List Of Major League Baseball Home Run Champions
In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle all the bases ending at home plate, scoring himself and each runner who was already on base, with no errors by the defensive team on the play. The feat is typically achieved by hitting the ball over the outfield fence in fair territory without it first touching the ground, which results in an automatic home run. There is also the rarer inside-the-park home run, where the hitter circles the bases while the baseball is in play on the field. In Major League Baseball (MLB), a player in each league wins the home run title each season by hitting the most home runs that year. Only home runs hit in a particular league count towards that league's seasonal lead. Mark McGwire, for example, hit 58 home runs in 1997, more than any other player that year. However, McGwire was traded from the American League's (AL) Oakland Athletics to the National League's (NL) St. Louis Cardinals midway through the season and his individual AL and NL home run totals (34 and 24, respectively) did not lead either league.
The first home run champion in the National League was George Hall; in the league's inaugural 1876 season, Hall hit five home runs for the short-lived National League Philadelphia Athletics. In 1901, the American League was established and Hall of Fame second baseman Nap Lajoie led it with 14 home runs for the American League Philadelphia Athletics. Over the course of his 22-season career, Babe Ruth led the American League in home runs 12 times. Mike Schmidt and Ralph Kiner have the second and third most home run titles respectively, Schmidt with eight and Kiner with seven, all won in the National League. Kiner's seven consecutive titles from 1946 to 1952 are also the most consecutive home run titles by any player. The most recent champions are Miguel Cabrera with 44 home runs in the American League, and Ryan Braun with 41 in the National League.
Ruth set the Major League Baseball single-season home run record four times, first at 29 (1919), then 54 (1920), 59 (1921), and finally 60 (1927). Ruth's 1920 and 1921 seasons are tied for the widest margin of victory for a home run champion as he topped the next highest total by 35 home runs in each season. The single season mark of 60 stood for over 30 years until Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961. Maris' mark was in turn broken by both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa during the 1998 home run record chase, with McGwire ultimately setting the mark at 70. Barry Bonds, who also has the most career home runs, set the current single season record of 73 in 2001. The 1998 and 2001 seasons each had 4 players hit 50 or more home runs – Greg Vaughn, Ken Griffey, Jr., Sosa, and McGwire in 1998 and Alex Rodriguez, Luis Gonzalez, Sosa, and Bonds in 2001. A player has hit 50 or more home runs 42 times. Of these feats, 25 occurred since 1990. The lowest home run total to ever lead a major league was four, a feat achieved in the NL by Lip Pike in 1877 and Paul Hines in 1878.
Read more about List Of Major League Baseball Home Run Champions: Key, American League, National League, Other Major Leagues
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, major, league, baseball, home, run and/or champions:
“Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Lastly, his tomb
Shall list and founder in the troughs of grass
And none shall speak his name.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)
“He makes his home where the living is best.”
—Latin proverb, quoted in Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977)
“It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)