Four years ago tonight, Albert Pujols became the fourth player in MLB history to reach 700 career home runs. It happened at Dodger Stadium on September 23, 2022, in front of 50,041 fans, with the Cardinals cruising to an 11-0 win. Since then, not a single player has joined him. The 700 club is still exactly four names: Bonds, Aaron, Ruth and Pujols.
The exact moment: an 80.8 mph slider, a 389-foot answer
Pujols had already given the crowd a preview earlier that night — a 434-foot shot off Andrew Heaney in the third inning to reach No. 699. He didn’t wait long for No. 700. In the fourth, Dodgers reliever Phil Bickford threw him a slider at 80.8 mph. Pujols turned on it and drove it to left-center at 99.8 mph off the bat, at a 33-degree launch angle, 389 feet from home plate. It wasn’t the most jaw-dropping of his 703 career home runs. It was just the one that mattered most.
That home run was also extra-base hit No. 1,401 of his career, making him the third player in history to reach that mark — joining Hank Aaron (1,477) and Barry Bonds (1,440). Three names, in all of organized baseball history in this country.
The smallest, most exclusive club in the game
The 700 home run club has exactly four members:
- Barry Bonds — 762
- Hank Aaron — 755
- Babe Ruth — 714
- Albert Pujols — 703
Four years after Pujols punched his ticket, no one else has come close. And there’s another layer to what makes his place in that group special: Pujols is the only player born outside the United States to reach 700. A Dominican who debuted in 2001 and spent 22 seasons building one of the most consistent careers the game has ever seen — a .296 average, .374 OBP and .917 OPS across more than two decades.
There’s also something that separates him even from his three club-mates: Pujols hit all 703 of his home runs without ever having a 50-homer season. Hank Aaron didn’t either. Bonds and Ruth both did. Consistency, not peak explosion, was always Pujols’ signature.
The season nobody saw coming
At the 2022 All-Star break, Pujols had just six home runs. He was 42 years old, playing his final season, and almost nobody expected what came next. From July 10 through the end of the regular season, he hit .312 with a 1.026 OPS and launched 16 home runs over his final 54 games. When he hit No. 700, his season line sat at .265 with 21 home runs.
He retired after 2022 with 703 career home runs and 3,072 games played across 22 seasons. He and Hank Aaron are the only two players in history to combine 700 home runs with at least 3,000 hits — and neither ever had a 50-homer season. Four years later, that’s still true for exactly two people in the history of this sport.
