Take A Walk! Take Anything You Want! Quiz

Answer: Barry Bonds

Babe Ruth hit 54 homers with 170 walks in 1920. Barry Bonds destroyed this record multiple times, beating both simultaneously in 2001 with his famous 73 homer season, where he walked 177 times. Bonds out-walked Babe Ruth in 2002 and 2004 while eclipsing 40 homers as well, with Bonds smashing 46 and 45 homers respectively in tandem with 198 and 232 walks.

Answer: Nobody

It's not even close. Lou Gehrig hit 44, Duke Snider hit 19, and nobody else in the 40 homer club reached double digits. The way the game was played was simply very, very different back in Babe Ruth's time. To offer some perspective, while only three 40 homer members hit double digit SHs, twenty one members of that club have hit double digit Sacrifice Flies.

Answer: Alex Rodriguez

A-Rod hit 645, barely edging out the 641 from Barry Bonds. Yet, neither of them came close to reaching Babe Ruth's total of 982.

Answer: Adam Dunn

A-Rod came close, but 989 strikeouts is considerably short of Adam Dunn's 1,108. Dunn was truly an 'all or nothing' type batter, as his career average of .242 is, compared to other members of the 40 homer club, quite poor. Any time his bat actually connected with the ball, it was going places.

Answer: Lou Gehrig

Gehrig struck out 280 times over his five 40 homer seasons, an average of 56 strikeouts a season. To have a home run total of roughly 71% your strikeout total is extremely impressive!

Answer: Duke Snider

In 1956, Duke was passed 26 times while hitting 43 home runs.

Answer: Albert Pujols

Teams really, really did not want to pitch to Barry Bonds. As a point of reference, he leads the 40 homer club with 413 intentional walks. Pujols, in second place, has less than half of that at 171 and nobody else has reached 1/3rd of Bonds' total!

Answer: Lou Gehrig

Gehrig slashed .362. Compared closely to Babe Ruth, and during his 40 homer seasons, Gehrig had far better patience at the plate, making pitchers throw significantly more pitches per plate appearance to him, and striking out far, far less than Babe Ruth did. Everything else is either basically dead even or slightly in Babe Ruth's favor, which is well represented by the one point differential in their batting averages.

Answer: 0

Maris in 1961 and Alex Rodriguez in 1998 when they entered the 'club' were never walked intentionally.

Answer: Frank Thomas

Funnily enough, Thomas hit well above average in doubles, being just outside the top ten at 168, yet he never stretched it just 90 feet further during this time. He wasn't especially slow on the base pathes nor undisciplined at the plate, it just simply never happened. That's baseball for ya.