One For The X-files
In a season of inalienable glory, Roswell's Joe Bauman hit 72 homers
Keith Olbermann
Forrest (frosty) Kennedy died three months ago, without so much as a moment of silence at any ballpark in the country. That was a shame, because on Sept. 6, 1956, Kennedy, then a 30-year-old first baseman for the Plainview ( Texas) Ponies of the Class B Southwestern League, blasted his 60th home run of the season, against the San Angelo Colts. Kennedy was the last of three sluggers to hit 60 in '56. Dick Stuart of the Lincoln Chiefs of the Class A Western League, who would later destroy major league pitching—both as a batter and as Dr. Strangeglove at first base—and Ken Guettler of the Shreveport (La.) Sports of the Double A Texas League had both reached 60 in August. Guettler would finish with 62 homers and Stuart with 66, including 23 during a 28-game binge at midseason.
All of this underscores the fact that the monster homer season once wasn't such a rarity, at least not in the minors. In 1930 Joe Hauser socked 63 homers for the Double A Baltimore Orioles, then of the International League, and three years later he hit 69 for the Double A Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. Between his 31st and 35th birthdays Hauser averaged 53 homers a season.
The fascinating thing about these forgotten sluggers is that the American professional record for home runs in a season has virtually always been held by a minor leaguer. When Babe Ruth hit 54 for the 1920 Yankees, he surpassed Perry Werden's mark of 45 for the Minneapolis Miners of the Western League in 1895. Ruth extended the record to 59 in 1921, but a future teammate, second baseman Tony Lazzeri, answered with 60 for the Double A Salt Lake City Bees of the Pacific Coast League in '25. Before Ruth matched Lazzeri in '27, Moose Clabaugh of the Tyler Trojans of the Class D East Texas League hit 62 in '26.
Hauser and others would eventually surpass Clabaugh and Ruth. Bob Crues hit 69 for the AmariGold Sox of the Class C West Texas-New Mexico League in 1948 (driving in 254 runs—take that Juan Gonzalez!), and Bob Lennon belted 64 for the Nashville Vols of the Double A Southern Association in 1954. But the king of home run hitters remains an obscure man named Joe Bauman who played for the Roswell (N.Mex.) Rockets. In '54 Bauman became the only one of the hundreds of thousands of men who have played professional baseball in the U.S to hit as many as 70 homers in one season. All the standard disclaimers apply: It was "just the minors," the Roswell Rockets' Park Field stood 3,573 feet above sea level, and most of the stadiums in the Class C (a step above Class D, then the lowest classification in the minors) Longhorn League were laid out to give hitters the advantage of the Southwest's fairly constant 15-to 20-mph winds. On the other hand, by '54 most minor league games were being played at night under feeble lights that favored the pitchers. The lefthanded-batting Bauman also had to contend with a 329-foot rightfield corner in Roswell. Most convincingly, the 6'5", 235-pound Bauman hit his 72 homers in 138 games, a rate that would have produced 85 of them in a 162-game schedule.
Bauman, who like Crues, Guettler and Kennedy never spent a day in the majors, didn't dwell on his achievements. The ball that he hit for his 72nd tater was on display at a Roswell museum, and when asked about it later in life, he'd explain, "I've never been over there, and I haven't seen it."
Wait a minute. The museum is in Roswell, N.Mex.? Near the site of the alleged UFO crash in 1947? You don't suppose....
Printed in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED on Aug. 31, 1998
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