Aaron Decide slams 61st residence run of 2022, tying the single-season AL report

New York Yankees slugger Aaron Decide belted his 61st residence run of the season in Toronto on Wednesday evening, tying the American League report set by fellow pinstripe nice Roger Maris.

Decide’s newest lengthy ball got here towards Blue Jays pitcher Tim Mayza within the seventh inning at Rogers Centre.

Decide had been with out a homer for seven consecutive video games, a non-noteworthy reality for nearly all different gamers however a drought by his lofty 2022 customary.

Decide has nonetheless very been productive in his homerless stretch, drawing 12 walks and scoring 5 runs because the Yankees went 6-1.

Wednesday’s blast moved Decide right into a tie for the seventh most homers hit in a single season.

The highest six seasons forward of Decide’s and Maris’ had been put up by three gamers who had been all Nationwide League sluggers linked to performance-enhancing medicine:

• Barry Bonds has the report of most residence runs in a season, with 73 in 2001 for the San Francisco Giants. Bonds is the lifetime residence run chief, with 762.
• Mark McGwire hit 70, then a report, in 1998 for the St. Louis Cardinals.
• McGwire adopted up the historic season by hitting 65 out of the park in 1999.
• Sammy Sosa chased McGwire all through 1998 and ended up with 66 lengthy balls for the Chicago Cubs.
• Sosa hit 64 in 2001.
• Sosa adopted up his McGwire chase with one other homer-filled summer season in 1999, with 63.

However within the minds of many baseball followers, Maris’ mark is the untainted actual report that deserves probably the most adulation.

The respect Maris, who hit 61 residence runs in 1961, will get at present stands in stark distinction to the dearth of esteem he deserved in that magical season 61 summers in the past.

Babe Ruth hit 60 homers within the 154-game season of 1927, and Maris’ 61 got here in a 162-game marketing campaign, prompting the Main League Baseball commissioner on the time, Ford Frick, to name for “some distinctive mark within the report books to point out” the distinction in video games performed.

Whereas Frick by no means ordered any asterisk to be positioned by Maris’ title, the accomplishment of 61 residence runs by no means received the admiration then that it does in these modern, post-steroid years.

Now Maris’ title is linked to baseball’s well-liked 2021 residence run chief, Decide, 30, a local of Linden, California.

Decide has been an elite residence run hitter from his first full season within the Bronx, when he hit 52 homers in 2017.

He has saved his finest season but for this, his potential stroll 12 months, as he is prone to check the free agent market earlier than the 2023 season.

Earlier than the season, Decide reportedly turned down a seven-year, $213.5 million contract provide from the Yankees, setting himself up for a deal that might go north of $300 million with the Yankees or one other big-money bidder.

This can be a creating story. Please examine again for updates.