Sport: Year of the Home Run

It hasn’t been much of a season in other respects, but 1961 is already the Year of the Home Run.

¶ By last week National League sluggers had hit 437 home runs, 23 more than at the same stage last year. American Leaguers, with two more teams, had 529, a jump of 153 over 1960.

¶The Los Angeles Dodgers led both leagues with 83, thanks largely to the 251-ft. leftfield fence in their home park, where Wally Moon has already hit 14 homers v. 13 in all of 1960.

¶ In one game, the Milwaukee Braves laid down a record barrage of four consecutive homers, still lost to the Cincinnati Reds 10-8.

¶ The New York Yankees’ Roger Maris hit ten home runs during the first two weeks of June, ran his season’s total to 22 for the first 60 games, and found himself within reach of two of the oldest records in the book: Rudy York’s mark of 18 home runs during one calendar month (August 1937), and Babe Ruth’s prodigious 60 home runs during the 1927 season. But this year. American League teams play eight more games than they did when Ruth was around, and even if Maris moves ahead of the Babe’s record, orthodox statisticians may reject his achievement.

Why the sudden explosion of power? Pitchers moan that the modern ball is more rabbit than horsehide. “They’ve got it jacked up,” insists Los Angeles Angels Reliefer Ryne Duren. Says Cleveland Manager Jimmy Dykes: “When some of these little fellows start popping ’em over the fence, you have to figure they are winding the rubber in the ball tighter. They must even be using elastic glue, too.” Baseball manufacturers huffily denied that souped-up balls are the reason. “There has been no change in the construction of the ball in the last quarter-century,” says Spalding President Edwin L. Parker, whose company has made balls for the majors ever since the leagues were formed. “The coefficient of restitution is the same today as it was 25 years ago.” Translation: today’s ball has no more bounce than the 1936 version.

Los Angeles Angels Manager Bill Rigney thinks the bats, not the balls, are responsible. “They have a harder finish.” says he. “And the light bats have that good whip action.” As if to back up Rigney, the Tigers’ Cash does his heavy hitting with a 31-oz. bat. lightest on the team. By comparison. Ruth used to tote a 42-oz. shillelagh to the plate.

Some managers blame the new “home-run parks” in California and Minnesota. The Giants moved their fences at Candlestick Park as much as 32 ft. closer to the plate, advanced game time by 30 minutes to beat the afternoon gusts that blow in off San Francisco Bay and keep home-run balls in play. The result: 84 home runs thus far in San Francisco, where only 80 were hit all last year.

Dodger Pitcher Don Drysdale is just about the only man to credit the ballplayers themselves. “There are just better hitters around.” said he last week, “and they’re hitting the long ball.” With that, Drysdale stepped up to bat against the Chicago Cubs at the Coliseum, belted his second home run of the season.