The opinion continues here that with a 162-game schedule, pitching spread thin through a 10-team league and a most inviting target in Los Angeles' Wrigley Field Jr., Mantle just might break the most glamorous record on the books, Babe Ruth's 60 homers of 1927.

Since 1927, fewer than a dozen men have made serious runs at Babe Ruth's record and each, in turn, has been thwarted.

Always, in the abortive attacks upon Ruth's record, one man alone -- a Jimmy Foxx ( 58 in 1932 ) or a Hank Greenberg ( 58 in 1938 ) or a Hack Wilson ( 56 in 1930 ) -- made the bid.

Baseball commissioner Ford Frick has ruled that Ruth's record will remain official unless it is broken in 154 games.

* 1974 – At Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run to surpass Babe Ruth's 39-year-old record.

After Maris broke Babe Ruth's home run record, Lane defended himself by saying he still would have done the deal because Maris was unknown and he received good ballplayers in exchange.

A prodigious home run hitter, Greenberg narrowly missed breaking Babe Ruth's single-season home run record in 1938, when he was again voted to the All-Star Team and hit 58 home runs, leading the league for the second time.

It has been long speculated that Greenberg was intentionally walked late in the season to prevent him from breaking Ruth's record, but Greenberg dismissed this speculation, calling it " crazy stories.

Megdal's article cited this walk percentage statistic as evidence of American League teams not wanting Greenberg to break Babe Ruth's record due to anti-Semitism.

While many expected Aaron to break Ruth's home run record in 1973, a key moment of the season came on August 6.

The jersey Hank Aaron wore when he broke Babe Ruth's record

This usage arose after the 1961 baseball season in which Roger Maris of the New York Yankees broke Babe Ruth's 34-year-old single-season home run record.

With 25 total bases, Jackson also broke Ruth's record of 22 in the latter Series ; this remains a World Series record, Willie Stargell tying it in the 1979 World Series.

During the 1961 season, Mantle and teammate Roger Maris, known as the M & M Boys, chased Babe Ruth's single-season home run record.

Five years earlier, in 1956, Mantle had challenged Ruth's record for most of the season, and the New York press had been protective of Ruth on that occasion also.

In 2001, the movie 61 *, produced by Yankee fan Billy Crystal, chronicled Mantle ( played by Thomas Jane ) and Maris ( played by Barry Pepper ) chasing Babe Ruth's single season home run record.

He broke Babe Ruth's record of 2, 062 career walks, Ty Cobb's record of 2, 246 career runs, and Zack Wheat's record of 2, 328 career games in left field, and on the final day of the season collected his 3, 000th career hit, a leadoff double off Rockies pitcher John Thomson.

The record had been one of the most durable in baseball history and like Babe Ruth's record of 714 career home runs, had been considered unbreakable by some observers.

* 8 April – Hank Aaron hit home run # 715 in the fourth inning off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record.

The grand jury transcripts, made public in 2008, record that on August 3, Ethel Rosenberg's sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass, testified that in November 1944, Julius Rosenberg recruited Ethel, and urged her to recruit David Greenglass ( Ruth's husband ) into a conspiracy to engage in atomic espionage for the Soviet Union:

Major League Baseball elected not to retrofit the records to the modern rules, and Ruth's total stayed at 714.

It was introduced in 1999 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Hank Aaron's surpassing of Babe Ruth's career home run mark of 714 home runs.

Claire lived to see two of Ruth's most famous records broken: his single season record of 60 home runs, superseded by Roger Maris in 1961 ; and his career record of 714 home runs, which was broken by Hank Aaron in 1974.

He was the home plate umpire on September 11, 1985 in Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium when Pete Rose collected his 4, 192nd hit to break Ty Cobb's career record, and was the third base umpire in the April 8, 1974 game in which Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record of 714 career home runs.

As a sidelight to his prominent role in changing the game to the power game, the frequency and popularity of Ruth's home runs eventually led to a rule change pertaining to those hit in sudden-death mode ( bottom of the ninth or later inning ).

Jenkinson's book ( p. 374 – 375 ) lists 78 foul balls near the foul pole in Ruth's career, claiming that at least 50 of them were likely to have been home runs under the modern rule.

The Yankees went on to defeat Ruth's former team, the Boston Red Sox, by a score of 4 – 1, with Ruth hitting a three-run home run into the right-field stands.

A footnote to the Curse of the Bambino claims that Babe Ruth's piano rests at the bottom of Willis Pond in western Sudbury near what was once his home.

He is the youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs, breaking the record Jimmie Foxx set in 1939, and the youngest to hit 600, besting Babe Ruth's record by over a year.

The two squared off in a home run derby before an exhibition game at Korakuen Stadium on 2 November 1974, after Aaron eclipsed Babe Ruth's home run record.

In doing so, Griffey Jr. breaks Babe Ruth's record for most home runs before the end of June.

* 1974-Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves breaks Babe Ruth's home run record by hitting his 715th career home run.

* Roger Maris hits 61 home runs during the regular season, breaking Babe Ruth's mark of 60 that had stood since 1927

This same committee also ruled that Roger Maris is the one and only single season home run record holder, overturning the 1961 decision of former commissioner Ford Frick that Maris and Ruth's home run totals should be listed side-by-side for 154 and 162 game seasons ( contrary to popular belief, Frick never mentioned using an asterisk ).

Maris hit a record 61 home runs during the 1961 season for the New York Yankees, breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60 home runs in 1927.

Entering the day, Detroit's Hank Greenberg was two home runs shy of tying Babe Ruth's then-single-season home run record of 60.

The final three home runs of Babe Ruth's career were hit in Forbes Field on May 25, 1935 ; the third of these cleared the right field roof and was considered the longest home run in the park's history.

" Mrs. Ruth's support for the real-life Aaron is in stark contrast to her depiction in the 2001 TV-movie 61 *, in which she was portrayed as not wanting her husband's record of 60 home runs in a season to be broken.

He demanded that umpires check Ruth's bat after he clouted two straight home runs off Garland Buckeye.

During Henry Aaron's quest to break Babe Ruth's record for career home runs in Major League Baseball, the bar was briefly advertised as being linked to him, even though it was first marketed years before he was even born.

He was one of only two players to break Babe Ruth's twelve-year string in which he led the American League in home runs ( the other being Bob Meusel ).

* Roger Maris hits 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth's record.