Babe Ruth Hits 500: Baseball's Home Run King

Babe Ruth connected with a pitch from Willis Hudlin at League Park in Cleveland on August 11, 1929, and sent it over the fence for home run number 500. No other baseball player had ever reached that milestone. Ruth, characteristically, made it look routine, adding a second homer later in the game as the Yankees lost to the Indians 6-5. The number itself was staggering by the standards of the era. When Ruth entered the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox in 1914, the single-season home run record stood at 27. He shattered it with 29 in 1919, then obliterated his own mark with 54 in 1920 and 59 in 1921. Entire teams struggled to match his output. Ruth did not merely play the game differently; he remade it. By the time he reached 500, Ruth had already transformed baseball from a sport built on bunts, stolen bases, and pitching duels into one defined by power. The "live ball era" owed its existence partly to changes in equipment and rules, but Ruth was its avatar. Fans packed stadiums to watch him swing, and the Yankees built their cathedral in the Bronx largely on the revenue his celebrity generated. Ruth would finish his career in 1935 with 714 home runs, a record that stood for 39 years until Hank Aaron surpassed it in 1974. But number 500 marked the moment when his dominance became numerically unprecedented. No player would join the 500 home run club until Jimmie Foxx did so in 1940, eleven years later. The milestone established a benchmark that remains one of baseball's most exclusive achievements.