(Above: National Leaguer Ross Barnes scoffs at small ball)
According to Baseball-Reference.com, Gary Sheffield’s grand slam off of Oakland’s Gio Gonzalez in last night’s 14-8 Tigers win was the quarter-millionth home run in big league baseball history. Number 1, according to historian David Vincent came in 1876 by the Chicago White Stockings’ infielder Ross Barnes off of Cincinnati Red Stockings’ Cherokee Fisher, who may or may not have been “bad for the Jews.”
Not until April 30, 1970, did the total reach 100,000. Atlanta’s Hal King is credited with the milestone hit out of many that day with a homer off the Cubs’ Ferguson Jenkins. It took nearly three decades for the list to double to 200,000, with Paul O’Neill awarded the honors for taking then-Marlins pitcher Livan Hernandez deep on June 12, 1999.
The final 50,000 homers, by contrast, have come in a relative flurry of about 9 1/2 years. The list stood at 249,996 entering the night, with four games scheduled to start around the same time at 7:05 p.m. ET. Jason Bay started off the home run parade with a first-inning solo shot off Edwin Jackson in Boston’s 3-0 shutout of Tampa Bay, but the next three homers came in Detroit — all of them off Tigers bats, and all off Gonzalez.
Magglio Ordonez and Sheffield homered in the opening inning to put the total at 249,999. An inning later, Sheffield stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and drove a fastball deep to left for the 496th homer of his career. With the grand slam, he earned himself a place on a Major League homer list before he joins the 500-homer club.
I was reading about early teams not too long ago and my impression is that the Cincinnati Red Stockings moved to another city and the name was then adopted by the Boston team which had been previously known as the Somersets and the Americans (among other colorful nicknames). I’m not positive that the modern-day Reds team is the same as the one cited above.
Good catch, Rog. I always assumed the Red Stockings were the early Reds…and when you assume, you make lemonade.
I’ve got a call in to Reds Chief Curator Chris Eckes for the official answer, no kidding. Lets’ see if he buys my Rick Morrissey impression on the voicemail.
Yes, it’s a different team.
Also, the Chicago White Stockings Rob refers to were the National League team of that era, what we now know today as the Chicago Cubs. The name “White Stockings,” or “White Sox,” was a hand-me-down to our working class friends on the South Side, a gift arranged by Jane Addams on a snowy Christmas Eve.
That the Cubs hit the first home run in baseball isn’t what I find notable, but that 198,000 of the next 250,000 recorded HRs were hit against us.
For whatever its worth, I did know about the White Sox not originating as the White Stockings. But unless I’m reading the Reds own history site wrong, it’s the team’s own position that they trace themselves back to the (or a) Red Stockings.
http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/cin/history/timeline1.jsp
Was Fisher a member of the Sizeable Red Contraption? Still no callback from Eckes.
Hey, I just got a welcome distraction from listening to the bunting ineptitude of the Chisox in the form of a phone call from Cincinnati.
It’s the position of Mr. Eckes that the 1876 Red Stockings in question are “yes, essentially” the same organization as the modern Reds since “a couple of players and a few front office guys remained in place when the team was booted out of the NL in 1880 and reconstituted in 1882 to play in the American Association”, later to return to the NL.
As far as Boston: “In 1870 the Red Stockings ceased to be a pro team, and some of the players did move to Boston to form the Boston Braves in 1871.”
I’ll take it to mean the Reds dating back to 1882 is for sure and to 1876 is a stretch.
I didn’t have the guts to ask him what Marge Schott did in 1880 to get the team kicked out of the league in the first place.
Schott banned white people from her team in 1880, then relented on that single group until 1948.