Maris, schmaris: What about Joe Bauman?
Everybody´s talking about Mark McGwire of the Cardinals and/or Sammy Sosa of the Cubs breaking Roger Maris of the Yankees´ 37-year-old major league homerun record of 61 in a season.
But neither of them hold a candle to Joe Bauman who hit 72 - that´s right, Seventy-Two - in 1954 while playing for second-place Roswell, N.M. Rockets in the Longhorn League.
It´s still the all-time record for professional baseball.
Now 76 and still living in Roswell where he operated a Texaco station for many years, Bauman was a 6-5, 235-pound lefthanded-hitting first baseman - a little smaller than the righthanded McGwire and playing the same position - when he sent those 72 homers out of the park.
Answering the inevitable questions of “how´d you do that?,” Bauman said the key was the same for McGwire and Sosa, who also bats righthanded, to break the record they´re shooting for: “Everything has to fall in place.
“I think it´s inevitable” that the record will fall but he figured lefthand-swinging Ken Griffey Jr. of Seattle would have the best shot at the homerun record because there are more righthanded pitchers in the majors and he plays home games in a more inviting park.
Lefties Ruth and Maris both benefited from Yankee Stadium´s short rightfield porch.
Bauman said the pitching he saw was “good to average”; the ballparks regulation with decent lighting, except for a smallish Big Spring field (“I couldn´t hit much in that park - I hated it”) and the ball probably less “jazzed” than it is now.
Roswell had 140 games scheduled that year but played only 138. Bauman - never sidelined by injury or fatigue - played in all of them (almost always night games with few doubleheaders).
His best game was four homers at home against Sweetwater. However, he remembers having few multi-homerun games.
While Maris´ benchmark was Babe Ruth´s 60 homers in 1927 - thus, his record has stood longer than Ruth´s did - Bauman was shooting for the 69 belted by Joe Hauser of the Minneapolis Millers in 1933 and matched by Bob Crues of Amarillo (where Bauman played for two seasons) in 1948.
He got to Ruth´s mark of 60 with about 20 games left and hit three on the last day of the season in a doubleheader to break and pad the all-time record.
“I probably picked up $700 or $800 (money was stuck in the fence behind home plate as the tradition of the time dictated for a homerun) that day,” Bauman recalls.
“I liked the low pitches,” he says, recalling that he was frequently walked.
He also batted an even .400 in 1954. Told that former Plainview Ponies star Frosty Kennedy, who died earlier this summer, said he (Kennedy) was the greatest player ever because he hit 60 homeruns AND batted over .400 in his career - feats accomplished individually by Ruth and Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams - Bauman chuckled, “Frosty was pretty confident.”
But he didn´t comment on whether, by Kennedy´s yardstick, he would be the best player of all time, especially since he did both in the same season.
Bauman says he has no idea what his longest homerun was but believes the balls are livelier now because “even middle-sized guys get fooled on pitches and hit them out of the park with one hand.”
Bauman, whose exploits are recorded on a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. (which he has never visited), played for Capitol Hill High School in his hometown of Oklahoma City, then signed with independent Little Rock.
Although his contract was eventually purchased by the National League´s Boston Braves, he never played a day in the majors, ending an off-and-on 15-year career when he refused to have surgery on his ankle after the 1956 season.
“There were just 16 major league teams then (and about 400 minor league teams after the war, so too much talent) and you could make as much or more money in a decent job in the business world,” he said.
Bauman also says he lost four prime years to military service in World War II.
He agrees players are more physically developed now due to better training and nutrition methods. “The evolution of mankind kind of takes care of some of that,” he surmised. “When I was playing, the clubs wrote you letters forbidding you to swim because they didn´t want you to get muscle bound.”
Bauman figures his record probably will never be broken - at least at the minor league level: “If somebody was hitting a lot of homeruns, they wouldn´t leave them down in the minors long.”
Even if it does fall, he can be proud of having held it for more than 40 years and he´ll be in some mighty fine company.
(Danny Andrews is editor of The Herald.)
