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Baseball’s Top-20 Home Run Hitters (1965) Photo Gallery
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The Continued Evolution of Baseball
In today’s interesting essay, Paul Doyle gives us a summary of how the game has evolved with regard to home runs, contrasting the Dead Ball Era with the Live Ball Era and with our present post-1965 era. When you see his list of top-20 from 1965 and top-20 as of 2020, I think you’ll be quite surprised, as I was:
“People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for Spring” -Rogers Hornsby
“Rajah” Hornsby
“The Rajah” would be developing saddle sores if he were alive today waiting for baseball to begin. Although he was four years into his playing career with the Cardinals in 1918 and played during the last pandemic, the days, weeks, and months would no doubt have been hell for him.
Similarly, we diehards have had more time to wax nostalgic and maybe look for more baseball trivia to occupy our time. Recently, I was rummaging through some miscellaneous baseball clippings in my many scattered files and came upon an interesting one that goes back to 1965. Baseball was in the early part of the decade of expansion and a few years beyond the asterisk of Ford Frick and 17 years into the integration of the game. It was also at least 25 years before the era of steroids left a stain that still has not been washed away.
The article in question was a list of the Top 20 career HR hitters entering the 1965 season. At that point in history, the eras of the Dead Ball (1876-1919) vs Live Ball (1920-64) were almost dead even with 43 years for Dead Ball vs. 44 years for Live Ball.
(In the featured photo we see babe Ruth in 1920, his first year with the Yankees, opening the door to the “Live Ball” era)
Roger Connor emerged as the Home Run King of the Dead Ball era with a grand total of 138 by the time he retired in 1897. Similarly, if we consider 1901 as the new modern era, “Home Run” Baker tops the list with 96 with 17 coming in his last two years, which were Live Ball years (1920-21 and a teammate then of the Sultan of Swat)!
The Great Willie Mays!
My point is that the HR became a staple of Baseball’s emergence from the stink of the Dead Ball scandal of the Black Sox of 1919. The so-called “scientific game” of moving runners around the bases began to wane when the Babe took a different philosophy of hitting. Helped by the livelier ball and in many ways by the increased size of ballplayers simply by economic evolution, health and training, the power game was now much more prevalent.
Sluggers like Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams, Stan Musial were stalwarts of the Roaring Twenties through the War Years and beyond. Integration in 1947 saw the emergence of black HR hitters like Mays, Banks, and Aaron. And yet, by the start of 1965, an important year in Civil Rights legislation that very slowly removed the prejudices, three black players were among the career HR leaders; in fact, in just that short period, those players were already amongst the Top 14 in history!
Hank Aaron had passed Joe DiMaggio in 1964, moving up to #14 with 366 home runs. No one was touting Henry as the heir apparent to displacing The Babe at that point. In fact, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were thought of more to dethrone Ruth and were just separated by one HR (454-453 advantage-Mantle and #’s 7 and 8 respectively on the list). The injury history of Mantle became more pronounced that year and the “Say Hey Kid” still had his foot on the accelerator, which made him more of a candidate.
To capsulize the noticeable impact of the home run at the start of 1965, the 20th player on the list (Al Simmons at 307) had more than twice as many as Dead Ball Connor achieved.
Fast forward to this year. Of the 20 players listed in 1965, only six are still on the Top-20 (Aaron, Mays, Mantle, Foxx, Williams). Williams has to share the 20th spot with Frank Thomas and Willie McCovey. Trivia note: Ruth had 521 entering the 1930 season.
The three players on the bottom of the list in 1965 (#18 Greenberg, #19 Roy Sievers, and #20 Simmons) have been pushed out beyond #100. Amazing! The eras go from Connor at 138 to Ruth at 714 to Bonds at 762 today.
So, as we wait patiently (with “The Rajah”) to stop staring out the window, in our hearts we know the game has evolved even as the one constant of HR remains. What used to be called the science of moving base runners is now the science of “bat speed”, “exit velocity,” and “launch angle” turning fans into aerodynamics experts. Wilbur and Orville Wright were born 100 years too soon and could have had a second career.
Top-20: Start of 1965 Top-20: Start of 2020
Babe Ruth 714 Barry Bonds 762
Jimmie Foxx 534 Hank Aaron 755
Ted Williams 521 Babe Ruth 714
Mel Ott 511 Alex Rodriguez 696
Lou Gehrig 493 Willie Mays 660
Stan Musial 475 Albert Pujols 656
Mickey Mantle 453 Ken Griffey, Jr. 630
Willie Mays 453 Jim Thome 612
Ed Matthews 445 Sammy Sosa 609
Duke Snider 407 Frank Robinson 586
Ernie Banks 376 Mark McGwire 573
Gil Hodges 370 Harmon Killebrew 573
Ralph Kiner 369 Rafael Palmiero 569
Hank Aaron 366 Reggie Jackson 563
Joe DiMaggio 361 Manny Ramirez 555
Johnny Mize 359 Mike Schmidt 548
Yogi Berra 358 David Ortiz 541
Hank Greenberg 331 Mickey Mantle 536
Roy Sievers 318 Jimmie Foxx 534
Al Simmons 307 Williams, Thomas, McCovey 521
Paul Doyle
Photo Credits: All from Google search
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