May 16, 2006
715
Dan Lewis posts on Babe Ruth's 715th home run. The rules at the time only credited a batter who hit a walk-off home run with the number of bases needed to win the game. Ruth was credited with a triple on one of those.
I guess that's balanced by the rule at the time that credited balls that bounced into the stands as home runs. They're the ground rule doubles of today. I know Ruth didn't hit any of those in 1927, but I'm not sure about the rest of his career.
I've updated the article to address David's concern. None of Ruth's 714 homers were of the ground rule double variety.
How does anybody know for sure that none of his HRs were of the ground rule double variety? There is not TV evidence of each and every one.
so wait, Ruth only ever hit ONE walk-off HR with a man on?
Wow.
That cat who says that Ruth really hit 1000 homers says that he hit a bunch via the ground rule route. He may have been purely speculating as well.
Anyone know how many inside-the-parkers he hit?
No walk-offs for Ruth? Next thing you know Sox fans will start saying he wasn't "clutch".
Gee, that's probably the worst attempt to insult Sawx fans...
No, no. The walk-off rule changed in 1920. So he only had one walk-off before 1920, which makes a lot of sense.
NB that he also hit the walk-off in question as a Red Sox player.
Easy there, Mike. It's called a joke. Must you take yourself so seriously?
From my understanding, the rule also used to be that if a ball went over the wall in fair territory and then curved foul it was foul, whereas now if it clears the inside of the foul pole, it's a homer. A guy did an article in Baseball Weekly a number of years ago about the possible additional homers Ruth would have had. I think it numbered in the dozen range, but I don't remember.
Also, Ruth played mostly or all prior to the 162 game season. That might have added a couple a year. It was 154 games in 1927 when he he 60.
Imagine how many fewer homers Ruth would have had if opposing pitchers had slow motion video replay technology.
