July 26, 2007
Young Gun
Alex Rodriguez hit career home run 499 Wednesday night against the Kansas City Royals as the Yankees took the game 7-1.
25 July 2007: New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez (13) hits his 499th career home run scoring Bobby Abreu during the 8th inning off Kansas City Royals pitcher Gil Meche (55) at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, MO.
Photo: Douglas Jones/Icon SMI
Note Alex's eye's in the picture. Even at the end of his follow through, he's kept his eye on the ball.
When Rodriguez hits his 500th home run, he'll be the youngest man to reach that plateau. Based on seasonal age, Alex (who is 31) will be a year younger than the former fastest to 500, Jimmie Foxx. In terms of seasons, Alex is getting there one year and two months faster than double-X. Foxx's 500th home run came with his final long ball of his age 32 season.
Now, Alex is an old 31. Seasonal age represents your age on June 30th of the given year. It's the age you spend at which you spend half the season. Alex turns 32 on Friday (a nice day for number 500). Fox was also an old in terms of age versus seasonal age, but if you figure his final home run came sometime in September, he would have been 32 years and eleven months when the shot came.
Beating Foxx by a year isn't the most impressive thing about Alex and seasonal age. Consider:
- Alex stands first through seasonal age 31 by 35 home runs, and there's still two months left to go.
- He's second through seasonal age 32, one behind Foxx.
- Alex stands second through age 33, tied with Sammy Sosa and nineteen twenty behind Foxx.
- Through seasonal age 34, Alex stands seventh.
A-Rod finally falls off the top ten at seasonal age 35, but if he hits twenty more this season he'll rank eighth, one ahead of Mantle. And if you don't think age is important, when the season started, Alex was one of four players with a shot at cracking 500 home runs this season. Thomas, Thome and Manny Ramirez were all ahead of him. Rodriguez passed Thome and Ramriez and will likely get to 500 before either of them, and shaved nineteen home runs off Thomas' lead. He now trails Frank by four. Alex still has enough youth to keep blasting lots of home runs for a few more years.
It seems remarkable that, despite having been the fastest to 500 HR, after that point Jimmie Foxx only hit 34 more (total!) in the rest of his career.
There was talk on Mike and Mike this morning that last night's home run might become the 500th. It appears that if he hits a home run in the Baltimore suspended game, that home run, since it is suspended would be 499 and 500 would be last night! Talk about a trivia question in the future!
500 has been losing its luster to me. And 500 for A-Rod has been a given conclusion for a long time. But, it's still exciting to see him do this...especially since he's only half way through his career. If he doesn't slow down, he could feasibly hit 900-1000 HR's. That would be ridiculous.
If everything goes right he'll probably hit about 400 more home runs max, but a lot of things can go wrong. If you look at the 500 club a lot of these guys flame out by their mid-thirties.