Babe Ruth’s Lost 715th Home Run

 

On April 27, 1969, baseball fans learned that “one of the most hallowed statistics of all sports lore” – Babe Ruth’s career total of 714 home runs – would be revised. Leonard Koppett of the New York Times reported on a “forgotten” home run hit by Babe Ruth in the summer of 1918. “It turns out,” Koppett wrote, “that Ruth hit 715 home runs, not 714, and starting next year the official records will show that.”1

This surprising announcement came out of the creation of The Baseball Encyclopedia – the landmark reference work containing, for the first time ever, “a complete record of every man who ever played in a major league game” – which was published later that year, in August 1969.

Record-keeping for baseball’s first four decades was far from meticulous. To make certain that The Baseball Encyclopedia contained accurate statistics for the years 1876-1919, researchers working for Information Concepts Incorporated (ICI) combed through miles of microfilm, gathering data game by game.

Questions arose about the statistics for many of those seasons, which had been played under different rules than were in effect for much of the twentieth century. Baseball Commissioner William Eckert formed the Special Baseball Records Committee in early 1968 to address these issues.

Koppett explained the five-man committee’s two main purposes: “To evaluate old scoring rules in order to make them logically consistent with existing practices so that the statistics would be truly comparable; and to pass upon outright errors uncovered by the researchers.”2 He also noted: “Since 1920, official league records are in good shape, but before that many games did not have an official scorer, and rules were written and applied inconsistently.”3

One of the research questions concerned “sudden-death home runs.” In its final report, the committee stated, “Before 1920, when the team batting last won the game in the ninth or in an extra inning, the ruling was that the team could not win by more than one run. If a man hit an outside-the-park home run … he was given credit for a lesser hit [the number of bases necessary to score the winning run] and only the winning run counted.”4 Only if the bases were empty would the batter get credit for a home run.

In November 1968 the committee ruled unanimously that those game-ending hits should now properly be considered home runs, and that the statistics for the batters, pitchers, and teams should be adjusted accordingly.5 This was not considered a big deal – until an ICI researcher found the box score of the Red Sox-Indians game played at Fenway Park on July 8, 1918. With the score 0-0 and Amos Strunk on first base in the bottom of the 10th inning, the Boston batter cranked a pitch over the right-field fence. Because three bases were needed to score the winning run, the batter was awarded a triple and the Red Sox celebrated a 1-0 victory. What made this game noteworthy? The batter was Babe Ruth.

“The Colossus of Clouters came up swinging his two heavy, new bats. The crowd yelled loudly and long for a home run. Babe took his stance, made his bid on the very first pitch [from Stan Coveleski], a curve ball, and zowee how it traveled … up into the realm of eagles, high and higher, far and farther.” The baseball landed about three-quarters of the way up the right-field bleachers, “easily the longest hit to that section ever seen.”6

At ICI’s offices in Manhattan’s Hotel Pennsylvania, this news caused a huge commotion. Joanne Cotterill, one of the computer programmers, recalled David Neft, who oversaw the Encyclopedia project, “roaring all day long. He was so over the top about it. He was thrilled. But he kept saying, ‘We can’t change that statistic. People have gone to their graves thinking Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs. How could we possibly do this?’”7

Nearly 50 years later, Neft was adamant that despite the gravity of changing one of baseball’s most iconic numbers, Ruth’s home run total should “absolutely” have been changed to 715. “If it had been Joe Smith, they would have approved the change,” Neft said. “Clearly, nobody wanted to monkey with Ruth’s 714. But why should most of baseball history say that if you hit a walk-off home run, you get credit for a home run, but when Babe Ruth hits one, he gets credit for only the number of bases needed to score the winning run? You have to be consistent. You have to use the same logic for everybody.”8

A week after the Times article appeared, the Special Baseball Records Committee met again and recast its votes. By a 3-to-2 vote, it was decided that Ruth’s 715th home run, as well as the other 36 game-winning home runs uncovered by ICI’s researchers, should be pushed back down the memory hole.9 Lee Allen (historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame) and Robert Holbrook (executive assistant to the president of the American League) remained in favor of upholding their earlier decision “in the interest of consistency in the records.” However, the other three members – Joseph Reichler (director of public relations of the commissioner’s office), David Grote (director of public relations for the National League), and Jack Lang (secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America) – changed their votes.10

Reichler noted that he had been out of the country during the November 1968 meeting and someone else from the commissioner’s Office had cast his vote. He also claimed the committee “had gone beyond its authority” and should not “tamper with rules which govern baseball records at the time in which these records were made.”11 Lang agreed: “It just doesn’t make any sense to go back 50 years and alter rules that were in force then.”12

However, if Reichler and Lang truly believed that changing rules from 50 years earlier was beyond the committee’s mandate, why did they agree to “alter” numerous other old statistics, including games played, hits, batting average, slugging percentage, walks, fielding assists, errors, earned runs, earned-run average, and won-lost decisions?13 In explaining his opposition to the home-run decision, Reichler said: “When you carry this a little further, what do you want to do about hits that bounced into the stands and were declared homers?” Bill Fleischman of The Sporting News answered: “A good question. They now are doubles.”14 That example further undercuts Reichler’s explanation, since the committee gave its approval to “tamper” with that rule, as well.

The New York Times published an unsigned article the day after the new vote, explaining that the committee believed it had “no right to change, retroactively, a playing rule” in effect in 1918. “All other changes voted on dealt with conventions about scoring, clerical errors, oversights and so forth; but this particular one dealt with actual rules of play, which could not be changed by anyone after the fact.”15

The rules concerning walk-off home runs – both before and after 1920 – obviously fall under “conventions about scoring,” as well as “rules of play.” John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian since 2011, said “[T]he decision to rescind Ruth’s homer was a result of pressures to leave hallowed numbers alone.”16 The committee believed it was better to knowingly retain an incorrect statistic in baseball’s official records rather than correctly revise such an iconic number.

Back in July 1918, not long after Ruth’s blast crash-landed in the Fenway Park bleachers, there was talk of changing this rule. That season was the first in which Ruth appeared in the Red Sox’ everyday lineup, playing either first base or left field when he wasn’t pitching, and his exceptional hitting over the first 2½ months of 1918 had become a huge national story.

“Had Strunk been on third yesterday … ‘Babe’ would have received credit for only a one-base hit,” wrote Melville Webb of the Boston Globe. “As the rules now stand the player is discriminated against, and all to no necessary purpose. Nothing is likely to be done about it, but something should be done, even if only in the spirit of fairness. …”17

Five days later, the Boston Traveler’s W.C. Spargo called the ruling “an undeserved hardship on the batter.” Spargo argued that although a single and a home run are worth the same thing when it comes to a player’s batting average, when a batter “drives out a homer that is beyond all question, he should not be cut down by the rules.”18

American League umpire Billy Evans agreed that the rule should be changed, and he wrote a lengthy article for the Boston Post after the 1918 season was over. “The right field bleachers at the Boston grounds are so far from the home plate that you almost need a field glass to get familiar with what is going on. Standing at the home plate with bat in hand, it seems almost impossible to hit the ball into said bleachers. … If there ever was a real, genuine, sure enough home run, [Ruth’s] wallop was the last word. … [A] batsman who hits the ball over the fence or into the bleachers should be credited with a home run [and] all runners on the bases, as well as the batsman, should be entitled to score.”19

The rule was changed after the 1919 season. The Rules Committee approved the change, 5 to 1. National League umpire Hank O’Day was the lone holdout, insisting that “there is no way you can score a run after a game is over.”

ALLAN WOOD is the author of “Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox” and “Don’t Let Us Win Tonight: An Oral History of the 2004 Boston Red Sox’s Impossible Playoff Run” (with Bill Nowlin). He has been writing “The Joy of Sox” blog since 2003 and has contributed to eight SABR books. Born and raised in Vermont, Allan enjoyed 2004 while living in New York City. He now lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, with his partner Laura Kaminker and their three dogs.

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From “Decisions of the Special Baseball Records Committee”
Appendix B to The Baseball Encyclopedia (1969)

Here are the 37 instances of a batter hitting an outside-the-park home run and being credited with a lesser hit (1876-1919):

Date	Batter	Team	League	Opponent	Hit
June 17, 1884	Roger Connor	New York	NL	Boston	Single
September 6, 1884	Hardy Richardson	Buffalo	NL	Boston	Triple
April 21, 1885	Fred Mann	Pittsburgh	AA	Louisville	Double
July 30, 1885	Tommy McCarthy	Boston	NL	Detroit	Double
August 20, 1885	Paul Hines	Providence	NL	Boston	Single
June 5, 1890	Sam Thompson	Philadelphia	NL	Brooklyn	Single
June 17, 1890	Mike Griffin	New York	PL	Philadelphia	Double
July 30, 1890	Al McCauley	Philadelphia	NL	Chicago	Triple
May 7, 1891	King Kelly	Cincinnati	AA	Boston	Single
September 13, 1891	George Wood	Philadelphia	AA	Milwaukee	Double (Game 1)
July 7, 1892	Buck Ewing	New York	NL	St. Louis	Single
May 13, 1893	Lou Bierbauer	Pittsburgh	NL	Louisville	Single
August 9, 1893	George Van Haltren	Pittsburgh	NL	Chicago	Double
August 27, 1895	Bill Lange	Chicago	NL	Washington	Single
September 2, 1895	Mike Tiernan	New York	NL	Cleveland	Triple
September 27, 1895	Duke Farrell	New York	NL	Baltimore	Triple
July 27, 1896	Charlie Irwin	Cincinnati	NL	Cleveland	Triple
June 4, 1897	Parke Wilson	New York	NL	Louisville	Double
July 15, 1899	Jimmy Collins	Boston	NL	Pittsburgh	Single
July 24, 1899	Ginger Beaumont	Pittsburgh	NL	Philadelphia	Triple
July 24, 1900	Jimmy Collins	Boston	NL	St. Louis	Single
July 27, 1900	Chick Stahl	Boston	NL	Pittsburgh	Single
May 17, 1901	Bill Coughlin	Washington	AL	Philadelphia	Single
September 1, 1902	Ed Gremminger	Boston	NL	Cincinnati	Double
June 26, 1903	Pat Moran	Boston	NL	Chicago	Triple
September 10, 1904	Roger Bresnahan	New York	NL	Philadelphia	Double
May 5, 1906	Sherry Magee	Philadelphia	NL	Brooklyn	Triple
June 2, 1906	Tim Jordan	Brooklyn	NL	Boston	Double
May 25, 1908	Joe Tinker	Chicago	NL	New York	Double
September 28, 1908	Cy Seymour	New York	NL	Philadelphia	Single
April 23, 1910	Doc Crandall	New York	NL	Brooklyn	Single
August 24, 1911	Tex Erwin	Brooklyn	NL	Chicago	Triple
June 17, 1914	Sherry Magee	Philadelphia	NL	St. Louis	Double
April 19, 1917	Ping Bodie	Philadelphia	AL	Boston	Triple
April 19, 1918	Irish Meusel	Philadelphia	NL	Boston	Triple
July 8, 1918	Babe Ruth	Boston	AL	Cleveland	Triple
July 18, 1918	Frank Baker	New York	AL	Detroit	Single (Game 2)