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Top 10 Baseball Home Run Hitters
Presents profiles of ten players, including Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Fred McGriff, Babe Ruth, and Roger Maris, whose home run percentages and "slugging percentages" were among the highest in baseball's history.
48 pages, Library Binding
First published July 1, 1997
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November 24, 2025
As this book is written for a juvenile audience, grade school kids, Bill Deane makes the short bios of each player interesting by first giving the story of an important home run is each player's career, which gets the readers interested. Only after he hooks you in with a fun story, does he go on to talk about the rest of their careers.
But Bill Deane's criteria for player inclusion were is oddly specific: a certain threshold combination of both Slugging Percentage and something he calls Home Run Percentage. This leaves out some of the top home run hitters in history, so I'm not sure why he chose these parameters. It seems like he wanted to use them so that he didn't have to make his own decisions as to who to include - basically, he let the math to the picking. But even at that, some of his selections are quirky. I understand why he would want to include active (as of 1996) players, so as to include players the young readers would recognize. The Frank Thomas selection makes sense, but Fred McGriff? No disrespect to the Crime Dog, but he doesn't seem like he'd be the most popular active player to pick. It leaves me scratching my head. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire both qualify and would been better selections for the younger audience.
But Bill Deane's criteria for player inclusion were is oddly specific: a certain threshold combination of both Slugging Percentage and something he calls Home Run Percentage. This leaves out some of the top home run hitters in history, so I'm not sure why he chose these parameters. It seems like he wanted to use them so that he didn't have to make his own decisions as to who to include - basically, he let the math to the picking. But even at that, some of his selections are quirky. I understand why he would want to include active (as of 1996) players, so as to include players the young readers would recognize. The Frank Thomas selection makes sense, but Fred McGriff? No disrespect to the Crime Dog, but he doesn't seem like he'd be the most popular active player to pick. It leaves me scratching my head. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire both qualify and would been better selections for the younger audience.
Displaying 1 of 1 review