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19 March 2024

Rodriguez belts 600th home run

Rodriguez said the milestone couldn’t compare to winning a World Series. (EPA)

Published
By AFP
New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez belted his 600th Major League Baseball home run on Wednesday, becoming the youngest of only seven players to reach the milestone.
The landmark blast came after a 12-game stretch without a homer from ‘A-Rod’ and it came three years to the day after he hit his 500th career home run.
“That’s amazing,” Rodriguez said. “To the day.”
Rodriguez’s drive off a 2-ball, no-strike pitch from Toronto’s Shaun Marcum in the first inning flew over the centerfield wall at Yankee Stadium for his 17th homer of the season, giving the Yankees a 2-0 lead over the Blue Jays.
The Yankees went on to beat Toronto 5-1 and end a three-game losing streak.
The ball - the 104th specially marked one used for his times at bat since he reached 599 homers - landed in Monument Park, an area where Yankees greats are memorialised, and a stadium worker retrieved the ball for him.
Rodriguez joined an elite collection of Major League Baseball legends that includes record-holder Barry Bonds with 762 homers, Hank Aaron with 755, Babe Ruith on 714, Willie Mays on 660, Ken Griffey Jnr on 630 and Sammy Sosa at 609.
Performance-enhancing drugs, the scourge of baseball for years, taints the feat for Rodriguez, however.
Last year, Rodriguez admitted to using steroids while he played for the Texas Rangers from 2001 through 2003, when they were not yet banned under major league rules.
Teammates on the reigning World Series champions raised their hands and the crowd roared as Rodriguez raised his arms once the ball cleared the fence.
After trotting around the bases and being congratulated in the dugout, Rodriguez stepped back out for a curtain call to warm applause.
Despite the hoopla, Rodriguez said the milestone couldn’t compare to winning a World Series.
“No personal achievement can compare to celebrating on the mound and being the last team standing,” he said.
Rodriguez became the fourth man in the past decade to crack the 600 career-homer mark, joining Sosa, Griffey and Bonds after a 31-year gap.
The Yankees began selling commemorative T-shirts of the feat for 25 dollars each during the game.
The quest for 600 had taken a toll in recent days. Rodriguez was 9-for-46 at the plate since hitting his 599th homer on July 22 and the gap between that blast and number 600 was the longest for any of the seven to hit so many.
“It was a relief just to put it past me,” Rodriguez said. “There’s no question I was pressing because I wanted to get it out of the way.”
Rodriguez, who turned 35 last month, reached 600 ahead of the previous youngest to make the mark, Ruth in 1931 at age 36. But Ruth needed fewer games to reach 600 homers, just 2,044 to Rodriguez’s 2,227.
‘A-Rod’ went 41 at-bats into the season without a homer and his homer hitting rate is far below that of past seasons, but Rodriguez has the power and youth to threaten Bonds’ home record set in 2007, a mark also doping tainted.
Bonds has denied accusations of steroid use but his links to the Balco steroid scandal - including a personal trainer who was convicted for his role in the Balco steroid distribution scheme - prompted fans outside his home park in San Francisco to jeer every homer as he approached Aaron’s cherished total.
Chasing the legends could be a lucrative quest for Rodriguez, whose 10-year contract worth $275 million includes $30 million in incentives for homer marks - six million dollars each for matching Mays, Ruth, Aaron and Bonds and for setting a new all-time homer record.