OK, it's time to pick up on our earlier look at the 10+ homer months turned in by the late great Willie Mays and give you a sense of just how many times in baseball history a hitter has managed this feat.
After that, we'll spend time examining the leaders in 10+ homer months. (Mays' total of eighteen 10+ homer months is impressive, but it's not the record.)
Did it occur to you that there might be more than a thousand of these in baseball history?
The three that occurred in June 2024 (Anthony Santander, 13; Shohei Ohtani, 12; Aaron Judge, 11) have brought that total up to 1289 instances.
The TimeGrid™ chart shows us that the first time anyone hit 10+ homers in a mother occurred in 1920. (Perhaps you can figure out who was the first to achieve that without our having to mention his name...)
WE can also see how the record for most 10+ homer months in a season has evolved over time, with what seemed like a big spike in 1930 holding the record at 15 in a season for more than thirty years--before being broken in the Maris-Mantle expansion year of 1961.
That record held for another thirty-five years until it was broken in 1996, and again in 1998 and 1999--when the current record for the most 10-homer months in a season (42) was set.
Since then, baseball sluggers have come close to breaking it, with 41 such instances in 2001, and again in 2019, baseball's most prolific home season ever.
NEXT time we'll take a look at the 10+ homers in a month as they break out by calendar months, and we'll look at the higher levels of homers in a month...who, for instance hit the most homers in any single month? Who's had multiple 10+ homer months in the same year? Who hit the least number of homers in a season that included a 10+ homer month?
All this, and more...stay tuned!
