Babe Ruth Home Run Log – Baseball-Reference.com
Posted by Sean Forman on May 18, 2009
Along with the minor league data, we licensed the SABR Home Run Encyclopedia which is quite frankly a stunning accomplishment in baseball history. I'm working on getting this together for everybody (and I do mean everybody back to 1876). If you want to brainstorm what you would like to be able to do with this in the comments, go ahead. First order of business, is to add a nice summary similar to what we have for the event finders. I'm make a full announcement in the next few days when it is live on the server.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Wow. 10 inside the park homers. 12 walkoff homers. 27 homers against guys named "Lefty" by a lefty.
The best. Period.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Both Yankee Stadium and Polo Grounds had miiiighty deep center fields. All the inside-the-parkers probably aren't so shocking even for a non-speedster back then. Look at all his triples too.
Not that I disagree about his being the best.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Most of the spaces are blank (pitch count, score, runners on base...)
Is that a test run or is that the way it will be for early players?
May 19th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Dave,
That is the way it is going to be. I really wish we had scores because that would allow us to get all walk-off home runs. I may need to pay someone to figure out which late inning home home runs are walk-offs. Obviously for retrosheet years, we'll have more data.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Very interesting.
I recall reading a few years ago that Ruth actually had more than 60 HRs in 1927 and more than 714 for his career as recording HRs as HRs back then was not uniform. Something along the lines that when the Yankees went to St. Louis (Browns) back then on the road the local newspapers did not record HRs and looking at the box scores, with 1 RBI and 1 R and the Yankees only scoring 1 R that Ruth must have homered. Anyone else a) recall this and b) any chance of changing these records?
May 20th, 2009 at 1:31 am
I had not heard about that. I do think that he gained a few homers from balls bouncing over the fence, which were counted as HR at some point, but I believe he also lost some when balls curved foul after going over the wall (also a rule at some point), and I think he may not have gotten credit for all his walk-off HR, because if runners were on base a hitter would only get credit for the bases needed to push the winning run around. (I hope I'm remembering all those different rules accurately...)
May 21st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Sean, I don't know if the information is available, but the final score of each game in which he homered (or at least who won) would be enlightening.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 am
Ruth didn't have any bounce home runs. I think you have it backwards Mrbaseballcard. The issue is that he didn't get any RBI for some of his home runs. There are I think a couple dozen if not a couple hundred cases where a player has 1 HR and no RBI for the game. Trent McCotter is tracking all of these down. 1920's RBI's are really messed up because the scorers didn't understand the new rule and often were arbitrary in assigning RBI.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Sean,
Very possible, and your explanation sounds more plausible. I also agree that Ruth never received bounced home runs. I believe the bounced home runs (ground rule doubles today) were back in the late 1800s. Thanks for the response.