Alex Rodriguez Becomes the Youngest Player to 300 Home Runs

On April 2, 2003, Alex Rodriguez hit a three-run home run off Anaheim Angels pitcher Ramon Ortiz at Edison Field, becoming the youngest player in major league history to reach 300 career home runs. He was 27 years and 249 days old, breaking the previous record held by Jimmie Foxx, who had been 27 years and 328 days old when he reached the milestone.

Rodriguez was in the third year of his ten-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers, at the time the largest deal in professional sports history. The Rangers had signed him expecting a franchise cornerstone. They got one of the most productive offensive players alive, but the wins never followed. Texas would lose 91 games in 2003, just as they had lost 90 the year before.

The personal numbers, though, were staggering. A-Rod finished the 2003 season with 47 home runs, 124 runs scored, and a .600 slugging percentage, all good enough to earn his first American League MVP award despite playing for a last-place team.

The milestone at 300 seemed like a waypoint on a clean march toward history. Rodriguez was hitting home runs at a pace that put him in line to challenge the all-time record. Nobody in the Edison Field crowd that night could have anticipated the steroid revelations that would later complicate his legacy and reframe every number he accumulated during those years in Texas.

At 27, Alex Rodriguez stood alone as the youngest member of the 300-homer club. The record still holds.