Inside-the-park home run

In baseball parlance, an inside-the-park home run is a play where a batter hits a home run without hitting the ball out of the field of play.

Discussion

To score an inside-the-park home run, the player must touch all four bases (in the order of first, second and third, ending at home plate) before a fielder on the opposing team tags him out. In Major League Baseball, if the defensive team commits an error during the play, it is not scored as a home run, but rather advancing on an error.^[1] Statistically, an inside-the-park home run counts as a regular home run in the player's season and career totals.

The vast majority of home runs occur when the batter hits the ball beyond the outfield fence on the fly; this is purely a feat of hitting with power. The inside-the-park home run is of a very different character; it is primarily a feat of fast baserunning, though strong hitting is also typically involved.

In the early days of Major League Baseball, with outfields more spacious and less uniform from ballpark to ballpark, inside-the-park home runs were common. However, in the modern era, with outfields less spacious, the feat has become increasingly rare, happening only a handful of times each season. Today an inside-the-park home run is typically accomplished by a fast baserunner hitting the ball in such a way that the ball bounces far away from the opposing team's fielders. In many such cases (such as Alcides Escobar's inside-the-park homer in the 2015 World Series), the outfielder misjudges the ball or otherwise plays it badly, but not so badly that an error is charged.^[2][3]

Major league statistics

Of the 154,483 home runs hit between 1951 and 2000, 975 (about 1 in every 158) were inside-the-park. The percentage has dwindled since the increase in emphasis on power hitting which began in the 1920s.

Career records

• Major League – Jesse Burkett – 55^[4]
• National League – Tommy Leach – 49^[4]
• American League – Ty Cobb – 46^[4]
• Major League post-1950 – Willie Wilson – 13^[5]

Single season records

• Major League and National League – Sam Crawford – 12 – 1901^[4]
• American League – Ty Cobb – 9 – 1909^[4]

Single game records

• Major League and National League – Tom McCreery – 3 – 1897^[4]
• American League – 17 tied – 2^[4]

In the World Series

Rare occurrences

• On July 13, 1896, Ed Delahanty of the Philadelphia Phillies hit four home runs in one game (itself a rare feat), two of which were inside-the-park home runs. This event is the only time any homers in a four-homer game have been inside-the-park.^[6]
• Jimmy Sheckard hit inside-the-park grand slams in consecutive games on consecutive days in 1901 with the Brooklyn Superbas (later the Brooklyn Dodgers), the only player in Major League Baseball history to do so.
• On April 27, 1949, Pete Milne hit an inside-the-park grand slam for his only career home run. It gave the New York Giants an 11–8 lead over the Brooklyn Dodgers,^[7] which was also the final score.^[8]
• On July 25, 1956, Roberto Clemente became the only MLB player to have ever hit a walk-off inside-the-park grand slam in a 9–8 Pittsburgh Pirates win over the Chicago Cubs, at Forbes Field.^[9]
• On September 2, 1975, Johnnie LeMaster hit the only inside-the-park home run to be recorded in a first career Major League at-bat, against future Hall of Famer Don Sutton.
• On August 27, 1977, Texas Rangers teammates Toby Harrah and Bump Wills hit back-to-back inside-the-park home runs.
• On May 26, 1997, Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs hit an inside-the-park home run in the top of the sixth inning in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the bottom of the sixth, Tony Womack of the Pittsburgh Pirates also hit an inside-the-park home run, marking the unusual occurrence of opposing teams hitting an inside-the-park home run in the same inning.
• On March 8, 2006, Adam Stern playing for Canada in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, hit an inside-the-park home run against the United States in a 8-6 upset win for Canada.
• On June 17, 2007, Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers hit a popup to center field that became an inside-the-park home run when Minnesota Twins outfielder Lew Ford lost the ball after it struck a speaker on the ceiling of the Metrodome. Fielder weighed 262 pounds at the time, becoming the third-heaviest player to hit an inside-the-park homer.^[10] On June 19, 2008, he added a second inside-the-park-homer at Miller Park in Milwaukee versus the Toronto Blue Jays.
• In the 2007 All-Star Game, Ichiro Suzuki became the only player to hit an inside-the-park home run in an All-Star Game,^[11] hitting it at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Suzuki, playing for the victorious American League All-Stars, earned Most Valuable Player honors.
• On April 6, 2009, Emilio Bonifacio of the Florida Marlins became the first player in 41 years to hit an inside-the-park home run on Opening Day, which was also the first home run of Bonifacio's Major League career.^[12]
• On August 18, 2009, Kyle Blanks of the San Diego Padres hit an inside-the-park home run against the Chicago Cubs. Weighing at 285 pounds, he became the heaviest player to hit an inside-the-park home run.^[13]
• On May 22, 2010, Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles hit a two-run inside-the-park homer against the Washington Nationals, after Nationals center fielder Nyjer Morgan threw down his glove in disgust upon believing the ball cleared the wall on a failed jumping attempt to catch it. It was the first time since Minnesota in 2007 that two inside-the-park home runs occurred in the same ballpark in one week, the first being Ángel Pagán's just a few days before.
• On July 18, 2010, Jhonny Peralta of the Cleveland Indians hit a three-run inside-the-park home run when Detroit Tigers outfielder Ryan Raburn crashed through the bullpen fence while trying to catch the ball. Peralta was one of the slowest runners then on the Indians' roster, and would eventually be traded to the Tigers ten days later.^[14] He took 16.74 seconds to round the bases, which was, at that point in the 2010 season, the slowest of any inside-the-park home run and slower than five regular home run trots.^[15]
• On April 20, 2012, Nori Aoki of the Milwaukee Brewers hit his first Major League home run, which was an inside-the-park, stand-up home run at Miller Park in Milwaukee. On the same day, Alex Presley of the Pittsburgh Pirates also hit an inside-the-park home run, this one at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
• On May 25, 2013, Ángel Pagán of the San Francisco Giants hit an inside-the-park home run at AT&T Park in San Francisco, a tenth inning, two-run walk-off home run, with teammate Brandon Crawford on base. That was the first walk-off inside-the-park home run since 2004, when Rey Sanchez of the Devil Rays hit one, also in the bottom of the tenth inning, also against the Rockies, albeit in a tie game.^[16]
• On September 13, 2013, Pedro Álvarez of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit his first home run in 16 games against the Chicago Cubs in the fourth inning at PNC Park. While the ball nearly left the park, it was a fan in right-center field that changed the trajectory of the ball back into the park; the ball was not ruled dead.
• On May 21, 2014, Kurt Suzuki of the Minnesota Twins hit an inside-the-park home run against the San Diego Padres after Padres left fielder Seth Smith had it go off his glove and mistook it for a home run that had cleared the wall; by the time the ball had got back into the infield it was too late.^[17]
• On August 2, 2014, Jon Singleton of the Houston Astros hit a two-run inside-the-park home run versus the Toronto Blue Jays. Jays outfielder Anthony Gose slid into the wall. He then got up and threw the ball to cutoff man Ryan Goins. Singleton was called out at the plate but the call was overturned. This was the first overturned call that resulted in an inside-the-park home run.
• On July 8, 2015, Logan Forsythe of the Tampa Bay Rays hit a ball over the head of Kansas City Royals left fielder Alex Gordon. Gordon injured his groin on the play, leading to an inside-the-park home run. Jarrod Dyson of the Royals, Gordon's replacement, hit an inside-the-park home run later in the game.
• On September 2, 2015, Rubén Tejada of the New York Mets hit the ball down the right-field foul line, under the glove of Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Domonic Brown who, running full speed, flipped over the out-of-play wall in foul territory. As Brown was unable to return to field the ball, it rolled to the deep right field fence in Citi Field before it was fielded by Phillies second baseman Cesar Hernández. Kelly Johnson scored on the play as well. Brown later left the game with concussion-like symptoms. At 74.5 mph off the bat, it was the softest-hit homerun of the season to that point.^[18]
• On October 27, 2015 Alcides Escobar hit an inside-the-park home run, the first in a World Series game since Mule Haas in the 1929 World Series^[2][3] and the first hit by a leadoff batter since Patsy Dougherty did it for the Boston Americans (now Red Sox) in 1903.^[19]

Inside-the-park grand slam

An inside-the-park grand slam is the same event but, like all grand slams, features the bases loaded for an inside-the-park home run. There have been 226 inside-the-park grand slams in Major League Baseball history, 28 in the past 50 years, most recently by Aaron Altherr of the Philadelphia Phillies against the Washington Nationals on September 25, 2015.^[20] Honus Wagner has the most in MLB history with five.

References

External links

• Baseball Almanac Records
• Baseball's most exciting play