DON'T expect to see all of the types of charts that we'll display in this installment of the "10+ homer months" series--if you go back two posts and look at the number of 10+ homer months that begin to accumulate in the 1950s, you'll understand how one of our charts in this post would overwhelm everything...
We've been teasing you with the identity of the hitter with the most 10+ homer months, but we figure that most of you have not been fooled by our feeble attempts at misdirection. So, without further ado, here are the twenty-five (25!) 10+ homer months by a man that needs no introduction:
Some of the slash line numbers in this display merge seamlessly into surrealism, don't they? Seven of these 10+ homer months feature SLG values above .900; five of them produce an OPS of 1.500 or higher.
We think you won't be surprised to discover that the first nine entries on the list are also the first nine times in baseball history where a batter hit 10+ homers in a month...
...and we'll find out as we go along whether any other slugger will duplicate Babe Ruth's feat of five 10+ homer months in the same season (1921).
Recall that there are currently 1289 instances of 10+ homer months...and note that on this chart we see five instances where the Bambino hit 14 or more homers in a month (capped by his great September 1927 run to sixty homers). A question for you to consider as we continue with the series: how many instances are there of a hitter slugging 14 or more homers in a month?
NOW for the chart that you will understand is going to be impossible when we move into decades where the home run has become chronic. From 1920-39, however, homers were less plentiful overall, reserved for a smaller class of elite hitter--all of whom you will see on the chart below...
As you can see, the list is sorted in descending order of frequency: the numbers for Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio are not all-inclusive, as each of these sluggers continued on into subsequent decades. But you can see the clustering of 10+ homer months in their big seasons, which also includes Hack Wilson's 56 homer season in 1930. Foxx and Wilson both logged four 10+ homer months in their biggest homer seasons; Foxx, Greenberg and Lou Gehrig managed three of 'em in other years.
Interestingly, Ruth only had two 10+ HR months in 1927, the year he hit sixty--but those two months (May and September) accounted for just under half of his seasonal total...
AT the bottom of the chart is where we'll find the hitters whom we'll be showcasing as the most unusual members of the "10+ homers in a month" fraternity. How are they unusual? Take a look at the chart and we think it will become immediately obvious to you...
Take a look at the "TotHR" column at the far right, and notice how many of these folk hit fewer than twenty homers in the season in which they had a 10+ HR month. Our first member of this list might not seem to really fit: the veteran Tillie Walker experienced a power surge at the tail end of his career, aided in 1922 by the decision by Philadelphia A's owner-manager Connie Mack to move the left field fences in. (Mack was not keen on Walker's relatively low batting average and benched the veteran the following year!)
The rest of our folk here (with one notable exception) are middling homer hitters who clustered their long-balls into a single month, which in many cases was accompanied by a month-long hot streak (George Harper in 1928 and Hank Leiber in 1939 being the most prominent examples).
But the guy who sticks out on the list is Vince Barton, a young slugger that the Cubs brought up in mid-1931 in the wake of Hack Wilson's shocking collapse. Barton hit five homers in a week in early August, but struggled to keep his batting average over .200 throughout the month, hitting his 10th homer on August 29th to become this fraternity's most anomalous member. (Barton fizzled out in early 1932 and was sent back to the minors by the Cubs, never to return.)
PERHAPS we can consolidate the 1940s and 1950s into a similar presentation, as the war years (and the balata ball) caused homers (and, by extension, 10+ homer months...) to drop precipitously. Stay tuned...
