Hit: Torkelson, Hayes, Jung (60)
Torkelson produced a .337 average at Arizona State and batted .340 in the prestigious Cape Cod League. Jung posted a .316 average while reaching Class A Hickory during his 2019 pro debut after batting .348 during his three-year stay at Texas Tech. Hayes raked at a .376 clip and recorded a 55.4 percent hard-hit rate with an average exit velocity of 92.8 mph in 24 big league games last season.
Power: Torkelson (70)
A combination of physical strength and bat speed allows Torkelson to generate massive power from line to line including elite raw power to his pull side. He showed that he could get to that power when he hit 25 home runs to shatter Barry Bonds’ ASU freshman record and then led the Pac-12 in home runs (23) as a sophomore. Overall, Torkelson went deep 54 times in 129 college games.
Paul Payne: Hank Aaron’s Passing Stokes Childhood Memories Of “The Chase” Saturday, January 23, 2021 - by Paul Payne
Atlanta Braves legend Hank Aaron watches his historic 715th home run on April 8, 1974. Aaron died Friday at the age of 86.
The chart the author maintained to chronicle Hank Aaron’s pursuit of Babe Ruth’s career home run record.
The scorebook signifying Aaron’s passing of Babe Ruth with his 715th career home run.
Hearing the news that baseball legend Hank Aaron died surely sparked a flood of memories for those of us who grew up in the South long before TBS turned the Atlanta Braves into “America’s Team”.
So much of Henry Aaron s baseball legacy is attached to three numbers 715, 755 and whatever Barry Bonds career home run total ended up at that we too often overlook his all-around brilliance on the field. Put it this way: If you turned his 755 home runs into outs, he
still finished with more than 3,000 hits. Or another way: He played 23 major league seasons and was a 25-time All-Star (there were multiple All-Star Games early in Aaron s career).
Even though he is widely regarded as one of the top five players in MLB history, Aaron has remained underrated among the all-time greats. He played most of his career in the shadow of Willie Mays, his contemporary who was the more visually breathtaking player thanks to Mays defense in center field. Many still consider Babe Ruth the greatest right fielder. So Aaron ranks merely as the second-best player of his generation
SI s Best Photos of Hank Aaron
Hall of Famer and 21-time MLB All-Star Hank Aaron, whom many baseball fans still consider to be the game s true home run king â his 755 career home runs is second only to Barry Bonds 762 â turned 83 years old on Feb. 5, 2017. In celebration of Hammerin Hank s 83rd birthday, we present SI s 44 best photos of No. 44 through the years.
Author:
on Friday. Slate is republishing this 2007 story on the media’s treatment of the former home run king.
This baseball season, it fell to the sporting press to drag a reluctant Hank Aaron once more into public view, the occasion being Barry Bonds’ slow-motion pursuit of a stationary number. Now, any time an old baseball personage hobbles back into frame, he is invariably described in awed, petrifying language better suited to, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The treatment of Aaron hasn’t been any different. A spin through the sports pages over the past few months reveals that he is a man of “cool dignity,” “quiet dignity,” “innate dignity,” “immense dignity,” “eternal dignity,” “unfettered dignity,” “unimpeachable dignity,” the very “picture of dignity” who “brought so much dignity to baseball” and who, “having exuded dignity his entire life,” continues to this day “exud[ing] class and dignity.” Aaron, proclaimed the inevitable