Great Home Runs of the 20th Century

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by Rich Westcott

Temple University Press

Due/Published April 2001, 232 pages, cloth

ISBN 1566398584

The home run is the single most dramatic moment in baseball. Often it has been the exclamation point that appears at the end of a game, a season, a playoff, or a World Series. For fans, certain images--such as that of Carlton Fisk urging his shot fair over Green Monster or of Kirk Gibson limping around the bases--are engraved in memory.

From Babe Ruth to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the author tells of the stories, complete with box scores and photographs, of what he has selected as the thirty most memorable home runs. Many of the stories include comments from the authorÕs interviews with home run hitters. Other sections cover sixty additional noteworthy home runs, All Star Game home runs, and milestones such as total home run production and grand slams.

In Rich WestcottÕs journey through baseball history, fans will encounter the most famous moments and longest blast, as well as fascinating sidelights like these about balls that didnÕt travel as far.

• Who won a home run title without hitting a single ball out of the park?*
• Who hit the first inside-the-park home run in a World Series game?**
• Who hit the shortest home run , one that failed to reach the pitcherÕs mound?***

* Ty Cobb won the title in 1909 with nine inside-the-park home runs.
** Casey Stengel for the New York Giants in 1923.
*** Andy Oyler of the Minnesota Millers scored on a two-foot drive into a mud puddle in front of home plate during a game in 1900. ( Baseball historians disagree on the truth of this account.)