Contact sport? Not for baseball's big swingers.(numbers)

Major league batters strike out more frequently in today's game of power hitting and tape-measure home runs

TED KLUSZEWSKI WAS MARK McGwire first, but without the weightlifting and andro. They called him "Big Klu," and he would cut the sleeves off his Cincinnati Reds jerseys, the better to display his massive biceps.

And he might be the best example of how dramatically baseball has changed over the past few decades.

Kluszewski, who was 6-2 and 225 pounds, is the most recent player to have won a home run title while finishing with more homers (49) than strikeouts (35), accomplishing that feat in 1954.

Today, it is almost inconceivable to imagine a power hitter striking out only 35 times in a season. In 2000, 57 major leaguers collected at least 100 whiffs, and eight more had 99. Through September of the 2001 season, 66 players already fanned more than 100 times with 19 more on pace to reach the century mark before the season ended.

The free-swinging Babe Ruth never struck out 100 times in a season. The Yankees' Joe DiMaggio in 1941 hit 30 home runs and batted .357, striking out 13 times in 541 at-bats.

Think about that a moment: 13 strikeouts in a season. The Yankee Clipper averaged one every 41 at-bats. Last season, St. Louis' Ray Lankford averaged a whiff every 2.6 at-bats, striking out 148 times in 392 at-bats. Florida's Preston Wilson piled up 187 strikeouts, two shy of Bobby Bonds' single-season record.