The Flukiest Record of Them All

Most baseball fans can trace the evolution of the season home run record back from Barry Bonds to Mark McGwire to Roger Maris and to Babe Ruth, who broke the record in 1919 and the exceeded his own record three more times before retiring. But whose record did Ruth break?

In 1884, the National League was beginning its ninth season. The major league season record for home runs was 14, set in the American Association, a marginal major league. The NL record was 10. When the season was over, the Chicago White Stockings (the team now knows as the Cubs) had finished 5th in an eight-team league. But five of their players had exceeded the old NL record for home runs; four of them topping 20 roundtrippers apiece, led by third baseman Ed Williamson's 27. Williamson held the record until Ruth connected for 29 in 1919.

How did Williamson and the White Stockings' other sluggers do it? Had they discovered steriods a century before anyone else? No, their secret lay in the park in which the White Stockings played, Lakefront Park. Left field in the park was just 186 feet from home and right field was 190 feet away. In every other season played there, ground rules had stated that balls hit over the fence were doubles. Before the '84 seasons, the club decided that they would be home runs, with the result that the White Stockings hit 142 homes runs that year, the most by a team until Ruth's 1927 Yankees hit 158. Williamson hit 25 of his 27 homers in Chicago, but never got a chance to repeat his feat, as the team moved into a new park with more normal dimensions in 1885. Williamson never hit more than 9 home runs in any other season of his career, before or after 1884. Standing for one year longer than Ruth's record of 60, Williamson's season home run record stands as one of the biggest flukes in baseball history.