The record

A summary . . .
(Sorry to go on and on, but I have the manuscript for a book on baseball history that I may never get around to editing, so I may as well share some of it here.)



Clifford “Gavy” Cravath’s 24 homers for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1915 were the best modern seasonal total until Babe Ruth’s 1919 season. The National League totaled just 225 homers in 1915, and only four of the sixteen teams out-homered Gavy that year. It should be noted that Cravath’s Phillies played in the notorious bandbox known as Baker Bowl. Nineteen of the 24 homers were hit at home.

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Cravath (career 1908-20), a righthanded-hitting outfielder, mostly with the Phillies had a high of 24 HR in 1915, but his 119 lifetime homers when he retired at age 39 were the most of any twentieth century player. I couldn’t tell you exactly where he ranks now in career homers, but he certainly isn’t in the top four hundred.

Accordingly, when Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees hit his 120th career homer on June 10, 1921 off the Indians’ Jim Bagby in the third inning of an 8-6 loss, Ruth laid claim to one version of the all-time home run crown, which he would wear until 1974.

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Ned Williamson homered 27 times for the Chicago White Stockings one year, and it was the most ever … as of 1884.

This figure was established with the aid of the field dimensions at Chicago’s Lake Front Park, which appear ridiculous today, and must have been questionable even then:

leftfield 180 ft, left-center 280 ft, centerfield 300 ft, right-center 252 ft, rightfield 196 ft

Williamson was a righthanded hitter. In 1883, hitting one out in left (which was a whopping 186 feet that year) netted one only a ground-rule double. New box seats reduced the distance the following year, and somehow the rules restored the home run. The fences were a mere six feet in height.

Williamson’s record stood until 1919 and the maturation as a slugger of Babe Ruth. Williamson’s Chicago teammate Fred Pfeffer hit 25 that year, and other White Stockings dominated the HR lists (Abner Dalrymple 22, Cap Anson 21, King Kelly 13). If you consider Williamson’s and Pfeffer’s marks a bit tainted, the next highest total was Buck Freeman’s 25 for the eleventh-place Washington club of the 1899 National League.

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Roger Connor hit 137 home runs in his career. (Older sources may say 132.) It is now believed that it was his record that Babe Ruth topped in 1921. As career records were not systematically kept in the early days, probably neither Ruth nor Connor was aware of the new record.

Contemporary sources might state that Big Sam Thompson was the record holder at that time. Thompson is now credited with 127 (or 128) career homers.

Connor (career 1880-97) was a big, lefthanded hitting-firstbaseman for a variety of teams in the 19th century National League. He spent 1890 in the upstart Players’ League, which is why 13 of his homers are of disputed official status, as are a few that he hit in the National Association prior to 1876. His best total was 17 in 1887 with the New York club.

Thompson (career 1885-1906) was an outfielder for Detroit and Philadelphia teams in the old N.L. A lefthanded hitter, he had no twentieth century homers (the 46-year-old Thompson played briefly for the Tigers in 1906). His best homer year was 20 in 1889 for Philadelphia.