Recently, a friend asked me the trivia question, “What Hall of Fame player hit a HR in his first major league at-bat, and then never hit another?” I knew the answer, Hoyt Wilhelm.
When I looked up more about Wilhelm’s HR, I discovered that he hit it on April 23, 1952, against a thoroughly obscure pitcher named Dick Hoover, whose career spanned exactly two games. It was the only HR ever given up by Hoover.
This got me to wondering how rare this might be. How many home runs have been both the only HR struck by the batter and the only HR given up by the pitcher?
If no one knows, useful fallback information would be, What % of all-time HR’s have been struck by single-HR batters, and what % have been given up by single-HR pitchers? This would give an idea about how rare the confluence should be.
Hmm. So 0.48% of all HR’s are batter solos, and 0.28% are pitcher solos. The product of those two numbers is 0.00134%, or one in 74,000. So it looks like it might be pretty rare.
Of course HR’s were less common in the early 1900’s, so there were probably more onesies then. But still, probably not a lot.