WE'RE in those dog days of the 2026 season fo' sho' right now, what with the mid-season surges subsiding and the musical chairs of player movement making Schoenbergian shrieks as the latest incarnation of an Evil Empire is showing its age, reduced to squeaking by the reeling Royals in hopes of righting the ship (while Joe the Poser self-promotes in an ever-galloping gush like one of his fetishized fountain pens leaking its ink in a manner defying the laws of gravity)...
INSTEAD, we offer more proof that the game has been hijacked by that swing-from-the-heels malady that has long since morphed into baseball's version of a thirst trap. And we will shift from jumping up & down on Joe the P. (even if he so richly deserves it...) and produce some data that proves (again!) what an insane year 2019 really was. (How could it not be, given the virulent pyramid-scheme omnipresence of a certain flatulent felon?)
We will focus on the team home run record--something that is simultaneously damning and delirious. Our tale of wondrous woe begins in 1961 (as the numerical scrawl at right demonstrates) when the M&M boys set a still-standing record for the most homers hit by teammates (that number, in case you were wondering, is 115). The rest of their "Bronx Bomber" crew added 125 more, bringing the World Champion New York Yankees to what was then the record for team home runs: 240.
It prompted an avoidance mode pivot that didn't quite hide the festering fetishisms that the M&M boys' exploits had unleashed. Sooner or later, though, the man covering his eyes to shield him from what Byron (Whizzer) White and others could recognize with a single glance (with or without a tall building to either erect or leap over...) was going to have to go the route of Ray Milland in The Man with the X-Ray Eyes or face the music of the (juiced) spheres (and the juiced players in orbit around them). "Welcome to the brave (and sticky) new world of Chicks dig the long ball, hermanos!"--a slobbering ejaculation, echoing that epic tale involving a horse who, in later times, would be feted on a six-pack of condoms. (Meanwhile, Homer is still howling in his unmarked grave...)
THE data at right shows you what happened when the juices flowed and forces were unleashed that proved unstoppable. That nineties explosion pushed past the Bronx Bombers record and created a new plateau for teams to inhabit--while the Mariners' 1997 record held for another twenty-one years, a dozen teams pushed past 240 homers during those years.
The 2018 Yanks pushed past to claim the record with two slugging giants (Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton) and ten non-descript types, signaling that the Age of the Non-Descript Slugger was nigh. And 2019 beckoned like a buxom girl teasing at poolside, while lechers measured her twerks by the launch angles they created...
The 2019 Yanks tried to shatter the record--and did, thanks to 14 hitters in double figures (but, insanely enough, one of these was not Stanton). They wound up with 306 homers (!!)--but it just wasn't enough to take possession of the all-time record...because, out in the murky Midwest, the Minnesota Twins added 38-year-old Nelson Cruz to their own conga line of freshly-minted Non-Descript Sluggers and slipped past the erstwhile latter-day Bombers with 307 chick-a-booms of their own.
It is the outlier of all outliers, even giving the liar in the White House a run for his money. As with that one unconscionable liar, we can fervently hope that something like this will never be allowed to happen again. Dim hope springs from an even dimmer reflecting pool, because the team homer totals in 2026 will not add anyone to the 240+ list. The Atlanta Braves have paid for their 2023 hubris (tying the Twins' record, then collapsing in a heap the next season...) by.finding a better balance for their return to success; the team with the best record in baseball as of this writing (the Brewers in the Midwest) currently have the least number of homers of any MLB team.
WE leave you with a list of these teams--all 37 of them, as noted in the TimeGrid™ above--in descending order of homers hit. Note that the team at the very bottom--the M&M edition of the Bronx Bombers--is still the only team with 240+ HRs in a season to win a World Series in the year they made this list. Odd little fact, is it not? It's an irony that we think our old pal Homer would appreciate...
