10+ HR MONTHS: 1960-79

IT has always been Brock Hanke's thesis that the "Lords of Baseball" dampened the home run for roughly twenty years after Roger Maris exceeded Babe Ruth's fabled total of sixty...and, if not literally true, it certainly seems figuratively true. 

Our survey of "10+ HR months" tends to bear that out, even with the peregrinations within the data for the two decades shown at right (a strike zone expansion in 1963 undone six years later; the unprecedented and never-repeated four team expansion in 1969; the adoption of the designated hitter in 1973; another "half-round" of expansion in 1977).

Clearly the decline in offense during the so-called "second deadball era" that still haunts the scurrilous scribes today as the ghost of that era's ghoulishly dessicated batting average comes to visit them in the dead of night...but note that the corrections implemented to course-correct the decline in power that came to a head in 1968 produced only the briefest burst in the two years after baseball's biggest-ever expansion. It wasn't until 1977 that the game began to leave  its power drought behind once and for all. 

BUT we're here to celebrate and catalogue the folk who continued the semi-honorable pursuit of doggedly swinging from the heels, and whose efforts would from time to time produce monthly homer totals in double figures. Such an occurrence has become rampant in the last thirty years or so, which makes these forays into the past more poignant (and less crowded).

Let's look at the top producers of 10+ homer months in the 1960s (at left). As always, what first leaps out of the list (save for the fellow at the top: we'll return to him shortly...) is how rare it was for Henry Aaron to hit ten or more homes in a single month--we'll do a deep dive on Hammerin' Hank's monthly totals and make it part of a special post later on in the series. 

What also leaps out here, if your eyes are drawn to the trickeries in our color-coding mechanism, is the fact that Roger Maris became the second player in baseball history to have five 10+ homer months in the same season--no wonder the Lords wanted to do something to quell such blasphemy! But, of course, our yearly log demonstrates the measures they took in 1963 did not manage to detract from the relentless, clockwork-like power probings of the man Fritz Peterson called "The Fat Kid"--Harmon Killebrew. 

Given the offensive deprivations put into place during that "second deadball" era, it's possible to consider Killebrew's 10+ homer month achievement (sixteen in the 1960s, twenty overall in his career) as being every bit as impressive as Ruth's lifetime total of twenty-five. Let's do him the favor of displaying his full 10+ homer handiwork (below).

What's  alsonotable about Killebrew's achievement--as we'll find out in greater detail later on--is that he pioneered the phenomenon of the 10+ homer month accompanied by a persistently sub-.300 BA. Thirteen of his twenty 10+ homer months include that feature, which had first become a bug immediately after WWII, when it happened seven times in 1947. Over baseball history, the percentage of sub-.300 BA 10+ homer months is still lingering around one in three (34%), but the "sons of Harmon" have taken over in recent years and have pushed that percentage well over 50%--paging Kyle Schwarber and the 10+ HR month in which he hit .168 (!!). 

BUT let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here are the "also-rans" (or, if you prefer, the "one-hit wonders" of the 10+ homer klatsch during the 1960s (at right). As might be evident to those who've perused the earlier versions of this list, the instances of truly "unlikely" hitters who make their appearances on these list are declining in number. Some of these folk actually have more than one 10-homer month to their credit--they just happened to have them in months occurring in an adjacent decade (Ted Williams: 40s, 50s; Eddie Mathews and Ernie Banks: 50s; Dick Allen and Billy Williams: 70s).

There are still a few anomalies here, however: guys like Chuck Essegian, known almost exclusively due to his pinch-hit homer spree in the 1959 World Series, or Chuck Hinton, who (like Essegian) got a late start in his major league career. There's also Gene Oliver, famed mostly for being the nemesis of Sandy Koufax, who finally received steady playing time in mid-1965 and bagged a 10-homer month in the midst of that. And--last but not least--the unbelievable Felix Mantilla, who parlayed a fortuitous trade to a congenial home ballpark (Fenway) into an unexpected power surge. (Mantilla, nicknamed "Felix the Cat" due to his slight 160-lb. frame, hit more than a third of his lifetime HRs in Fenway, where he accumulated less than 20% of his total plate appearances.)

LET's move on to the 1970s, where it will immediately become clear how the Lords were able to leach out the power levels from the game as it was played in the sixties (even with the enlarged strike zone). 

Note first that the leader in the decade (Mike Schmidt, who'll have more 10+ HR months in the 80s) has only six instances, as opposed to Killebrew's sixteen. No one comes close to approaching Maris' five 10+ HR months in a single year, not even George Foster, who probably caused some defibrillating moments in the cold hearts of those "Lords of the Game" when he hit 52 homers in 1977. The youthful Johnny Bench, who looked like he might be a truly prolific slugger early in his career, was quickly ground down by the seventies trend for "iron man" catchers. And Reggie Jackson, who'd electrified folks in 1969 with his first-half homer surge (including two 10+ homer months), never followed with a similarly prolonged stretch of homer hitting as his career continued to play out. There are fifteen hitters on this list, but only nine new names, as opposed to twenty and fourteen respectively on the 1960s "multiple 10+" list.

And here are the one-timers in the 1970s--many of whom, as you'll see, are there by virtue of the homer surge that occurred during the first half of the 1970 season. 

That's a total of nine 10+ homer/month one-timers (try repeating that phrase rapidly...) in '70, though the Giants' two Willies (Mays and McCovey) had been previously prominent on the 60s list. But such an overall surge certainly boosted the chances of hitters like Bob Bailey, Rusty Staub, Tommie Agee, Tommy Harper, Tony Conigliaro and Tony Perez. 

The big drought on this list occurs in 1974-76, when only two players--John Mayberry and Richie Hebner--manage to hit 10+ homers in a month. Hebner, a guy who hit 203 lifetime HRs but only had one 20+ season over his career, is the unlikeliest guy to have a 10+ homer month in the season in which he did it (1975), a year when he hit a total number of just 15. 

The unlikeliest of all on this list, however, has got to be Mike Hargrove, known mostly for his skill at drawing walks and for the colorful nickname "The Human Rain Delay"--earned for his propensity to jump in and out of the batter's box at every opportunity (a "pioneering" behavior that came to infect baseball more generally in the years that followed, leading slowly but inexorably to the present-day pitch clock). Hargrove hit just 80 lifetime homers, 18 of which came in 1977, including ten in August (five in a six-game stretch) and sixteen in the second half of the season.

And we'd be remiss not to mention our old fave Sixto Lezcano, whose 1979 season was a gem--164 OPS+, 28 HR, 101 RBI, .321 BA, capped by a 10-homer month in August--making it appear that he was poised for greatness. It didn't quite happen, but it was fun while it lasted (a statement applicable to many activities that remain all too associated with some form of "feckless youth"). It's nice to have him on the list, and it's a nice place to stop (for now). Stay tuned...