In 1961, Roger Maris slammed his sixty-first home run of the season into the stands, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a single season. That record, at the center of a decades-long dispute, was finally broken in 1998 by leap-frogging Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, within days of one another in September 1998. In 2001, Barry Bonds broke McGwire's record by hitting seventy-three homers.