19 to 21

No, that’s not how many home runs Harry Stovey hit in 1883, it’s,

Baseball... Then and Now

Volume 5, #30, August 8, 2007

News Item: July 29, 1893 – Harry Stovey plays his final major league game after hitting 122 home runs.

John McGraw may not have liked it. And even Luke Gofannon said he liked triples better. Ty Cobb, sure as he was a red neck, didn’t like it at all. It’s called the “home run” and it’s been around baseball since, well at least since they were playing English base ball in Merrie Olde England in the 18th Century. That’s because the essential object of most bat-and-ball games (or “safe-haven” games, as they are also known), notably including the Rosetta Stone game of English base ball, has been to return home. And what easier and quicker way to do that than with one swing of the bat? Maybe that’s why the home run, some 88 years after Babe Ruth re-introduced it into prominence, continues to have such a hold on the National Pastime.

If you are in your mid-thirties or so, chances are you were following baseball in 1983, when one of the truly significant career records was not only broken twice, but actually passed back and forth between two players. Do you have to stop and think what record that was? We’ll wait……………………………………………..

It was the career strikeout record. Walter Johnson’s long-standing (since 1927) record of 3509 was broken first by Nolan Ryan in April, whose record was then taken over by Steve Carlton in June. At one point in the season the two strikeout artists were passing the mark back and forth with each start – a situation basically unprecedented in baseball maturity. When the season was over, Carlton held the career strikeout mark with 3709. However, Ryan took it back in 1984 and, with Carlton’s career then winding down, ran it out to a seemingly impossible level of 5714 before he finally retired in 1993.

The point is… as dramatic and historic as the Ryan/Carlton pas de deux was, probably very few of you remember this particular duel. As important as strikeouts are, they’re not home runs. The solo pursuit of the aforementioned Mr. Ruth’s career record in 1973 and 1974 by Hank Aaron? Everybody remembers that… even people who aren’t baseball fans (there must be a few out there.) And, for right or for wrong, a similar pursuit is likely to be what everyone will remember about the 2007 season.

But, what’s the real history of the home run record? The game has changed immensely, not only since Ruth retired in 1935, but going back to its very origins as base ball, the 19th Century game with underhanded pitching from 45 feet and no gloves that nonetheless we would still recognize as the national game. Different eras have produced wide variations in the frequency of home runs, due to various factors, including the composition of the ball, the layout and size of the playing field, the tactics of the game, who was playing the game, the style of play and yes, certain, shall we say, chemical factors. The standard history of the home run gives this chronology for the career leaders, starting at the point where said total surpassed 100…

1890 – Harry Stovey becomes the first player to hit 100 home runs

1893 – Stovey ends his major league career with 122 home runs

1895 – Roger Connor passes Stovey, ending the season with 126 home runs

1897 – Connor ends his major league career with 138 home runs

1921 – Babe Ruth passes Connor, ends the season with 162 home runs

1935 – Ruth retires with 714 home runs

1974 – Hank Aaron breaks Ruth’s record in the first week of the season

1976 – Aaron retires with 755 home runs

And there the record has stood for 31 years. However, as you should have guessed by now, it’s really not that simple. Let’s begin at the beginning…

No one really knows exactly when the home run took its hold on the sport. For that matter, no one really knows when home runs began to be exactly tabulated. The first box scores of baseball-like games, dating from the mid-1840s, merely list Hands Out (or outs made, be they batting or base running) and Runs (scored). This is even true of the 1858 Fashion Race Course All-Star series between New York and Brooklyn. The incredibly detailed box scores from those games, as published in The Spirit of the Times and reproduced by Dean Sullivan in “Early Innings,” while giving detailed pitch counts and fielding totals, don’t say a word about the offensive end of the game, except for Runs and Hands Lost (another term for Hands Out). While this may not be surprising, given the importance of fielding in this gloveless era, it’s not too helpful in establishing who the power hitters were. Interestingly though, we do learn from the write-up of the first game that Brooklyn second baseman Johnny Holder of the Excelsior club hit the only home run.

“Holder was the only one who made a clear home strike, and a beauty it was, clear out of the middle field, which brought him to the home base amidst the most unbounded applause.” (Ahhh, those were the golden days of sportswriting…)

Thus, by 1858 it’s clear that, although the term “home run” may or may not have been used, and wasn’t included in the box score, the concept was of some importance and was recognized as something of extra-normal value. Of maybe just anecdotal significance, it’s worthwhile to note that, three years later, the death of the first baseball superstar, pitcher Jim Creighton, was qualified by referencing a home run. Creighton suffered a serious internal injury (ruptured spleen? ruptured bladder? ruptured hernia?), not just while batting, but while hitting a home run. Just about every account of Creighton’s fate references that he was stricken while hitting a home run.

Still, exact records of home runs were not kept during this era, the era of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). This informal grouping of clubs did keep batting records, but not so specific as to tally individual homers, all of which had to be run out prior to the first baseball grounds being enclosed in Brooklyn during the Civil War. That’s really too bad, because the high-scoring nature of the early game – for this was by far the highest scoring time in baseball history – might well have made for some interesting numbers for us to look back upon. The combination of the lack of gloves with very roughly-kept fields, no fences and balls that were, to put it mildly, elastic (one make of ball was called a “bounding rock”) made for an incredibly offensive game, with top teams sometimes breaking into triple figures against especially overmatched opponents. As for home runs, what anecdotal evidence we have is indeed intriguing. Al Reach, although he made his reputation as a good-fielding left-handed second baseman, also hit 37 home runs in 47 games in 1867. Harry Wright, better known as a manager, fielder and executive, hit seven home runs in one game that same year. And Harry’s brother George, well, as Darryl Brock notes in “If I Never Get Back,” he was a Babe Ruth. Brock’s careful research as the foremost expert on the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings has provided the rather daunting fact that George hit 59 home runs during the Red Stockings’ undefeated tour of 58 games. Admittedly, the Stockings played a lot of club-type teams in 1869 (that’s almost all there was in 1869, there were only 15 or so professional teams), but that’s still a lot of home runs… almost exactly one per game... and essentially all struck in the context of the game’s highest level at the time.

Anecdotal evidence, including Brock’s writings, batting statistics from the NABBP’s final seasons, the fact that George was the highest-paid professional of his time, and the fact the he was also the first really old-time ballplayer elected to the Hall of Fame, make it pretty safe to say that George Wright was the best baseball player in his heyday, which ran from 1864 to 1876. Although he only hit 11 home runs after the first professional league, the National Association, was formed in 1871 (underscoring how the game had changed in just a few years), there’s literally no telling how many he may have hit between 1864 and 1870. If his 1869 season was typical of George’s home run output… well, that’s quite a record, and one that’s difficult to swallow, let alone verify. Still, Marshall Wright’s research for his book, “The National Association of Base Ball Players” indicates that George’s 1870 season was just as good in terms of his overall hitting numbers as his 1869 campaign, and that he wasn’t exactly a slouch for Union of Morrisiana in 1868. He played a total of 158 games in those three years. He also played 51 games in the years prior to that. That’s 209 games. Do the math. It may well have been George Wright’s career home run record – a total of maybe as many as 200 home runs from 1864 to 1876 -- that Ruth broke, and he didn’t break it until 1922. (Reach’s single season total of 37 in 47 games in 1867 would also seem to make this a reasonable assumption.)

An intriguing proposition, though a flawed concept, since the game George Wright played, and the conditions he played under, were a lot different than those Ruth faced. Of course, the game in the Babe’s years was also a lot different than during Aaron’s years. After all, Aaron himself wouldn’t even have been allowed to play major league baseball during Ruth’s 1914-1935 career. So, what to do?

Baseball, and those who write about the game, most notably historians, love to divide the game (and time) up into eras. It’s almost a compulsion. So, perhaps another division of baseball for purposes of studying the career home run record can be forgiven. To wit…

Pre-1871… The Pioneer Era

1871-1892… The Chuck and Duck Era

1893–1920… The Small Ball Era

1921–1960… The Ruthian Home Run Era

1961-1993… The Expansion/Integration Era

1994-Present… The Juiced Era

Thus does George Wright tentatively become the home run king of the Pioneer Era, when the game was still evolving on the field and organizationally, even to the point where the number of games played varied wildly. How many did George hit? We may well never know, but 200 or so is a nice, round guess.

The Chuck and Duck Era is so-named because that was often what the pitcher had to do, mainly because he was right on top of the batter (first at 45 feet, then at 50 feet), and a well-hit ball back up the middle was not a lot of fun, particularly if you weren’t wearing a glove. At least the deep fences of the newly-enclosed playing fields, the development of technically illegal “trick” pitches like the curve and spitball, and a softer, standardized ball cut down drastically on the scoring and the number of home runs. For instance, Levi Meyerle, Lip Pike and Fred Treacey led the National Association in home runs in 1871 with four apiece. And the single season mark didn’t get to double figures until Stovey hit 14 in 1883. Although Stovey held the single season mark at the end of that year, Charley Jones had the career mark, for this era at least, with 33 at the close of 1883. Stovey took the career crown in 1885 (50), lost it to Dan Brouthers in 1887 (65) and then took it back in 1889 (89). By the end of this era, when the pitchers were moved back from 50 feet to 60 feet, six inches before the start of the 1893 season, Stovey was king (not that anyone at that time knew it.)

With pitchers trying to adjust to another 10 feet from 1893 on, offense in general soared for the rest of the 19th Century, but the game’s style of play didn’t change. Although there were a lot of struggling pitchers out on the new mounds, baseball was still played one base at a time… a style that has since been called “Small Ball.” As typified by the Baltimore Orioles, players didn’t swing for the fences (which were nonetheless sometimes getting closer to the hitters, at least down some of the foul lines) but relied on the bunt, the hit-and-run, and the stolen base. And so the game would remain until Mr. Ruth came along and showed everyone what you could do with a cork-centered ball (introduced in 1910) when you swung from the heels. However, that wouldn’t happen until 1920, and Connor remained the home run king of the Small Ball Era with 138. And, although the years up until 1960 were marked with a plethora of long balls, as just about every big hitter emulated the Babe, it is an everlasting tribute to Ruth that no one came anywhere close to his career home run total throughout this Home Run Era. Not even close. Those of us old enough to remember this time will also recall that the list of the top five career home run leaders was the same group of Home Run Era sluggers…

Ruth 714

Foxx 534

Williams 521

Ott 511

Gehrig 493

And that was it. No one else was even a threat to just 500 home runs until Mantle, Mays and Aaron came along in the 1950s. Of course, the game was changing radically at that time, as the first wave of integration, as personified by Mays, Aaron, Ernie Banks, etc., really got rolling along with the Expansion Era that began in 1961 and eventually saw Aaron beat out Mays for the home run crown. And that’s without even considering such other factors as expansion, night ball, the Latin American influx, lowering the pitcher’s mound and smaller, retro ballparks.

And there we stood until 1994 when, all of a sudden, the baseball world went crazy. Although scoring in general took a huge jump in that benighted season, the fact is that no one can say when steroids really started to shape the game. (Although we can say that smaller, retro ballparks also started to shape the game around that time.) Was it 1987, when a one-year home run binge had everyone shaking their heads? Was it just some time after 1969, when Jim Bouton was writing the first honest inside account of baseball, and yet did not mention the juice? (Though he wrote a lot about “greenies,” DMSO and the like.) Was it 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa staged their famous home run duel? Who knows?

No one really knows exactly, and those who were in the wave of the trend aren’t saying… at least not in a reliable fashion except maybe under oath. Maybe. All we can say is that the Steroid Era has crowned a new titlist (note, the word is titlist, not champion) and to hope that steroid testing procedures (hello, Neifi Perez… Neifi Perez?) will produce a cleaner, more honest game in the future. Until that point, the career home record by era looks like this…

Pre-1871 George Wright @ 200

1871-1892 Harry Stovey 122

1893–1920 Roger Connor 138

1921–1960 Babe Ruth 714

1961-1993 Hank Aaron 755

1994-??? Barry Bonds 756+

Along with round numbers, we all love simple, linear statements of fact. Sadly, we do not have that luxury in this matter of career home runs, at least, not if you want to be realistic about the career home run record. If you want to be realistic, you have to put it into context. In point of fact, it wasn’t really a linear record from 1876 to 1922. Look at that time line, project where Alex Rodriguez may well be going, and draw your own conclusions… who is the real champion of the home run, now and in the foreseeable future? You decide, for it is among baseball fans that the true champion is crowned.

In case you can’t get enough of “19 to 21” these columns are now being archived by one of the wittiest and hardest-working pundits of the National Game, Bill Chuck, on his Billy-Ball website. Go to www.billy-ball.com for more information. It’ll be worth the trip, especially if you sign up for his daily Billy Ball e-zine. And, in case you’re wondering, Bill and I came up with the “home run champions by era” story independently. Proving that great minds think alike… or something like that. (Baseball writers with bad knees think alike, maybe?)

- John Shiffert