Before Ruth, Connecticut Slugger Ruled

By TOM YANTZ | Courant Staff Writer

August 1, 2007

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis wasn't at Detroit's Navin Field to see Babe Ruth become the major league career home run leader on July 18, 1921.

Baseball's first commissioner was more concerned with the very future of the game, so he was in Chicago for the trial stemming from the "Black Sox" scandal that had marred the 1919 World Series.

Nevertheless, there was a baseball buzz in Detroit that day - but only because Ruth's 139th homer, off Bert Cole of the Tigers, was a colossal drive that had traveled at least 500 feet.


 

There were no speeches or tributes recognizing Ruth as the new home run leader. That's because no one was aware that the man he surpassed - Roger Connor, a first baseman from Connecticut who had retired in 1897 - owned the record.

Connor was born July 1, 1857, in Waterbury, and he grew up there. His parents did not want him playing baseball for a living. The sport was associated with gambling and drinking; it was not respectable. They preferred that he work in a Brass City factory.

But Connor was determined to play

ball, and after his father died, his mother relented. He started his professional baseball career in 1880 with the Troy (N.Y.) Trojans of the National League and played 17 seasons in the majors, mostly with the New York Giants. He died in 1931, and it wasn't until after his induction into the Hall of Fame in 1976 that his 138 homers finally were recognized.

"There have been discrepancies in statistics with such players from way in the past as Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie and Ty Cobb," said Gabriel Schechter, a researcher for the Hall of Fame. "Connor was in that group. I've seen 130, 131, 136 and 137 homers for him in various publications over the years. Here at the Hall, we agree with Elias Sports Bureau, the official statisticians for Major League Baseball: 138."

Most folks know that the record Barry Bonds is attempting to break (755) belongs to Hank Aaron, who broke the record held by Ruth (714). But the answer to the question of whose record Ruth broke is not so widely known.

But make no mistake: With his total of 138, Connor was the Ruth of the 19th century.

Consider these feats:

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and Troy trailing 7-4 against Worcester on Sept. 9, 1881, Connor hit the major league's first over-the-fence grand slam. It also was the first walk-off grand slam, according to Mike Attiyeh, a baseball historian who has written about Connor.

Connor was the first player, and maybe the only one, to hit a ball out of the original Polo Grounds in New York. It was reported in The Sporting News that some members of the New York Stock Exchange who were at the Sept. 11, 1886, game were so impressed by the blast - off future Hall of Famer Charley "Old Hoss" Radbourne of the Boston Beaneaters - that they passed around a hat. They collected about $500 and bought a gold watch they later presented to Connor.

Playing in the "dead ball" era, Connor hit a career-high 17 homers for the Giants in 1887. His total surpassed that of three NL teams that season: Pittsburgh, Brooklyn and Baltimore. The left-handed batter, 6 feet 3 and 220 pounds, had 14, 13 and 14 homers the next three years in New York.

He hit three consecutive home runs in a game May 9, 1888, against Indianapolis.

He had 233 triples, which set the standard at the time. (He ranks fifth today.) He had a career slugging percentage of .486, an impressive number in an era when singles and stolen bases were extolled more. He really was the game's first true power hitter.

But Connor was a more complete player than that. He won the NL batting title in 1885 (.371) and hit .300 or more in 12 seasons. He stole 244 bases. He went 6-for-6 in a game on June 1, 1895.

He retired from the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1897 season with 2,467 career hits and a .317 average, according to Elias.

"One of the problems in determining true numbers of 19th-century players was the reliance on newspaper box scores," Schechter said. "You might have two or more different box scores; but only one was the official one. In the case of Connor, I suspect that's what happened."

Whatever his true numbers were when he retired, no one could dispute that he had been a prodigious power hitter.

When Connor returned to Waterbury, he bought his hometown team in the semipro Connecticut League. Besides being the owner, he was the manager and first baseman for two years. He sold the Waterbury team and later bought a team in Springfield, where he also was the manager.

When Connor died on Jan. 4, 1931, in Waterbury at age 73, he was buried in an unmarked grave at St. Joseph's Cemetery.

As more information about his playing career was discovered over the years, Connor was given the credit as the man Ruth had passed to become the new home run king. Two years after Aaron surpassed Ruth, the veterans committee elected Connor to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Still, there was no testament to this at St. Joseph's Cemetery until 25 years later. On June 30, 2001, the Waterbury Monuments Committee unveiled a monument with an engraved image of the mustachioed Connor wearing a baseball hat. One of the inscriptions simply reads: "Baseball Hall of Fame 1976."

"His recognition was more than deserved," Schechter said. "In his day, he was a bruising hitter, that's for sure."

Contact Tom Yantz at tyantz@courant.com.