Sport: The Babe Ruth Derby

If the first month of the 1971 baseball season is any indication of things to come, major league pitchers may soon have to start wearing catchers’ masks for protection. Consider the events of one fairly typical evening last week. In St. Louis, Joe Torre of the Cardinals banged out three hits, thereby extending his hitting streak to 21 consecutive games (it ended two games later) and raising his batting average to .381. In Pittsburgh, Pirate Leftfielder Willie Stargell, who twice this season has hit three home runs in one game, clouted his eleventh homer to set a new record for the month of April. And in a 25-hit slugfest in Atlanta, the Braves’ 25-year-old Ralph Garr and the San Francisco Giants’ aging (40) Willie Mays collected four hits apiece. The barrage boosted Garr’s average to a league-leading .434, and gave added testimony to Mays’ contention that “there’s a little life in these old bones.”

Souvenir Worth Keeping. That evening, though, really belonged to the livelier old bones of Atlanta’s Henry Louis Aaron. In the first inning, he lined Giant Pitcher Gaylord Perry’s first pitch off the right centerfield fence for a stand-up double. Next time up, when Perry tried to jam him with a high inside fastball, Hammerin’ Hank hit a 350-ft. drive that sailed over the leftfield wall and caromed back onto the playing field. After retrieving the ball, Third Base Umpire Paul Pryor was presented with a card that read: “I caught Hank Aaron’s 600th home run.” It was a souvenir worth keeping, for Aaron had just set a career mark surpassed by only two other players—Mays and Babe Ruth.

Aaron’s 600th stirred speculation that either he or Mays might break Ruth’s once seemingly unassailable lifetime record of 714 home runs. Mays, whose five homers so far this season give him a total of 633, has at best only an outside chance. Though Willie feels he has five more seasons left in him, he is fighting not only time but the wicked left-to-right winds that plague righthanded power hitters in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Aaron is three years younger than Mays (he turned 37 in February) and also has the advantage of hitting in Atlanta Stadium, where the relatively short fences and calm breezes allowed for 211 home runs last season, more than were hit in any other National League park. Aaron is off to a fast start in his 18th season with eight homers so far. To best Ruth’s mark, he must average 24.6 home runs this season and the next four—a tough but not impossible feat for a slugger who has averaged 38.8 homers in the past five years. Many baseball men agree with Las Vegas Oddsmaker Jimmy (“The Greek”) Snyder, who rates Mays as a 4-1 shot and Aaron as an even bet—barring injuries, of course—in the Babe Ruth derby.

Whippy Wrists. One of baseball’s unsung superstars, Aaron is content to swing away and let the records fall where they may. Last season he became the first player in history with more than 500 home runs also to surpass 3,000 hits (a feat since equalled by Mays); his lifetime marks, as of last season, rank him among the top ten in extra base hits (1,224), runs batted in (1,842), total bases (5,610), and slugging percentage (.594). A great natural hitter, the relatively slight (6 ft., 187 Ibs.) righthander gets his power from his whippy wrists, which are bigger (8 in. around) than Muhammad All’s. A notorious bad-ball hitter, he once hopped out of the batter’s box to slug an errant pitch over the wall. “Throwing a fastball by Henry Aaron,” Pitcher Curt Simmons once said, “is like trying to sneak the sun past a rooster.”

Getting him to expound on his hitting feats is even harder. Last week, while the bat and ball that accounted for No. 600 were being readied for shipment to baseball’s Hall of Fame, Aaron sat among a group of reporters and drawled, “One home run is the same as another.” Pressed for more, he paused for a moment. “My next goal,” he finally said, as the reporters crowded in, pencils at the ready, “is to hit the next one.”