Now that Judge has hit 62 WITHOUT roids, who is the REAL single season MLB record holder?

voted Bonds, but thought Bonds

i'm old school in that i don't think of any of the 90s/00s guys as the real record holders. i do think of judge as the record holder now! i would also vote bonds into the hall of fame, clemens, manny ramirez, a bunch of guys who clearly cheated. i vividly remember mcgwire breaking the record and what all of that was like. the deep burn of cheating is that even though i can rationalize what they did and contextualize it, i don't blame them, whatever, everyone did it, everyone has always done it, they weren't breaking explicit rules, whatever. but still, now when i watch judge do a cool thing, i just think of mcgwire doing the uncool thing

i'm more agnostic on the roids issue, but I still crack up that Canseco's argument against steroids being a major contributor to increased production was "lol my twin brother roided up with me and he sucked at baseball"

Pitchers were using them too, they built a bunch of hitter fields and expanded two more teams in '98.
Roids was a part of the equation, but I don't think the only thing going on.

Maris' 61 happened during an expansion year.

At this point it don't matter much, as not that many people under 40 give a crap about baseball anymore.

voted bonds

i wrote-in for Ruth

I actually kinda believe in the juiced ball theory explaining why HR numbers suddenly jumped off the charts in the 90s. Dunno if it's been proven one way or another but I've read some pretty convincing articles in support of it. I actually think that makes more sense than attributing it solely to steroids. I'm not really convinced the extra muscle mass matters all that much. A lot of prolific HR hitters are tall skinny dudes. IMO what's more important is that they help players heal from injuries much quicker. when Ryan Braun got off the roids it wasn't like he dropped any muscle, he was just constantly battling hand & back injuries which kept him out of the lineup half the time.

the juiced ball theory was floating around years before the record got broken, too. i think the 1994 season I read speculation on it in the news, but how exactly they'd pull that off idk. change the material and not tell anybody?

no one imagined the could do that before 2018 or whatever

so yeah i would think that they totally thought no one would notice

regarding roids, cheating in baseball is literally ingrained into the sport's history, so I find it weird to draw the line at steroids. Mickey Mantle's autobiography described the way Yogi Berra would intentionally nick the ball on his shinguard before throwing it back to Whitey Ford, to make the ball 'move' more. lots of players took amphetamines, which gave performance advantages of a different variety (they called em 'greenies' then). Bobby Thomson hit the game winning home run due to his coach stealing signals w/ a telescope...etc etc

bonds' at bats during the 2002 playoffs and world series were the most exciting and amazing at bats i have ever watched. seemed like every game it was 3 intentional walks scattered around one at bat where they decided oh well we'll pitch to him BLAM home run!

didn't he get intentionally walked w/ bases loaded once

Yup

The '51 Giants had that legendary closing stretch -- and were stealing signs and relaying them with electronic equipment. If anything it was worse than what the Astros got punished for. And yet nobody is advocating for anything stupid like booting Willie Mays from the HOF for his role in the whole thing.

The biggest HR seasons in history happened in the last decade, not during the "steroid era". I really don't think steroids affect hitting all that much, besides helping to keep injury prone players on the field (as frogbs noted).

Congrats to Aaron Judge on an amazing season, but his "record" is nearly meaningless. Voted Bonds, of course.

I mean you can argue that Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa don't count but I highly doubt anyone out there in baseball land really feels like a record was broken. they can say they do but I bet they don't mean it. it's kind of bullshit for Judge that half the talk about his insane season has to be about steroids. as though there's anything more to say on the topic

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Bonds wuz robbed!!