The Five Hundred Club - What If?

by Bob Brigham

WHAT IF. Now that Bobby Bond's kid, Barry, has joined the exclusive "500 Club," let's play a little What If. Suppose Barry had elected to sign with the Giants in 1982 instead of playing the next three years at Arizona State. That's what fellow club member Frank Robinson, then the San Francisco manager, wanted him to do. He would have joined the Babe, Hank , the Thumper and the rest a bit sooner no doubt. While we are chewing on that one, let's look at the bigger picture.

IT STARTED WITH THE BABE. George Herman Ruth hit his 500th home run Aug. 11, 1929. I don't know if folks were distracted with what was going down on Wall Street or what, but there were no headlines proclaiming "RUTH HITS NUMBER 500." The Babe himself was not counting. A beat writer traveling with the Yankees noted that it was kind of a milestone, but nobody made a big deal of it.

DOUBLE X GETS CCCCC. When it took 11 more years for somebody to join the Bambino, people must have done a double take. Hey, nobody did it before Ruth. Now its Sept. 24, 1940 and Jimmy Foxx has done it, too, but it took a while for him to get here. Wonder if anybody else will ever join the Babe and Jimmy.

DOUBLE X, MEET DOUBLE T. It took 15 years for Mel Ott to get to 500 on Aug. 1, 1945. It also took some war-time pitching by a bunch of guys who were 4F, too young or too old to fight in WW II. Think of what Ted Williams would have done had he been able to hit against that crop.

SPEAKING OF TED, he came next, hitting #500 June 17, 1960. It was beginning to look like every 10-15 years baseball could expect to see another hitter join Club 500. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 1970s. Four new members joined the organization: Willie Mays (9/13/65), Mickey Mantle (5/14/67), Eddie Mathews (7/14/67) and Hank Aaron (7/14/68). And no, that's not a typo. The man who was eventually to shatter Ruth's career mark hit his 500th one year to the day after his Brave teammate.

LONG HAIR, DOUBLE KNITS - - - AND MORE HOME RUNS.The 1970s saw another quartet of big boppers pass the 500 milestone. Ernie (Let's play two!) Banks was the first to get there on May 12, 1970, followed by Harmon Killebrew (8/10/71), Frank (NL/AL MVP) Robinson (9/13/71) and Willie McCovey (6/30/78). Things cooled down a bit in the 80s with only Reggie Jackson (9/17/84) and Mike Schmidt (4/18/87) breaking the 500 barrier in that decade. Eddie Murray (9/6/96) and Mark McGwire (8/5/99) closed out the century.

WHAT IF REDUX. We opened this look at the 500 Club with a What If. How much sooner might Barry Bonds have joined the club if he had signed with the Giants right out of high school? Now for that other What If , the one that goes in the aforementioned bigger picture. Mel Ott was the last of the pre-integration inductees into the 500 Club. With Mays the "Whites Only" sign came down. From Willie on there have been seven black men and five whites.. Hmmmm. Could a Josh Gibson have hit 500 over a career in MLB? Would the dingers Monte Irvin hit in the Negro Leagues, if added to those he hit in the big leagues, have added up to that figure? It's another look from a different angle at what was denied a significant segment of our society and what that society denied itself through its own stupidity.