By Tom Van Riper

updated 1:40 a.m. ET Aug. 8, 2007

As Barry Bonds surpassed Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, Babe Ruth was probably smirking somewhere.

No matter that the Babe's lifetime total of 714 home runs, once a record, has been pushed down to No. 3 all-time by Aaron and Bonds. The man who changed baseball forever by out-homering entire teams, by compelling owners who saw the drawing power of his homers to liven up the ball, and by pushing the New York Yankees to such heights that the team built a new stadium perfectly designed for his swing, is still the king of the long ball.

For proof, look no further than this: Babe Ruth averaged 44 home runs per season from 1920 through 1934. Over the same number of at-bats, the average American League player hit fewer than six.

Everyone loves a record. Whether it's the Dow hitting a new all-time high or a baseball player poised to reach the top of the home run list, we love to focus on the new big number. The only problem is that such numbers don't paint a full picture of reality. Stock market "record highs" don't factor in inflation. Sports records, too, are always presented in absolute terms, where they have far less meaning than they do in relative terms.

Remember the hoopla during the 1998 season, when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs to break the single season record? Everyone was so busy cheering that it was easy to lose perspective. McGwire's banner year came during one of the biggest power periods in Major League history, when balls were flying out of the park at a rate of once every 34 times at bat. Compare that to 1920, when they went out just once every 114 times up.

Ruth slugged 54 home runs that year, while second-place finisher George Sisler had — ready? — a grand total of 19. McGwire's runner-up, Sammy Sosa, finished with 66, while two other players, Greg Vaughn and Ken Griffey Jr., reached 50. That's four players hitting the 50 mark in one season, not long after a 24-year stretch (1966 to 1989) in which exactly one player, George Foster of the 1977 Cincinnati Reds, managed to do it. None of this is to deny that McGwire's season was spectacular, but it doesn't even compare with Ruth's. Ditto for Bonds' 2001 campaign, when he smacked 73 home runs to break McGwire's record. National League hitters went deep once every 30 times that season, even more often than in 1998. How power-packed has the current era been? The last 12 seasons (1995 to 2006) are all among the all-time top 13 for home runs per at-bat, the 1987 season being the other.

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One certainty in sports is that changes through the years affect statistics. Owners tinker with the pitching mound (the higher the mound, the bigger the advantage to the pitcher), the weight of the ball and the ballpark dimensions. Expansion, which happened during the 1960s, '70s and '90s, dilutes pitching quality and sends home run totals higher, at least for a year or two. It all adds up to different statistical norms during different eras.

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