Raleigh slugged his 59th and 60th home runs on Sept. 24 against the Rockies on the night the Mariners won their first division title since 2001. In the process, Raleigh became the seventh player in MLB history to hit 60 home runs in a season (10th overall occurrence). This was Raleigh’s latest feat in a season where he set the single-season records for most home runs by a catcher, by a switch-hitter and a Mariners hitter.
Bonds set MLB’s single-season record for dingers during a monster 2001, the first of four straight National League MVP Award-winning seasons for the slugger. He hit 28 home runs in 49 games before the end of May, setting a blistering pace, and kept up his power production throughout the year. Bonds entered the Giants’ final series of 2001, against the Dodgers in San Francisco, sitting on a record-tying 70 homers. He slugged two homers in the first game of the set and added another in the final game of the season to finish with 73.
The summer of 1998 is so ingrained in baseball culture that there have been literal books and documentaries about it. McGwire, Griffey and Sammy Sosa duked it out over the course of the ’98 season, smashing home runs at a preposterous rate. It was McGwire who came out on top, hitting a then-record 70 long balls for the Cardinals and winning one of the most memorable stat chases in baseball — and sports — history.
Sosa might have finished just short of McGwire’s 70 home runs, but his 66 long balls were just as important for the story of the ‘98 season. Through the end of August, Sosa and McGwire were tied with a whopping 55 home runs. (Sosa’s 20 in June 1998 remain an MLB record for a single month.) Sosa slugged 11 homers the rest of the way, compared to McGwire’s 15, making for an excellent storyline between two sluggers (and friends) on NL Central rivals. This was the first of three 60-plus homer seasons from Sosa.
After beating out Sosa in epic fashion in 1998, McGwire got the best of his NL Central rival again the following year. He came five short of tying his then-record 70 homers, but he still reached 65 thanks to a ridiculous second half. McGwire homered 16 times in July alone, then added 12 in August and 12 more in September (plus two in three October games). Despite ending the season with 147 RBIs and a 1.120 OPS, he finished only fifth in NL MVP voting.
It was overshadowed by Bonds’ record-setting year, but Sosa’s 2001 was still plenty impressive. In the last of a string of four straight 50+ homer seasons, he put up the second-highest power output of his career, second only to 1998. At the end of July, Sosa (with 35 homers) trailed both Bonds (45) and Luis Gonzalez (41) in terms of dingers. He then crushed 17 in August, including a pair of three-homer games, and finished with five homers in six games in October.
It’s hard to imagine any player hitting 63 dingers and finishing NINTH in league MVP balloting, but that was the fate that befell Sosa in 1999. He finished two homers behind McGwire for the Major League lead, batting .288 with 141 RBIs, a 1.002 OPS and the most strikeouts in MLB (171). His prodigious power output helped him finish his career with 609 home runs, ninth on the all-time list.
Judge’s 2022 season was special in so many ways, but it was his 62 home runs that were truly eye popping. The ‘22 American League Most Valuable Player had a 1.111 OPS with 130 RBIs, all while playing a majority of his games in center field for the first time in his career. After setting the MLB rookie record with 52 home runs in 2017, Judge has only gotten better.
Similar to the summer of 1998, the home run chase in 1961 left a permanent mark in American sports history, with books, movies and other forms of entertainment being produced about Maris’ 61 home runs. It’s hard to overstate the significance of Maris topping Ruth’s record and the sheer magnitude of the moment. Ruth was — and still is — one of the biggest sports icons in human history. Maris surpassing “The Babe” and the chase for 60 home runs is one of the most memorable storylines in baseball’s illustrious history.
With the number of home runs soaring in recent years, it’s sometimes easy to forget how far ahead Ruth was of his peers. Before Ruth’s 60-homer campaign as part of the Yankees’ “Murderers’ Row” lineup, no other player (besides Ruth) had hit more than 42 dingers in a season (Rogers Hornsby in 1922). Lou Gehrig hit 47 as part of the famed ’27 Yankees, but it was Ruth who commanded the attention with 60 dingers — a record that stood for more than three decades, until Maris came along.
Sixty home runs from a switch-hitting catcher is almost hard to wrap your head around. After slugging 91 home runs from 2022-24, Raleigh took his game to an entirely different level in ’25, breaking the single-season record for the most home runs by a catcher, a switch-hitter and a Mariners hitter. Fittingly, Raleigh got to 60 home runs in dramatic fashion, hitting homers No. 59 and 60 on Sept. 24 against the Rockies when the Mariners won their first AL West title since 2001.