Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

- Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 648 by John "Crazy Legs" Milton.

On Tuesday Barry Bonds reached the 650-homers plateau in exciting fashion, hitting a pair of tatters off the Mets at Shea (with Bill Clinton in attendance as well as my friend Murray though I do not believe he sat with Bill) and collecting three runs batted in in a 5-4 loss. Bonds connect on a first-pitch Aaron Heilman slider in the third. Bonds' one-out solo shot in the ninth put the Giants one-run down, but Edgardo Alfonzo then struck out on five pitches and Benito Santiago flied out to end the game.

The number 650 seems like it should have some magic behind it: Bonds is now just 10 behind his godfather "Don" Willie Mays:

And besides 650 sounds nice and round. It's not as if the extra 50 dingers since 600 have helped Bonds to move up the all-time list. Once you get past Frank Robinson, each of the next three are as far on the horizon as Omar Sharif in his first appearance in Lawrence of Arabia ("Et cetera...Et cetera...ET cetera"). ESPN reported that Bonds was the fastest from 600 to 650 career homers:

(What no Sadaharu Oh?)

Poor Bonds collects 50 homers and does not budge one line in the all-time list. So what's the big deal about 650 anyway? Is it any more impressive than 649 or 651? For my money, the number that he started with on Tuesday, 648, holds much more significance.

What's so great about 648, you ask? Well, let's set the stage. It was June 2, 1972 and the place was also Shea Stadium and the Braves were visiting the Metsgoes. There were a pair of first basemen-though they are remembered as outfielders and pretty good ones-who went head-to-head, mano-a-mano, tete-a-tete that day for a collective 0-for-7 with three strikeouts and one walk. Those two men were Hammerin' Henry Aaron, the number three hitter for the Braves, and Willie Mays, the leadoff hitter for the home team.

Those two opponents had more career home runs than any two men who had ever faced each other on a diamond. And what may be even more remarkable is that they both had 648 in total. This was in a day when 400 career home runs were still rare. Here are the men at the start of the 1972 season who had 400 or more dingers:

Willie Mays started the season with the Giants but after hitting .146 through April, he was mostly relegated to the bench. Mays had filled in the previous season at first for the injured Willie McCovey and played well. However, for 1972 he had moved back to center field and perhaps the position was too much for him as he quickly approached 41 years old. The Giants finally gave up on the greatest player the franchise ever had, trading Mays to the Mets for pitcher and future umpire Charlie Williams and cash on May 11. Mays would split his time among first, center and the bench with the Mets.

In Atlanta Aaron, coming off his career high in home runs (47) in 1971, kept racking up four-sackers. He had signed a record-setting contract for 3 years at $200 grand a year in the offseason at the age of 37. Aaron hit one in four consecutive games April 22-26. On May 6, he played right field for one of the rare occasions that year and hit a solo shot off Rick Wise in the eighth inning. The Braves would lose 4-2 and the homer proved a meaningless run, but it was Aaron's sixth on the season putting him just one behind Mays. By the way, it was Willie Mays' birthday.

Then Aaron went on a cold streak. He didn't hit a home run for 11 games and 39 at-bats. Meanwhile Mays started his Mets career with a bang. On May 14, Mother's Day, he beats his old team, the Giants, in his old city, New York, with a solo shot in the fifth off of Don Carrithers to break up a tie ballgame. In his next game, May 18 against Montreal, he works a leadoff walk from Mike Torrez. Mays then scores on Ted Martinez's triple and knocks the ball out of catcher John Boccabella's (great name by the way) glove to allow Martinez to score what ends up the winning run on Boccabella's error.

Three days later, Mays goes 2-for-4 with his second homer as a Met off of Steve Carlton, who is en route to one of the most amazing years for a pitcher in recent memory. The two-run, eighth-inning shot proves to be the game winner. Mays is now three homers ahead of Aaron.

Then it's Hank's turn, hitting three home runs in seven games to tie Mays at 648 on May 31. The first is May 26 against the Giants Juan Marichal, who falls to 1-8. The Giants have a young player in the lineup who was starting to blossom since the departure of Willie Mays. He replaced Mays in the leadoff spot and would end the next year just shy of a 40-40 season (39 HRs and 43 SBs). His name is Bobby Bonds.

On May 28, in the second game of a doubleheader, Aaron hits an eighth-inning solo shot off of the Giants Ron Bryant to tie the game 6-6. The Braves eventually win, 7-6, in the 11th as Aaron walked and scored the winning run.

On May 31, his solo shot in the first off Fred Norman of San Diego in a ballgame the Braves won, 5-4.
The two players face off on June 2, but even though there are two more games in the series, Mays does not make an appearance. Mays does not hit another home run until June 30 at Montreal. Aaron's average dips to a season-low .224 and then on June 10 he connects in the sixth against the Phils' Wayne "Twitch" Twitchell for a grand slam as the Braves win 15-3. It's Aaron's 14th career grand slam to tie the NL record held by Gil Hodges.

Aaron the collects two more home runs against Mays and the Mets on June 13-14 in Atlanta. The first is a game winner in the tenth. Aaron is now ahead to stay. He hits three more before Mays' next tatter is recorded on June 30. On August 6 he hits a pair of home runs for 661 in his career. It is the most that any player has ever had for one team (Ruth had 659 with the Yankees). It also is one ahead of where Mays will be when he retires.

By the end of the season, the all-time leader board looks like this:

The players were headed in different directions. Mays had just one year and 6 home runs left, though he did make it back to the Series in 1973. Aaron had another 82 home runs and four years left. However, they wouldn't all come as a Braves. After fulfilling his contract and passing Babe Ruth for the home run record, Aaron is traded to the Brewers for Dave May and Roger Alexander to finish his career back in Milwaukee. Both players did play the bulk of their careers with a franchise that switched cities and then finished their careers with an expansion club in the old city.

And after all is said and done, the crossroad that was home run 648 is long forgotten amid magic numbers like 500, 660, 714, and 755.

(Retrosheet.com was instrumental in the research for this; Also, Bonds may miss a week due to his bereavement leave to be with his ailing father. This may affect his chase for third place all-time.)