Steven K. Wagner - The Four Home Runs Club: Sluggers Who Achieved Baseballs Rarest Feat

The Four Home Runs Club

The Four Home Runs Club

Sluggers Who Achieved Baseballs Rarest Feat

Steven K. Wagner

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wagner, Steven K., author.

Title: The four home runs club : sluggers who achieved baseballs rarest feat / Steven K. Wagner.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018008333 | ISBN 9781538115428 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Home runs (Baseball)History.

Classification: LCC GV868.4 .W35 2018 | DDC 796.357/26dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008333

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For Mom

Prologue

I t is, some believe, the most historic home run in baseball history, one that was first celebrated on October 3, 1951, at New Yorks Polo Grounds. Giants fans have been celebrating it ever since.

The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! broadcaster Russ Hodges repeated over and over as New York Giants slugger Bobby Thomson jubilantly circled the bases following a dramatic ninth-inning walk-off home run served up by Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca. I dont believe it. I dont believe it. I will not believe it .

Thomsons three-run blast, later dubbed the Shot Heard Round the World, won the National League pennant for the Giants and catapulted them into the World Series. The Dodgers, meanwhile, quietly returned home to await the start of another season. Sadly for them, the slogan Wait til next year once again was in play, much to the vexation of weary Brooklynites.

Watching in stunned disbelief from his infield perch that day was Dodgers first baseman Gil Hodges, who only a year earlier had been on top of the baseball world after hitting four homers in a single game; on deck as Thomson started his home run swing was Willie Mays, who nine years later would hit four round-trippers in a ballgame. By the fall of 1951, Hodgess four shots seemed remote compared with Thomsons giant blast into immortality. Just an annotation in baseball history, is Hodgess collection of homers. Or, is it?

The definition of home run is, as Branca underscored that day, a perspicuous one: a safe hit that allows the batter to touch all bases and score a run . In most instances the touch is easy. Its the hit thats the hard part.

(Unless youre Kirk Gibson of the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose swing and trot were both difficult at one moment in time. On October 15, 1988, in the first game of the World Series against the Oakland As, the injured Gibson was asked to pinch hit with a runner on base and two men out in the last half of the ninth inning. His team was behind, 43, and Gibson was facing future Hall of Fame closer Dennis Eckersley, who was enjoying one of his finest seasons. Gibson, who was barely able to walk or swing a bat due to injuries, battled Eckersley for six minutes before drilling a home run into the right-field bleachers and limping around the bases to score the winning run. For Gibson, whose home run that day is ranked with Thomsons blast as one of the greatest ever, both hitting and circling the bases were difficult.)

In all of sports there are few skills more challenging than hitting a baseball thrown at high velocity. It is so difficult that baseball great Wilver Stargell, a former Most Valuable Player who hit almost 500 home runs during a 20-year career, described the act as succinctly as anyone ever has in a single oft-repeated quotation: They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball and they tell you to hit it square.

During the 2017 major-league season a record 6,105 baseballs were hit square enough to clear the fences. Most players hit only one homer in a single game, although many hit two and a fair number hit three. The last time a player hit four home runs in the same game was in September 2017, when J. D. Martinez accomplished it for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

As a home run reference point, Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins led all major-leaguers with 59 blasts in 2017. Many players didnt hit one. Some didnt even dribble a single.

If hitting a round ball squarely is a difficult task, then hitting the ball square enough to send it sailing over an outfield fence planted more than a football field away is the ultimate in hitting success. Doing that four times in the same ballgame against the worlds premier pitchers is an unthinkably difficult task.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Since Major League Baseball first began to entertain fans almost a century and a half ago, 18 players have hit four home runs in a ballgame, an average of about one every nine years. Some of those sluggers were legendsfor example Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig and Mays. One, Pat Seerey, played only a few short seasons and has been all but forgotten. Still others fall somewhere in betweenMark Whiten and Bob Horner, to name a pair.

By most accounts, the stars must be in order for any player to homer four times in one game. It helps if your team is way ahead or way behindif a game is out of reach there is less chance that a hurler will pitch around a home run hitter, depriving him of the one at-bat that might make the difference between three home runs and four. It also helps if a hitter is in peak health, although Mays accomplished the task while sick. Seerey, a lifetime .224 hitter, did it despite carrying 40 extra pounds. Rocky Colavito overcame a foamy start when an angry fan tossed a beer on him early in the contestperhaps the sticky brew helped him grip the bat better during an era before pine tar and batting gloves were in vogue.

Members of the Four Home Runs Club come from all walks of life and nationalities. Shawn Green is Jewish. Josh Hamilton is a Christian. Hodges was Catholic. Ed Delahanty was a drunk.

There are Kansans, New Yorkers, and Ohioans. There are Easterners, Southerners, and Midwesterners. One player, Carlos Delgado, was born in Puerto Rico. Producing the most club members was, surprisingly, Ohio. None of the 18 hail from California despite the Golden States rich baseball heritage.

Most remarkable, however, is what each player accomplished during his one special game, and individual statistics from the 18 games are surprisingly diverse. Green accumulated 19 total bases, a major-league record that still stands. Adcock hit a smash that struck the top of the wall and came within inches of being a fifth homer. Delgado was the only batter to connect for four home runs in just four at-bats. Mark Whiten drove in a record-tying 12 runs during his big game, while Mike Cameron drove in the minimum for a four-home run game: four. Delahantys four home runs included two inside-the-park shotsno other club member hit even one home run that failed to clear a fence. Bobby Lowe hit two out in the same inning. Seerey hit homers in three consecutive innings and is one of only a handful of playersMays and Green are othersto hit three home runs on another occasion. Oddly, Seerey hit only 86 home runs in six-plus seasons, almost 10 percent of them in those two games. Although he and Mays put up the best-ever two-game statistics with 31 total bases, Seerey is the third weakest home run hitter of the 18-member gang; Mays is the most prolific.