The Futility Infielder

A funny thing happened on the way to my blog. What had started out on Sunday morning as an email to Dayn Perry in appreciation for last week's Baseball Prospectus article on Hank Aaron turned into a quick and dirty research project. That in turn grew to a multi-spreadsheet undertaking and then into an overlong, caffeine-fueled blog entry. On a whim, I decided to run it by the BP editors before publishing it myself, braced for a quick but polite "no thanks." But the editors liked it, and within the hour I was revising the piece for publication on Prospectus. To paraphrase the great Eddie Izzard on the discovery of the Heimlich Maneuver, the way it all came together was like, "A fist, a hand, hoocha hoocha hoocha... lobster!" (If you don't know what I'm talking about you really need to watch Dress to Kill.)

Perry's article was an affectionate if belated tribute to Aaron, the 30th anniversary of whose 715th home run was on April 8. Noting Barry Bonds' progress up the all-time home run charts, Dayn began with a sentiment which I share: "With all due kudos to Barry Bonds for passing Willie Mays on the all-time home run leaderboard, I'm hoping his efforts to fell Hank Aaron's mark of 755 come to grief." Perry's desire has less to do with a dislike of Bonds for his arrogance or for any taint of BALCO-related mischief. It's based squarely on his admiration for Aaron and the obstacles which he overcame; a southerner himself, Perry's acutely aware of what he calls the region's "crueler natures."

He reminds readers that Aaron started in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns, encountering segregation and racism at several turns, including an ugly incident where a D.C. diner destroyed the plates which the players had eaten off rather than serve food on them to their white clientele. As a 19-year-old, Aaron broke the color line of the South Atlantic (Sally) League and would have done so in the Southern League as well when he got a break, literally. Bobby Thomson (yes, that one) fractured his leg, giving Aaron an opening on the Milwaukee Braves at the tender age of 20. Seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, Aaron was the last Negro Leaguer to make it to the majors.

Perry notes that Aaron's superficially declining stats in 1968 (the Year of the Pitcher) led him to consider retirement, but that historian Lee Allen reminded him of the milestones which lay ahead. Two years later, Aaron became the first black player to cross the 3,000 hit threshold, two months ahead of Willie Mays. By then Aaron was chasing 600 homers and climbing into some rarefied air among the top power hitters of all time.

It's Aaron's late-career heroics where I stepped into the picture. Intending to make a point about how Hammerin' Hank's homer totals were boosted by Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, a/k/a "the Launching Pad," I dug out my old Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (the '87 version) which contains home and road HR splits for a select group of players, and jotted some numbers down; lo and behold, during his Atlanta tenure, Aaron had hit 192 homers at home and 145 on the road. A big boost, to be sure, but then I began wondering how other top sluggers, particularly the Bambino, compared. Here's the home-road breakdown for the Top 20 homer hitters of all time as of April 20 (asterisks denote an active players):

Rk   Player             HR   HHR   RHR

1    Hank Aaron        755   385   370

2    Babe Ruth         714   347   367

3    Barry Bonds*      667   327   340

4    Willie Mays       660   335   325

5    Frank Robinson    586   321   265

6    Mark McGwire      583   285   298

7    Harmon Killebrew  573   291   282

8    Reggie Jackson    563   280   283

9    Mike Schmidt      548   265   283

10   Sammy Sosa*       543   292   251

11   Mickey Mantle     536   266   270

12   Jimmie Foxx       534   299   235

13   Rafael Palmeiro*  529   288   241

14T  Willie McCovey    521   264   257

14T  Ted Williams      521   248   273

16T  Ernie Banks       512   290   222

16T  Eddie Mathews     512   237   275

18   Mel Ott           511   323   188

19   Eddie Murray      504   248   256

20   Lou Gehrig        493   251   242 

Who knew Babe Ruth hit more homers on the road than at home? I surely did not. As you might expect, there's plenty of fun to be had with these numbers. That fun, accompanied by several other charts, is part of my BP article, which is a freebie this time (so I'll hear no whining about how broke you are this week). Check it out, and post your comments here if you have any.