Babe Ruth revolutionized baseball and remains one of the sport’s most iconic figures, but his era was the roaring 1920s, not the late 1990s. Ruth’s 60-home-run season in 1927 set the gold standard for slugging greatness and made him a larger-than-life figure, but by the 1990s, a new generation of sluggers had taken the stage. In the aftermath of a players’ strike that hurt baseball’s reputation, it was a dramatic home run race between two contemporaries—not legends of the past—that reignited national passion for the game. Ruth’s legacy is unmatched, but he wasn't part of this particular modern-day resurgence.