IN SEARCH OF/3: THE MOST HOMERS HIT by A HITTER vs. AN OPPOSING TEAM

BACK at it after another hiatus...we will eventually shift the focus of this series to cover the HR/PA percentage sweepstakes, which currently has Babe Ruth out in front of all competitors.

In this installment, however, we continue to look for hitters who might eclipse Ruth's record for homers against a single opposing team: that total, in case it's slipped your mind, is 123 (a very nice number indeed, one that should remain readily rememberable; the Babe amassed that total against the Detroit Tigers).

So we turn our attention to hitters who played against a more limited number of opponents, figuring that this type of investigation will be the quickest way to determine if anyone can wrest this particular feat awav from the Bambino

First, Jimmie Foxx, whose total of 534 HRs was second only to Ruth for more than three decades, and who had very limited playing time in the National League, as the chart at right will reveal.

As you can see, it's those Tigers again (93 homers allowed to Foxx...) who are the favored victims--their ballpark was conducive to the long ball (particularly by opposing sluggers!). The lowly St. Louis Browns gave the Tigers a run for their money, but came up just short with 87 HRs.

Interestingly, Foxx had his lowest HR/PA against the Red Sox; we'd have expected it to be the Washington Senators due to the home run suppressive characteristics of Griffith Stadium, their home park for the timespan of Foxx's career. 

Note also that Foxx bucks the general trend of homer hitters feasting on weekend competition: his HR/PA against good teams (those with a WPCT of .500+) is actually six-tenths of a percent higher than against the major also-rans (<.500 WPCT).

We will eventually sum up those percentages for all of the notable homer hitters and present our findings.

Now let's move on to Willie Mays, who was thought to be the most robust of challengers for Ruth's overall HR record but who began to fade in the late sixties and wound up around fifty homers shy of 714.

Willie never played a single regular-season game against an AL opponent, which would seem to make him into an ideal candidate to challenge the Babe's "single opponent" record.

But, as you can see in the chart at left, Mays is also unable to get especially close to Ruth's 123 vs. the Tigers. The best he can do in chasing this record is to hit 98 homers against the Dodgers.

That pushed him one homer ahead of Hank Aaron, who hit 97 HRs vs. the Cincinnati Reds during his career.

The introduction of expansion teams did not particularly favor Mays--his only really robust HR/PA value against the NL's new teams came against the Mets. 

Willie was extremely consistent in his HR/PA versus good/bad teams, coming in with a 5.3% against both types. 

With these two hitters now accounted for, it's becoming hard to imagine that any of the other sluggers are going to eclipse the Babe in this subcategory of longball legerdemain. And neither man came particularly close to Ruth's HR/PA...which brings us back to what is possibly the most relevant question to be answered via the data in this series: who really is the greatest home run hitter of all time? Hold that thought: we'll get back to it...