Baseball Reference – with is usually definitive, gives the date of his first major league home run as May 6, 1915.
The one in Fayetteville is his first professional home run, but that was in the minors.
He only had one home run in his (short) minor league career, but records from the minors are sketchy. It’s possible he hit others, and he did hit the one in Toronto. But that was after his HR in Fayetteville. Baseball Reference is very unclear – they list him as having only one HR in 1914, but also list one HR with Baltimore and one HR with Toronto.
The home run in Fayetteville was during an intra-squad spring training game conducted by the then-minor-league Baltimore Orioles. The home run in Toronto was a regular-season minor league game; the Babe was playing for Providence AGAINST Toronto. As noted the Babe’s first major league home run came against the Yankees in New York on May 6, 1915.
In his early days, he supposedly hit 10 inside-the-park homers. I have such a tough time picturing that. I know he was slimmer in the teens, but I just…wow.
Were any of the major league parks unfenced by 1915? No, right? I guess the Polo Grounds would be a likely place to go for broke.
The Giants were in the National League. Ruth would never have played there except in a World Series, and those home runs wouldn’t count against the 714.
What made inside the park homers more likely was a combination of odd dimensions, weird bounces, fields that weren’t perfect (harder to run on and easier for balls to move unexpectedly), softer balls that moved more slowly, and the practice of letting overflow crowds stand in the outfield. (I think balls hit into the crowds were usually ground-rule doubles but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t get in the way on other plays.)
Actually, as Babe’s home field, Fenway had a bigger center field than the Polo Grounds: 468 versus 433. Polo made up for that in roomy left and right fields, up to 17 feet longer than center.
[del]I looked up League Park, too, which was basically a big rectangle, so dead center was 460 feet away from home plate.[/del]
Never mind. By the time Ruth would have ever played there, center field was at most 420 feet (still a huge center field, but not on the order of the Polo Grounds).
Now look up Huntington Avenue Grounds – original home of the Red Sox – and imagine the Babe playing there.
Yaknow, that’s a pretty good idea for a “what if” simulation. See what his numbers would have been had he played in the largest outfield in the majors, ever.
This is the park the Babe hit his Toronto home run in, or at least as near as I can piece together because the damn thing kept burning down and being rebuilt. Man, it would have been something to see a game there.
Holy smokes! Hit first homer was against the Yankees! And he *was *pitching! - 12 1/3 innings facing 50 batters! (This is something I thought I’d have known)
Yes, that was still the DBE. Interesting newspaper report. Into the right field grandstand. The right field line was 258 ft (yes, I had to look that up), so it wasn’t a long shot, but it did hit the upper tier, so hard to say how much power it had.
I played sandlot ball in my earlier days, and in the community parks I played at, the fences were usually about 250 ft. Even at that I probably only saw a handful of dingers in the few years I played. Makes you appreciate how hard it is to do!
I was under the impression that all he did for the Bosox was pitch - so the answer to the question about any early homer about if he pitched that day would be “yes.” If he was in the lineup, he was pitching.
According to Baseball Reference .com he was a pitcher-only through 1917. He began mixing it up in 1918. By 1920, the time he started playing in New York, he bcame a full-time player. He did, however pitch in a few games over the years with New York.
The Polo Grounds had a *very *short rightfield “porch” - not unlike current/Mattingly 80s/old Yankee Stadium. And a cavernous 475 foot centerfield. Willie Mays made “The Catch” way say hey out there.
