The Windowbreakers: The New York Giants in 1947

Nobody saw it coming. Nobody could have, because nothing quite like it had ever happened before. 

It is true that they had led the league in home runs the previous season, 1946. In fact, they had done so by a huge margin: they had hit 40 more homers than any other team in the league. But their league-leading total that year had been just 121, which was an unremarkable figure for a league leader in that era. The fact that no other team in the league hit more than 81 was a more unusual fact than their hitting 121.

They had hit more than 121 home runs five times in the past; their franchise record for team homers was 143, set 17 years earlier. The league record for team homers was 171, so obviously a team hitting 121, while achieving a mark that might lead the league, wasn’t remotely threatening league history. And the major league record was 182, a full 50 percent ahead of 121.

Moreover, the roster that had fashioned the 121 gave no indication of having much capacity to exceed it, and the team had made no significant acquisitions in the off-season. They began the new campaign with just three players on the roster who had ever hit more than 13 home runs in a big league season, and two of those three figured to ride the bench, given that one (Ernie Lombardi) was a 39-year-old backup catcher, and another (31-year-old Babe Young) was blocked on the depth chart at his first base position by the third guy who had hit that many. 

That third guy, the lone accomplished power hitter who did figure to play regularly, was, to be sure, one of the very best sluggers of the period: The Big Cat, Johnny Mize. He had once hit as many as 43 homers in a season. But that had been seven years earlier. Mize was now 34, and was coming off a season in which a broken hand had limited him to 101 games and 22 home runs. At this point in his career, there was no reason to anticipate him ever hitting as many as 43 again; 30 to 35 was a realistic upside, and a decline could hardly be considered unlikely.

Little of the rest of the lineup looked to be impos­ing. Despite leading the league in homers the preced­ing season, they hadn’t done much else well, rank­ing fifth in runs scored. This, in combination with a lackluster pitching staff, had resulted in a last-place finish. In addition to Mize, there were three regulars who figured to keep their starting roles: 32-year­ old catcher Walker Cooper, 26-year-old right fielder Willard Marshall, and 24-year-old shortstop Buddy Kerr. Cooper and Marshall were established as good line-drive hitters, but neither had demonstrated out­ standing home run capability. Kerr was a slick fielder with a meager bat.

One other veteran, Sid Gordon, figured to com­pete for a starting job, but at 29, he had never been a true regular, instead performing more as a “super sub,” roving between the outfield and infield. He had demonstrated value, but his career high in home runs was nine, and he was coming off a season in which he had produced just five in 450 at-bats.

Various other journeymen, and several rook­ies, would compete for playing time at second base, third base, center field, and left field. While giving significant opportunities to new talent introduces an obvious element of unpredictability into forecasting a team’s performance, in looking at this roster and envisioning all possible scenarios, no one could rea­ sonably anticipate this ball club hitting significantly more than 121 home runs.

Nobody saw it coming. Nobody could have, because nothing quite like it had ever happened before.

The 1947 New York Giants hit 221 home runs. This has been a fact for more than half a century now, and generally if we’re aware of it at all, it’s just an obscure notation buried deep in a long list: today that total is tied for 37th on the all-time list of major league team home run totals. Since 1996 alone, 33 different teams have hit more than 221 homers in a season, and the current record is 264, by the 1997 Seattle Mariners. Hitting as many as 221 homers has become a routine occurrence under modern-day baseball conditions.

Through 1946, only 14 ball clubs in history had managed to hit as many as 150, just six of them within the past 10 years, and none in the past five. The idea that a team could possibly hit 221 home runs in a season was entirely ludicrous. At any time prior to 1947 — most certainly including 1946 — the very phrase, “the 1947 New York Giants hit 221 home runs” would have reasonably been perceived as nonsense, com­plete gibberish.

It was a silly number, fantasy land. Two-twenty­ one was the batting average of your utility infielder. It was nothing resembling how many home runs your team would hit, or even could hit.

Dominance

In the entire National League of 1947, a total of 886 home runs were hit — thus the Giants contributed almost exactly one-quarter of the league’s output. The other seven NL teams averaged 95 homers apiece, making the Giants’ 221 mark 2.3 times that of their typical opponent; in the 58 years since, no other league has demonstrated anything close to such single-team home run dominance.

One ball club in history did dominate its league in homers at greater proportional rates than the ’47 Giants, and that was the New York Yankees of the 1920s, with Babe Ruth in particular playing a very different game than just about anyone else. But in terms of absolute magnitude, rather than percentage, the Giants outdid even those Yankee teams. The Yankees’ greatest numerical margin over their com­petitors occurred in 1927, when, with Lou Gehrig bursting on the scene to join Ruth, the Yanks hit a new-record 158 homers while their average opposing team managed 40, for a differential of 118. The 1947 Giants produced 126 more home runs than the aver­age of their competitors.

Ballpark

The Giants’ home park was, of course, Harlem’s Polo Grounds, with a long, narrow horseshoe configura­tion, yielding the most oddly shaped playing field in modern major league history. The foul lines were comically short-279 feet to left field, and 257 to right-and then the walls angled very sharply out to a cavernously deep center field, measured at 484 feet from home plate in 1947. It added up to an extremely good environment for home runs (though interest­ingly, the enormous expanse of foul territory meant it was a very poor ballpark for batting average, and on balance it played as a neutral to slightly above-aver­age scoring environment).

So there’s no question that the 1947 Giants’ home run total was enhanced by playing half their games in the Polo Grounds. That year the ballpark yielded home runs (for the Giants and their opponents com­bined) at a rate 46% above the league-average yard, highest in the NL, and a mark typical of how the Polo Grounds played through­ out the late 1940s and early 1950s.

But to think that their achieve­ment was little more than a park-effect illusion would be to commit a serious miscalculation. The 1947 Giants hit 131 home runs at home, far and away the most in the league — but they also hit 90 away from the Polo Grounds, also far and away the most in the league. The total of 90 road home runs was easily a new league record (the previous mark was 78, by the 1930 Cubs). If the Giants had pro­duced no more home runs at home than they did on the road, they still would have set a new league record for total homers. Their power pro­duction was completely genuine.