Baseball: The Fence-Busters

Someone once asked Babe Ruth how he came to hit so many home runs. The Babe grinned and replied, “Because I don’t like to run out singles.” This season, two other sluggers who hate singles are swinging for the fences: Oakland’s Reggie Jackson and Washington’s Frank Howard. One out of every four hits that Ruth produced during his 21-year career was a home run; Jackson and Howard have been walloping them at the rate of one in every three.

Against California last week, the lefthanded Jackson hit his 36th home run of the year as the A’s won 3-2. Earlier in the week, Howard, a righthanded hitter noted for his tremendous strength and towering blasts, lashed his 34th in a game that the Senators dropped 4-3 to Detroit. Both men are at least two weeks ahead of the pace set by Ruth and Roger Maris in the years of their record performances (60 in 155 games for Ruth in 1927; 61 over an expanded 163-game schedule for Maris in 1961). Both were solid American League choices for this week’s All-Star game.

Diamond Over Gridiron. Son of a Wyncote, Pa., tailor, Jackson, now 23, starred in both football and baseball in high school and won a scholarship to Arizona State, perhaps the only college in the country that prizes the diamond over the gridiron. In his sophomore year he hit 15 home runs and batted .327. He was drafted by the A’s and signed for an estimated $85,000.

After only two years of minor-league seasoning, Jackson was called up by the A’s in 1968. At 6 ft. 2 in., 197 Ibs., the rookie rightfielder did not look like an overpowering slugger. Yet in a season dominated by superlative pitching, he hit 29 home runs. He also struck out 171 times—the second-highest total in major-league history. On top of that, he led American League outfielders in errors with twelve. “I took the bat with me to the outfield,” Jackson explains. “When I did poorly at the plate, I used to brood about it out there.”

Biggest and Strongest. This year, Jackson’s fielding is much slicker, and his strikeout rate is down by 25%. He has also switched from a 33-oz. to a 37-oz. bat, and the results have been awesome. One of his homers cleared the left centerfield fence in Kansas City, 480 ft. from home plate and nearly 80 ft. up. “They say it went 600 and change,” says Jackson. He batted in ten runs in a game with Boston. During a recent game in Oakland, he belted three home runs against Seattle pitchers. After he cracked two home runs in a single game in Washington, Jackson received a telegram from a local fan: “Although I always root for the home team, I have nothing but the highest admiration for your performance the night I saw you. Sincerely, Richard Nixon.”

Nixon’s home team also boasts a man whose performance has been worthy of the highest admiration—bespectacled Frank Howard. While Jackson is relatively unprepossessing in appearance, Howard at 33 is absolutely forbidding. One of his home runs once splintered a bleacher seat 530 ft. from the plate. A veteran of seven years with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 6-ft. 7-in., 260-lb. first baseman was always a prodigious but sporadic long-ball hitter. Only after he was traded to the Senators in 1964 did he begin living up to his potential. In 1968 Howard led both leagues with 44 home runs. Says Manager Ted Williams: “That son-of-a-gun is the biggest and strongest hitter who ever played this game. Nobody ever hit the ball harder or farther. Nobody.”

Others are certainly trying. Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski and Minnesota’s Harmon Killebrew have slammed 28 home runs apiece. In the National League, San Francisco’s Willie McCovey and Cincinnati’s Lee May also have 28, while Atlanta’s durable Hank Aaron has 24, to bring his career total to 534. With the season little more than half over, seven or eight hitters thus have a shot at hitting 50 or more home runs—a feat that has been accomplished by only nine players in major league history.* If 1968 was the year of the pitcher, 1969 may well be remembered as the year of the fence-busters.

* Hack Wilson, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Mize and Maris each did it once; Ralph Kiner, Jimmy Foxx, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle twice; and Ruth four times.