Bye Bye Bauman

With his 73rd dinger yesterday, Barry Bonds capped one of the most remarkable performances in baseball history. He set single-season records for Home Runs, Slugging Percentage (.863), Bases on Balls (177), and Home Run Percentage (15.34 per 100 At Bats). And don’t forget the share of the National League record for Extra Base Hits (107), a share of the major league record for OPS with 1379 (tying Babe Ruth’s 1920 mark), and an On Base Percentage of .515, the first man over .500 since Mickey Mantle in 1957.

But there’s one other record Barry broke. Not only did his 73 homers set a Major League record, they also broke much less well-known record for HRs at any level of professional baseball. In 1954, Joe Bauman, a 6’5″ lefty first-baseman slugged 72 HRs for the Roswell (New Mexico) Rockets of the Class C Longhorn League. Playing in some small parks (the Sporting News article places the dimensions at 340 to left, 385 to center and 330 to right) and aided by high elevations (Roswell sits at 3570 feet above sea level–not as high as Denver, but higher than any other Major League city), Bauman put up a remarkable line for the year, batting .400 with 72 HR, 224 RBI, and 456 Total Bases in 138 games. Bauman, who was 32 at the time, won 4 minor league home run titles but never reached the majors. According to Bill James’s Historical Abstract, he finished his minor league career with 337 HRs and a .337 average.

Incidentally, the Longhorn League, which covered New Mexico and western Texas, featured some colorfully-named teams in 1954: the Artesia Numexers, Big Spring Broncs, Carlsbad Potashers, Wichita Falls/Sweetwater Spudders, Midland Indians, Odessa Oilers, and the San Angelo Colts, along with the Roswell Rockets. The league operated as a Class D league for the first few years of its inception (1947-1950), then became a Class C league from 1951-1955. It evolved into the Southwestern League (1956-1957) and finally the Sophomore League (1958-1961) before going defunct (all of this info comes from Mike McCann’s Minor League Baseball Page, an complete list of minor leagues and their franchises).