About Home Runs—Everywhere

Podcast Transcript

One of the most dramatic events in sports is the home run. Leads can change hands in a split second and games can be won or lost.

However, home runs weren’t always what they are today. The rules regarding home runs have changed, in some cases dramatically.

Perhaps the biggest change is the strategy surrounding home runs. Advanced statistical analysis changed the approach to home runs so much that the game was unrecognizable to people in the late 19th century.

Learn more about home runs, how they’re changing, and how they impact the game of baseball in this edition of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The genesis of this episode goes back to the first list of 100 ideas I came up with when I launched the podcast in 2020.

One of the ideas came from a book written by a baseball researcher named Bill Jenkinson called Babe Ruth hit 104 home runs that year. This idea has been at the top of my list for years, and every time I open a file, it’s always in front of my eyes.

In the book, Jenkinson details Babe Ruth’s 1921 season, undoubtedly one of the greatest seasons in baseball history. He reviewed every game he played throughout the season, read every sportswriter’s coverage, and included all exhibition games against other major league teams.

His argument is that if Babe Ruth had played under a modern schedule, modern ballparks, and modern rules, he would have hit 104 home runs in 1921.

It was a very interesting read, but for years I struggled to find a way to turn it into an interesting plot.

What I finally realized was that what was interesting were the changes in rules, ballparks, and strategies that changed the approach to the game and home runs.

So then…

When organized baseball was first codified in the mid-19th century, the home run barely existed as a strategic concept. Early rules didn’t even guarantee that a ball going over the fence would count as a run.

In many cases, spectators are required to recover a ball that hits the crowd, and the batsman can continue running until the ball is recovered. What came to be known as “ground rules home runs” started out as just an extension of aggressive baserunning.

The outfield is vast and irregular, the fences are often non-existent, and the balls are soft and inconsistently produced. Later hits became regular fly balls or home runs, but instead were rolling balls chased down by outfielders.

Also, in the early days, hitting long fly balls was often hampered by the fact that if the ball was caught after one bounce, the batter would be out.

Scoring emphasizes fundamentals and speed rather than raw power.

By the end of the 19th century, professional leagues such as the National League began to standardize venues and equipment, and the concept of fair balls clearing outfield boundaries and automatic runs gradually became popular.

Even so, home runs are still uncommon. The “Dead Ball Era,” which lasted until roughly 1919, was characterized by heavy, loosely wound baseballs that were used throughout the game but were soft, misshapen, and darkened by dirt and tobacco juice.

Pitchers were allowed to scuff, spit or otherwise manipulate the ball, making it difficult to hit the ball. Strategies focus on bunting, hit-and-runs, stolen bases, and producing singles. The league leaders typically end the season with fewer than ten home runs.

Many of the home runs during this period were inside the park, with the ball not clearing the outfield wall. They were just glorified triples that the batter would actually run home.

The single-season home run record was set by Ed Williamson of the Chicago White Sox in 1884, who hit 27 home runs. This record stood for 35 years.

The record was finally broken in 1919 by Babe Ruth, a young pitcher/right fielder of the Boston Red Sox, who scored 29 runs.

In 1920, people’s perception of home runs fundamentally changed. Babe Ruth, now playing for the New York Yankees, broke his previous single-season home run record with 54 home runs. This revolutionized the game of baseball.

With the exception of the Philadelphia Phillies, who hit 64 home runs, Ruth had more home runs than any other team in the major leagues.

In 1921, Ruth hit 59 home runs in one of the greatest seasons ever, and at just 26 years old, he ended the season as the career home run leader with 162 home runs.

Several rules regarding home runs were different in 1921 than they are today.

The first is that if a ball goes over the outfield wall in fair territory but then curves into foul territory, the ball is considered a foul ball, not a home run.

Second, if a home run ends a game, it is not necessarily recorded as a home run. Only enough bases were awarded to win.

Finally, if the ball bounced over the wall, it was considered a home run, unlike today where it was a ground rules double.

Another major difference is court size.

By modern standards, many parks built around 1900 had huge outfields. The center field wall is 460 to nearly 500 feet from home plate. For example, Cleveland’s Union Park, before it was reconfigured in the 1910s, originally had a center field distance of 460 feet and a left field distance of 385 feet.

The most famous is the New York Polo Grounds, home to the Giants and Yankees until 1923, which has a 483-foot notch in center field, the furthest in history.

This is offset by the very close left and right field walls. Right field is 256 feet long and left field is 279 feet long.

Only five players in history have hit a home run in the center of the Polo Grounds: Babe Ruth, Luke East, Hank Aaron, Lou Bullock and Joe Adcock.

The size of early ballparks was no gimmick. Early ballparks were squeezed into city blocks, railroad yards and scattered tracts of land. Before standardized rules, teams accepted radical asymmetry as part of the game.

It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that MLB began enforcing minimum distances and gradually eliminating the most extreme cases.

There is an ongoing debate surrounding home runs as to who hit the longest home run in history.

Today, major league ballparks use the Statcast system, which uses radar to measure a ball’s speed and trajectory to estimate its distance.

Yet for decades, we only had anecdotal stories of numerous home runs. This results in ridiculous measurements, often based on where the ball comes to rest after rolling.

Modern measurements tell us that 500-foot home runs are rare. In 2025, there will be zero 500-foot home runs in Major League Baseball. The longest is 495 feet, designed by Nick Kurtz of the former Oakland (sort of Sacramento) team that will soon become the Las Vegas Athletics.

Before the Statcast era, the most well-documented moonshot home run was by Micky Mantle. He hit an estimated 565-foot home run at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., which sailed over the left-field bleachers and landed far outside the stadium.

This was helped by favorable wind direction. The depth of Griffith Stadium makes this estimate reasonable, and multiple witnesses confirmed the distance.

Some initial estimates put the distance at 634 feet, but these estimates have been largely debunked.

Reggie Jackson hit a towering home run off the beacon at Tiger Stadium in Detroit during the 1971 All-Star Game. Estimated height is 520 to 530 feet. It’s one of the most visually convincing long home runs ever recorded on broadcast video, lending credibility to the estimate.

Likewise, Babe Ruth probably hit more 500-foot home runs than anyone in history. His longest song, the one certified by Guinness World Records, was shot in Detroit on July 18, 1921. Estimated height 575 feet.

The longest proven home run in competitive play was hit by Joey Meyer of the AAA Denver Zephyrs on June 2, 1987. Playing at Mile High Stadium in Denver, his home run measured 582 feet.

Given Denver’s higher elevation and less air resistance, it makes it an ideal place to set a home run record.

Under ideal but physically reasonable conditions, physicists and baseball researchers agree that the maximum range is about 550 to 600 feet, which would be consistent with the longest home run ever recorded.

A hitter swinging at the limit of human ability can generate bat speeds of approximately 80 to 85 mph, resulting in a maximum ball exit velocity approaching 120 to 125 mph.

Muscle strength, reaction time, and risk of injury impose strict biological limits. The ball itself also limits distance. At higher speeds, air resistance increases dramatically and quickly offsets the gain from the extra speed.

If the ball leaves the bat at about 125 mph, a near-optimal launch angle of 30 to 35 degrees, moderate backspin to create lift, warm air and a slight tailwind, projectile models show a maximum flight distance of just under 600 feet at sea level.

So the home run that Joey Meyer hit was about the biggest home run that could ever be hit.

YouTube channel Smarter Every Day has created a batting machine that can swing an aluminum bat far faster than a human can. Their best hitting distance using the machine was 696 feet.

One of the biggest changes in baseball over the years has been the shift toward home runs as the primary strategy.

In the dead-ball era of the early 20th century, the focus of the game was batting average, stolen bases, and trying to win every run on the basepaths.

Advanced statistics show that a solo home run is more valuable than a series of singles, which require multiple successful outings and carry the risk of ending an inning early. Guaranteed runs with one swing can significantly increase scoring efficiency regardless of the number of people on base or the size of the defensive lineup.

The analysis also showed that slugging percentage and on-base percentage were more strongly correlated with runs and wins than batting average or stolen base percentage.

A base hit plus a home run results in two runs without ever putting the ball in play, eliminating the defensive difference. When teams were modeled over thousands of innings, it was clear that high-power lineups produced more runs in a season, even if they struck out more.

Eliminating defenses makes outcomes more predictable, resulting in what are known as three true outcomes. The three real outcomes in baseball are strikeouts, walks, and home runs. None of this involves defense.

Prior to 1920, most years averaged about 0.1 home runs per game. Over the past few years, averaging 1.2 home runs per game has become commonplace. A 12-fold increase in about 120 years.

I’ll end with the biggest record in baseball: the career home run.

The current Major League Baseball record is held by Barry Bonds, who hit 762 home runs. He surpassed the record held by Hank Aaron, who in turn surpassed Babe Ruth.

Major League Baseball isn’t the only league, however.

From 1959 to 1980, Sadaharu Oh hit 868 official home runs in the Nippon Professional Baseball League. His total is fully documented, consistent and universally recognized, making him the player with the highest proven career home run total in baseball history.

In the Negro Leagues, Josh Gibson is often credited with hitting 800 or more home runs, but that number includes exhibition games, speaking tours and incomplete records.

While Gibson’s power was legendary and was likely on par with or greater than that of MLB sluggers of his era, his total power cannot be accurately verified, so this remains an estimate rather than an official statistic.

However, to bring things full circle, I’ll go back to Bill Jenkinson again. He estimated in the book that if Babe Ruth had played under modern rules, on a modern schedule, and in a modern-sized ballpark, he might have hit more than 1,000 home runs in his career.

That’s nearly 300 more home runs than the 714 he actually hit in his career.

So, will we see more home runs in the future?

Maybe, but probably not, and if so, not in huge numbers.

As with every revolution in war, advances in offense lead to improvements in defence. More home run hitters lead to better pitching by pitchers who are rotated into the field more often.

What began as an accident of course geometry is now the result of careful design tweaked by decades of rulemaking and advanced statistics. In many ways, the history of home runs is the history of baseball’s shifting balance between strategy and spectacle.