If You Go Missing, I Promise to Find You
There is a forgotten home run king, a link missing in the chain. Bonds passed Aaron. And Aaron passed Ruth. And Ruth passed… Well, who did he pass? It can’t start with Ruth. Someone had to precede him. Ruth started playing for Boston in 1914, and Major League Baseball had already been in existence for decades by then. There had to be a record holder already in place. Before Bonds was born, before Aaron took a swing, before Ruth re-defined the game, there was Cactus Gavy Cravath, a man who led his league in homers six times in seven years, collecting 119 homers by the time he was done. Cravath retired in 1920 at the age of 39, and his name settled into a comfortable semi-obscurity before the summer of 2004, when Ken Jennings – a record-breaking trivia monster who dominated the television game show Jeopardy! – brought him back into the national headlines.
Welcome back, Gavy.
And, Sorry, but you don’t belong.
He didn’t. That’s the sad part. After being re-introduced to the American general public in the summer of 2004, Cactus Gavy Cravath discovered that his name did not fit. There were some people who knew that all along. But it seemed like an odd, cruel reminder to everyone else, a scant 84 years after the man had stopped playing professional baseball.
Bigger than Big, Stronger than Strong
The Home-Run Kings are legends. They occupy a different level of adulation from even the most celebrated of baseball players. For example, Jim O’Rourke, Tommy McCarthy, and Bobby Wallace were all elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in the forties, years after their playing careers were over. But despite their impressive careers, and despite receiving the highest honor in the game, O’Rourke, McCarthy and Wallace are almost invisible afterthoughts in baseball’s public consciousness in contrast to the recognition and attention received by Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth. There are Hall of Famers. And then there are All-Time Home-Run Kings. That second group is a far more selective club. Far more revered. These men were towering figures of their time.
4. What more can be written about the enigmatic Bonds, an ageless wonder, excessively misanthropic and unfailingly controversial. Fueled by rage and arcane chemicals, people didn’t want him to break the record. He represented a tainted legacy, a testament to performance enhancing drugs. The Human Asterisk, he was the perfect storm of otherworldly talent, blinding arrogance, and cutting-edge science. He is the reigning king, with 762 homers to his name. Everyone else who wants to try and stake a claim has to line up behind him. In the record books, just like in his mind, there is Bonds, then there is everyone else.
3. He passed Hank Aaron, the picture of reliability, of steady consistency. Aaron never hit more than 47 in a year, but he put up magnificent season after magnificent season, patiently roping the years together, stretching them out, transforming himself into the dignified paragon for right-handed power. Aaron had twenty consecutive seasons with twenty or more homers. Those add up. Those count. That’s a beautiful career. But again, as with Bonds, there were people who didn’t want him to break the record. We know this to be true, because he received death threats as he approached Ruth’s mark.
People liked Babe Ruth. He was a symbol, an icon, an American hero. People were worried that Ruth would be forgotten. And, not to put too fine a point on it, The Babe was white. There was a segment of the population that rooted against Aaron because of the color of his skin. I think that’s a given.
The death threats came. Disturbed cowards sat in the dark, penning angry notes claiming that they owned guns and that they were willing to trade Aaron’s life for Ruth’s record. Undeterred, Aaron smashed the record anyways. How could he not? He was The Hammer. And Hammers are built to smash.
2. Babe Ruth. The Bambino. The Sultan of Swat. The Greatest Player Ever. His left arm could win twenty games on the mound. His big bat could revolutionize American’s pastime. And his outsized personality could captivate the country’s attention. Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe there is no human walking the planet today who could compare to Ruth’s cultural impact.
1. And at the start of the line was Cactus Gavy Cravath. Who was a very good player. Just not good enough.
The Hard Eight
Gavy Cravath put in a helluva stretch in the eight years from 1912 to 1919. He led the league in homers in 1913. He led the league in homers in 1914. He led the league in homers in 1915. He led the league in homers in 1917. He led the league in homers in 1918. And he led the league in homers in 1919. There were a couple of years where he didn’t lead the league. In 1912, he was third. And in 1916, he was third again. In that eight year period, he led the league in homers six times, and finished third twice. To help illustrate his dominance, when he won the home run championship in 1915, he hit 24. That was as many as twelve Major League franchises hit collectively as a team. When you start to outhomer the majority of the professional teams in existence, you’re doing okay for yourself.
In his January, 2000 article “Before the Babe” for The Baseball Research Journal, Bill Swank wrote “The Babe hit his 120th home run off Jim Bagby of Cleveland on June 20, 1921, to break Gavy's career record.” And in the SABR Baseball Biography Project, Swank mentions “Cravath's career home-run record of 119, however, was quickly shattered by Babe Ruth in 1921, and it stood as the NL record only until 1923, when it was surpassed by Cy Williams.”
While Bill Swank has a particular interest in Gavy Cravath (as a member of the Pacific Coast League Historical Society, and the Gavy Cravath Hall of Fame Commission Escondido) it was really Ken Jennings who brought the name back to national attention in a surprising manner in the summer of 2004.
Remember to Phrase your Response in the Form of a Question
You remember Ken Jennings, right? Jennings was a master of trivia. He was a contestant on the game show Jeopardy! who looked unbeatable. Day after day, week after week, question after question, and show after show, Jennings brushed aside all challengers who crossed his path. He won a staggering 74 shows in a row, which was more that ten times longer than the previous winning streak of seven, set by former Jeopardy! champ, Tom Walsh.
In a June 27, 2004, when the Washington Post interviewed Walsh about how he felt to have Jennings eclipse his old streak, he told them:
“I feel like 'Cactus Gavvy' Cravath. Do you know who that is? Right. Nobody does. He's the guy who had the home run record before Babe Ruth came along.”
Gavy Cravath led the NL is homers six time in seven years. He once hit as many homers as 12 of the 16 teams in the league. He was the career home run leader. Appropriately enough, it took a trivia champ to point out that Cravath was the answer to a trivia question. Which is wonderful.
Except... that the answer to the trivia question was wrong.
Tom Walsh compared himself to the career home run leader before Babe Ruth. He came up with Cravath’s name. But he should have said “Roger Connor.” Because it was Connor who was the rightful former All-Time Home-Run King.
Set the Record Straight
When he retired from the game after the 1920 season, Gavy Cravath finished with 119 career homers. And, after he retired from the game 1897, former New York Giant Roger Connor had 138 homers to his name. Which is nineteen more than Gavy Cravath. And which came 23 years earlier. Roger Connor is the man who held the all-time home run record before Babe Ruth passed it. No matter what Tom Walsh tells you.
In the New Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James wrote:
“Connor hit more career home runs that anyone before Babe Ruth. However, although season records were circulated, no career records were maintained at the time, and no one knew until the 1960s, that Connor had held the record, which was variously attributed to… Gavy Cravath.” (p. 440)
No one knew until the 1960s. Sometimes it seems like people don’t know in the 2000s either.
I Once was Lost, But Now am Found
There are only four men on this chain. Bonds. Aaron. Ruth. And Roger Connor. Each one of them did what nobody else before them could. Each one of them held down the game’s ultimate title. All-Time Home-run King. Only one of them is not a baseball legend celebrated with wonder and regard. One of them was the wrong man at the wrong time.
Trivia – by definition, by its very nature – is insignificant, unimportant, negligible. But when you are the answer to a trivia question, even if the information is unimportant to the world at large or in the general scheme of things, it still means that you are remembered.
Roger Connor was the Home-Run King. The first one. The one who set the bar, the one who blazed the trail before Ruth. He deserves credit for his accomplishments. He deserves to be remembered correctly. In the end, we all do.
If you have any thoughts you want to share, I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at roeltorres@post.harvard.edu. Thank you.