Who Were Baseball's Home Run Hitters Before Babe Ruth?

 

Although home runs were far less common in the majors prior to the arrival of Babe Ruth, there were a handful of players who gained some acclaim for their slugging ability. The most prominent ones are as follows:  

           

NED WILLIAMSON

An infielder who spent most of his career with the Chicago White Stockings (later known as the Cubs), Williamson might have been totally forgotten if not for his performance in 1884. In those days, the White Stockings played their home games in Lakefront Park, where the dimensions in right and left field were quite shallow (around 200 feet). During the 1883 season, balls hit over the right field fence were counted as doubles. A ground-rule change the following year prompted a dramatic power surge as Williamson clubbed 27 home runs—a new single-season record. Three other Chicago players gathered at least 21 homers that year, which was an unprecedented event. After the White Stockings moved to West Side Park in 1885, Williamson’s home run output dwindled significantly along with the rest of his teammates.  

 

ROGER CONNOR

 Unlike Williamson, Connor actually had some legitimate power. A big man for the era at 6-foot-3, 220 pounds, Connor was the first man to hit a ball completely out of the Polo Grounds in New York. When he retired after the 1897 season, he had amassed 138 lifetime homers—a major league record. Unfortunately, statistics were not diligently kept in those days and Connor’s notable achievement was not recognized until long after the fact. It’s important to note that major league rules were a lot different in Connor’s day. During a portion of his career, one side of the bat could be flat, batters could call for low or high pitches, and foul tips were not counted as strikes. The pitcher’s mound was only 50 feet from home plate. 

 

FRANK “WILDFIRE” SCHULTE

Schulte spent a majority of his playing days with the Cubs. A daring base runner, he stole home 22 times during his career. In 1911, he proved he had some pop in his bat as well, cracking 21 homers—a short-lived 20th century record. Schulte, who was incredibly superstitious, would sometimes wander the streets looking for hair pins, which he believed brought him good luck at the plate. He used extremely heavy bats with thin handles, breaking up to 50 of them per season—very unusual for the time.  

 

FRANK “HOME RUN” BAKER

Baker led the American League in home runs every year from 1911-1914 and probably would have won the 1916 home run crown had he not missed more than 50 games. The two homers he hit in the 1911 World Series earned him his famous nickname. He played in six Fall Classics altogether—four with the A’s and two with the Yankees. A clutch performer, he retired with a .363 postseason batting average. In later years, he claimed that the deep dimensions of Shibe Park in Philadelphia robbed him of dozens of home runs. By his own report, he hit the right field wall 38 times in 1913 (likely an exaggeration).

 

GAVVY CRAVATH

Cravath was the first true slugger of the modern era. “Some players steal bases with hook slides and speed. I steal bases with my bat,” he once said. From 1912-1919, he finished among the top three in homers every year, leading the NL six times. His 24 blasts for the Phillies in 1915 were the most by a 20th century player until Babe Ruth hit 29 four seasons later. Cravath played a majority of his games in Philadelphia’s oddly-proportioned Baker Bowl, which had a 280-foot foul line in right field. A 40-foot wall and 20-foot screen made things a bit more challenging, but the park remained a hitter’s paradise until it closed for good in 1938.    

Explore this topic further along with many others in my latest book, Lore of the Bambino: 100 Great Babe Ruth Stories, available this April through The Lyons Press.     

Worst Baseball Movie of All Time

 

    The film based on Ruth’s 1948 autobiography, The Babe Ruth Story, was an unmitigated disaster. To begin with, William Bendix was miscast as the Babe. In order to make him look like the former Yankee hero, makeup artists dyed his hair and gave him a prosthetic nose. Attempts to coach him on the finer points of Ruth’s swing were fruitless. John McCarten of New Yorker magazine wrote, “[Bendix] handles a bat as if it were as hard to manipulate as a barrel stave. Even with a putty nose, Mr. Bendix resembles Mr. Ruth not at all and he certainly does the hitter an injustice by representing him as a kind of Neanderthal fellow.” Physical disparities between the actor and baseball icon were the least of director Roy Del Ruth’s problems. The script was an absolute mess. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times observed, “[the film] has much more the tone of low-grade fiction than it has of a biography.” He was spot-on with that remark. Historical inaccuracies are rampant throughout the film—some more preposterous than others.

            --In one scene, the Babe’s second wife, Claire, warns him that he is tipping his pitches by sticking out his tongue. While it’s true that Ruth arrived in the majors with the bad habit of curling his tongue when he delivered curve balls, he had not yet met Claire during his time with the Red Sox. Another major oversight—Ruth’s first wife, Helen, is never mentioned in the film.

            --During the “called shot” sequence, Claire shouts at the Babe, “Don’t forget Johnny!” in reference to Johnny Sylvester—the boy Ruth famously promised a home run to. But the homer Ruth is said to have hit for Sylvester happened during the 1926 World Series against the Cardinals, not the ’32 Fall Classic vs. the Cubs.

            --In two of the film’s most ludicrous scenes, Ruth orders a glass of milk in a bar and heals a crippled boy by waving at him. In another laughable clip, the Babe hits a dog with a foul ball, severely wounding it. When he sees a little boy crying next to the fallen animal, he scoops it up and hurries out of the stadium in search of medical attention. Accompanied by the crying boy, he ends up at a local hospital, where a physician performs a successful operation, saving the dog’s life.

            Bendix himself once referred to the movie as the worst he ever made and said that he was embarrassed by the audience’s reaction at the premiere in Los Angeles. In particular, he alluded to a scene early in the film when the Babe is discovered by a scout while playing at St. Mary’s. The kids in the scene are all actual teenagers, but Bendix (at thirty-eight years of age) was forced by the director to appear wearing makeup. The final cut is unintentionally funny and, according to Bendix, L.A. moviegoers laughed when they saw it.

This topic is covered in depth along with many others in Lore of the Bambino: 100 Great Babe Ruth Stories, available in April through the Lyons Press.