it's about games played and at-bats which really counts, as well as the aforementioned difficulties that the old timers had to go thru to achieve the milestone.
Just my 2 cents,
-- MM