Nothing in sports is better than hitting a home run. Think about it, you beat a guy so bad that he has to stand there was watch you jog around the bases while your team cheers you on. No football play will ever beat it, nor will anything to ever do with basketball. A home run is the ultimate, "fuck you I am better than you" in sports. Which as a person who has hit about 50ish home runs in my lifetime holds true. No better feeling in the world than jogging around the bases and there is nothing anyone can do to stop you.
In order to see what home runs used to be, we must first establish what a home run is now. According to the MLB a home run is stated as this
"A home run occurs when a batter hits a fair ball and scores on the play without being put out or without the benefit of an error."
For my visual learners it may look something like this.
Pretty simple stuff right. The ball goes over the fence on the fly in fair territory, or an inside the park home run in which no error occurs. But today you are going to learn about just how weird and complex a home run was less than 100 years ago.
Something that baseball history nerds like myself know to keep us feeling smarter than a casual baseball fan is that a ground rule double used to be a home run. Yes my simple minded readers, a ground rule double used to be a home run all the way up until 1931 when the MLB changed the rule. The reason for the rule change was because there was simply too many home runs being hit. The rule proved to have a great impact on the amount of home runs being hit as in 1930 there was 1,565 home runs across the MLB and in 1931 there was only 1,069 home runs. For reference, in 2024 there was 5,453 home runs in the MLB. If you want to get more extreme, in 2020 when the season was only 60 games, the MLB home run total was 2,303. Below is an example of what a home run pre 1931 looked like.
You may be thinking to yourself, "but T, there is no way 500 ground rule doubles happen a year." Yeah I expected you to say this so I can blow your mind away with this one. The same year that the ground rule double was put into place, the MLB also got rid of this rule. A home run had to go over the fence in fair territory AND land in fair territory. This rule was not very simple for player and umpires. The biggest offender of this rule and probably the player who lost the most home runs from this is none other than the great Babe Ruth. This was a complete judgement call because its not if the ball landed in fair territory over the fence, its where the ball would have landed if the stands and bleachers were not there. This made the umpires literally pull out of their ass where the ball was going to land if it did not land in the stands.
This rule was very stupid and never really made sense to really anyone. Let me put this in situational format to really drive it home...run. Get it? home run, were talking about home runs. Ok I'm done now. So lets pretend were The Babe and we just pimped one 500 feet down the right field line. The ball is out of the park and no one sees it come down but it was a little too close to the line and you hooked it just a tad. Well the umpire that ejected you in yesterdays game wants a little revenge and he thinks that your tape measure shot would have landed foul. The call on the field is a foul ball and guess what, it ain't nothing but a long strike. Ridiculous. The reason I bring up Babe Ruth is because it is estimated that he would have hit at least 50 more home runs in his career. Which would bring hit total up to 764 at least which means Babe Ruth would never be dethroned as the home run king.
Another stupid rule about what a home run is and isn’t was that prior to 1920 a walk off hit would only be the minimum amount necessary. So if the bases were loaded in a tie game in the bottom of the 9th and a home run was hit, it only counted as a single because only one run is needed for the game to be over.
Thank goodness all of those rules are no longer in use. Can you imagine explaining to your girlfriend that the home run was recalled because it went over the fence in fair territory but landed in foul territory over the fence. You would have to answer a million questions and she probably still would not understand. "Whats a foul pole?" "How do they know if it landed foul?" "Why did you spend so much on 50/50 tickets?" See, they would never get it.
Share with a friend who enjoys absolute moon shots like myself.
That is today's Tea, with T.
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