Aaron Judge set an AL homer record on Tuesday night when he hit his 62nd home run of the season. As congratulatory messages poured in, many started to draw a line between him and others, who did this in the infamous steroid era.
Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa went past 62 home runs much before Aaron Judge. But their records are marred in controversy over steroid investigations.
Roger Maris, Jr. was the first to tweet “for the MAJORITY of the fans, we can now celebrate a new CLEAN HOME RUN KING!!” in reference to Aaron Judge. Earlier the son of Roger Maris, who held the 61-home-run record in the American League, told:
“After seeing Aaron Judge hit No. 61 in Toronto on September 28, Maris Jr. said that “the New York slugger should be the only one, who qualifies to become the single-season home run king, and Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire’s records were not authentic.”
MLB insider Jon Heyman indirectly mocked Barry Bonds’ 73-homer record. He wrote on Twitter:
“Congrats to Aaron Judge, the real, honest-to-goodness home run champion (warning: column intended only for fans of justice and fair play).”
This led to a storm on Twitter and the baseball fraternity was looked divided between supporters of Aaron Judge and Barry Bonds.
The battle between fans of the Yankees and the Giants led to an outpouring of emotions on social media. Betonline.ag came out with a map that used geotagged Twitter data from the previous 24 hours to show the location of fans of Aaron Judge and Barry Bonds.
According to the map, fans supporting Bonds s the king of single-season home runs were in majority in 27 states. Aaron Judge was the undisputed holder of that title in 23 states. The map was constructed using more than 100,000 tweets that included phrases and hashtags supporting either Bonds or Judge.
Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001, which is the most in a single season in MLB history. Bonds’ record is questioned because of his use of performance-enhancing drugs. Many see him as a key player in baseball’s steroids scandal. He was charged with lying during the investigation. Due to strong opposition from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, Bonds never get the required vote to have a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
On the other hand, Aaron Judge is without any such allegation. However, Judge made it clear last month that he considers Bonds the “home run king.” He then told:
“Seventy-three is the record. No matter what people want to say about that era of baseball, for me, they went out there and hit 73 homers and 70 homers, and that to me is what the record is.”
Where do you stand in this Aaron Judge vs. Barry Bonds Twitter war?
