Will anyone hit 74 homers? Even Aaron Judge thinks MLB season record is 'a little untouchable'

What used to be one of baseball's most magical numbers — 61 home runs — now sits buried, eight lines deep, in the Major League Baseball record book.

The number now at the top of that record book — 73 home runs — is steeped in a steroid-addled purgatory, but it remains there nonetheless. These days, breaking that record is more of a wild-eyed aspiration than a realistic goal in a game that has largely been cleaned up and transformed.

“It’s good to dream, good to hope and always good to shoot for those goals, but I think that one’s a little untouchable,” said Aaron Judge, the Yankees slugger whose 62 homers in 2022 represent the closest anyone has come to breaking the record since the so-called “steroid era” ended in the early 2000s.

Baseball has returned to being more relevant on the sports landscape in 2024 but it has little to do with what brought eyeballs to the game a generation ago — notably, home run chases that placed Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in the headlines almost daily in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Since baseball began the long, not-so-direct path toward ridding performance enhancers from its clubhouses — an effort that started meekly in 2002, a year after Bonds set the record — only Judge has eclipsed Roger Maris’ once-hallowed record of 61 home runs in a season.

Even with his impressive season, Judge sits at only seventh on the list of single-season home run hitters, one spot ahead of Maris, whose record stood from 1961 until 1998, the year Sosa and McGwire took hacks during a wild chase to break the record. McGwire got there first and finished with 70 dingers. Sosa ended up with 66.

Bonds surpassed them all in 2001. When Judge speaks of the former Giants slugger, he speaks not of steroids, but of the raw talent it takes to hit that many homers when all pitchers are trying to avoid you.

“He'd get one pitch to hit (in) a series and he’d hit it out of the ballpark,” Judge said. “That takes so much discipline, such a great eye. He’s just so consistent. I’ve been through this for eight, nine seasons now. It’s not that easy. He made it look a lot easier than it is, and that’s why he’s the greatest to ever play.”

The year 2008 was something of a tipping point for baseball. It was three seasons after MLB enacted much harsher penalties for using performance enhancers and only months after the release of the revelatory and damning Mitchell Report, which tarnished the reputation of dozens of players and bluntly assessed that illegal drug use “raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”

In the 10 years before 2008, six of baseball's single-season home run leaders hit 55 or more. In all the years since, that number has been eclipsed only twice — by Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who hit 59 in 2017. Reaching 74 has never been in the conversation.

“It’s possible but I just think the pitching is so good, and the specialty of pitching today,” said Rockies manager Bud Black, who pitched in the 1980s and '90s. "And what it takes for the hitter, the durability, the stamina, and getting those number of at-bats, going to the plate that many times to potentially hit a homer, it’s hard.”

While it's clear to see what the steroid era did to home runs — the top six single-season performances came between 1998-2001 — overall home run trends do not run in straight lines, in large part due to quirks of the game.

For instance, there were only an average of 11 more total home runs per season from 1998-2007 than in all the years since 2008 (not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 season).

Though the earlier period was viewed as a home-run hitter's heyday — Bonds hit 73 and Sosa cracked 60 three times — factors such as early-season weather, bringing in fences at some ballparks, manufacturing quirks with the baseball and even the use of humidors in Denver and elsewhere have played a role in the overall numbers.

Home runs have been up recently. From 2010-15, the number of total homers in a full season never exceeded 5,000, but since 2016, it has not been below 5,200. That includes 2019, when a record 6,776 homers were hit.

One factor in that surge is believed to be the baseballs themselves. Although there's no evidence MLB intentionally juiced its baseballs, the league did acknowledge in 2019 that balls were briefly flying further because they had less drag.

The recent uptick also follows an analytical push placing more value on lifting the ball and trying to hit home runs. Those changes to the baseballs and in hitter behavior haven't produced a 70-home run threat, but they are a reminder how quickly the sport can evolve.

Judge (58) and Shohei Ohtani (54) battled for the 2024 home run title, though in a sign of what's driving the game's popularity these days, Ohtani becoming the first player to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases made much bigger headlines than their home run chase.

Could a race to 74 by Ohtani, Judge or someone else someday be a September headline maker again in baseball?

Not everyone is giving up on the thought:

—“You never say never,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said.

—“I think if it’s been done before I think it could be done again,” Royals pitcher Michael Wacha said.

— Judge's manager, Aaron Boone, would like to think no record is unbreakable.

“It's an astronomical huge number but I wouldn’t put it past anyone as talented as Aaron or Shohei,” Boone said.

Many in baseball agree it would take a once-in-a-generation talent having a once-in-a-lifetime season to even think about approaching a record that, frankly, nobody much thinks about these days.

“I’d like to think no record’s untouchable, but I feel like the top home-run hitters in the world are still maybe 20 homers from that,” said Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker, who hit 36 homers in 2023. “That’s crazy to think about. I’d like to think someday it will be tapped into, but it’s one of those things that’s hard to predict. It’s such an anomaly and outlier.”

AP Sports Writers Janie McCauley, Steve Megargee, Mike Fitzpatrick, Stephen Hawkins and freelancer Dennis Georgatos contributed.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

FILE - San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds (25) circles the bases after he hit his 73rd home run of the season in a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sunday, Oct. 7, 2001, at Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

FILE - Former San Francisco Giants player Barry Bonds waves as he arrives at a ceremony honoring Hunter Pence on the team's Wall of Fame before a baseball game between the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers in San Francisco, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FILE - St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire reacts as he watches his 61st home run of the season, in the first inning off Chicago Cubs pitcher Mike Morgan, Monday, Sept. 7, 1998, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)

FILE - Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani, of Japan, warms up before the start of a baseball game against the Miami Marlins, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

FILE - San Diego Padres bench coach Mark McGwire (25) watch from the dugout during a baseball game against the Atlanta Braves Thursday, June 14, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)

FILE - Former Major League Baseball player Sammy Sosa arrives to a tribute ceremony for foreign films actors during the 6th Dominican Film Festival in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Diaz, File)

FILE - New York Yankees' Aaron Judge stands on the field during the ninth inning of a baseball game Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Eakin Howard, File)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Courtney Williams scored 17 points and Alanna Smith had 15 points to help the Lynx offset an off night for star Napheesa Collier and beat the Connecticut Sun 77-70 to even the best-of-five WNBA semifinal series at one game apiece on Tuesday.

Collier, who scored 80 points in the two-game sweep of Phoenix in the first round, was held to nine points on 3-for-14 shooting. She led the Lynx with 12 rebounds and five assists, content to let her supporting cast lead the charge past a feisty opponent.

“We’ve got to match their energy. First game, they was chirping and chatting so you have to give it back to ’em,” Williams said. “Playoff basketball, man.”

Alyssa Thomas had 18 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists for the Sun, who shot just 5 for 20 from 3-point range. DeWanna Bonner scored 17 points and Marina Mabrey added 15 points on 4-for-14 shooting after she had 20 points in the opener.

“We weren’t happy with how we approached the first game. I think we played OK, enough to only lose by 3. We knew that we had to take it to another level and we had to have each other’s backs,” said Smith, who played with Williams for Chicago last year.

Connecticut will host Game 3 on Friday and Game 4 on Sunday. Then Game 5, if necessary, would be in Minnesota on Oct. 8. New York leads defending champion Las Vegas 2-0 in the other semifinal series.

The Lynx never lost consecutive home games this season on their way to a 30-10 record for the No. 2 seed in the playoffs, and their 73-70 defeat in Game 1 clearly fueled a fierce follow-up in this persistently physical matchup that resembled football at times more than hoops.

Myisha Hines-Allen hit an off-balance bank shot from the corner to beat the halftime buzzer, giving the Lynx a 36-30 lead and some extra energy to take into the break.

“They were the aggressor tonight. They were aggressive on the defensive end. They were physical. They wouldn't let us get into our offense. They responded to every run, ” Sun coach Stephanie White said.

Smith, the shot-blocking specialist who is on her fourth team in four seasons, has revitalized her career in Minnesota under coach Cheryl Reeve two years after being released by Indiana. She swished a 3-pointer early in the third quarter for a 41-30 lead that triggered a Connecticut timeout.

Williams had 11 points in the third for half of her team’s output, helping tilt the frustration more toward the Sun in the second half after the Lynx had their flustered moments earlier. Reeve won four WNBA titles with a legendary group that's all gone. This is the first true playoff test for the current core.

“I believe to be successful you do have to experience adversity. You have to get through the adversity, go through it, go through the lumps, bumps, all of that to get through the promised land,” Reeve said. “That’s the only way. If it was easy everybody would be doing it.”

The two best defensive teams in the regular season — the Sun allowed an average of 73.6 points per game, the Lynx 75.6 — were on full display in a meat grinder of a first quarter in which the first 14 shots misfired and each side had two turnovers in less than four minutes.

Collier saw constant double-teams and started 1 for 6. The Sun did their best to not only deny the four-time All-Star her favorite spots on the floor but get under her skin, too. Mabrey applied some extra force at one point when she and Collier were scrapping for a loose ball near the paint, prompting a stare down between the two stars.

“It’s playoffs, so it’s going to be physical, it’s going to be dicey moments. It’s win or go home,” Bonner said. “Everybody wants it, so emotions are high. It’s just two competitive teams going after it.”

Later in the second quarter, Kayla McBride extended her forearm into Mabrey’s neck as she took a fast break to the basket. McBride was given a technical foul after the two former Notre Dame stars — they missed each other by two years — exchanged words and a bump on the way back.

McBride had 11 points for the Lynx to help lead them back from a 2-for-15 start from the field, even with Collier never finding a rhythm.

“We got into our switches. We tried to make catches difficult. We tried to make shots difficult. But certainly they showed as a team why they’ve been successful. They’re so balanced,” White said. “Yes, we were able to limit Phee, but they got off on the 3-point line and that’s something we have to remedy. We’ve got to keep them off the offensive glass.”

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

Forward DeWanna Bonner (24) of the Connecticut Sun nocks the ball from forward Cecilia Zandalasini (9) of the Minnesota Lynx during the first half of Game 2 of a WNBA basketball semifinals game, at Target Center, Tuesday, October 1, 2024, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Guard Marina Mabrey (4) of the Connecticut Sun drives with the ball as forward Napheesa Collier (24) of the Minnesota Lynx defends during the first half of Game 2 of a WNBA basketball semifinals game, at Target Center, Tuesday, October 1, 2024, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Forward Napheesa Collier (24) of the Minnesota Lynx battles with forward Alyssa Thomas (25) of the Connecticut Sun during the first half of Game 2 of a WNBA basketball semifinals game, at Target Center, Tuesday, October 1, 2024, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Forward Napheesa Collier (24) of the Minnesota Lynx drives as forward Alyssa Thomas (25) of the Connecticut Sun defends, during the first half of Game 2 of a WNBA basketball semifinals game, at Target Center, Tuesday, October 1, 2024, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Guard Courtney Williams (10) of the Minnesota Lynx shoots the ball as forward Alyssa Thomas (25) of the Connecticut Sun defends during the first half of Game 2 of a WNBA basketball semifinals game, at Target Center, Tuesday, October 1, 2024, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)