In all of baseball, one record shines as perhaps the most coveted: four home runs by one player in a single game. If the pinnacle of pitching is the perfect game, then the highpoint of hitting is four home runs, and only eighteen players in the history of the sport can boast this accomplishment. In The Four Home Runs Club: Sluggers Who Achieved Baseball’s Rarest Feat, Steven K. Wagner profiles the select group of men who have accomplished the near impossible. Drawing on interviews with dozens of current and former major-league ballplayers, Wagner chronicles the lives of these few who, in the space of a few hours, left an indelible mark on the game. In doing so, the author draws attention to the unique features that distinguished some of these events: one player homered in three consecutive innings; another did it twice in the same inning; a third hit two inside-the-park home runs; one added a double and a single in the same game; and a fifth player drove in a record-tying twelve runs. Among the men in this elite club are legends Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt, as well as recent “inductees” Shawn Green, Scooter Gennett, and J. D. Martinez. From the sandlots of Coushatta, Louisiana, to the suburbs of New York City, this book examines the special batsmen who parlayed four mighty swings into baseball immortality. A fascinating look into this extraordinary exploit, The Four Home Runs Club will appeal to baseball fans everywhere.

From the authority on baseball research and statistics comes a vast and fascinating compendium of unique baseball lists and records. The SABR Baseball List & Record Book is an expansive collection of pitching, hitting, fielding, home run, team, and rookie records not available online or in any other book. This is a treasure trove of baseball history for statistically minded baseball fans that's also packed with intriguing marginalia. For instance, on July 25, 1967, Chicago's Ken Berry ended Game Two of a doubleheader against Cleveland with a home run in the bottom of the sixteenth inning -- Chicago's second game-winning homer of the day. The comprehensive lists include Most Career Home Runs by Two Brothers (Tommie and Hank Aaron have 768), Most Seasons with 15 or More Wins (Cy Young and Greg Maddux each have 18), and Highest On Base Percentage in a Season by a Rookie (listing every rookie above .400). Unlike other record books that only list the record holders -- say, most RBI by a rookie, held by Ted Williams with 145 -- SABR details every rookie to reach 100 RBI. Other record books might note the last pitcher in each league to steal home; here SABR has included every pitcher to do it. The book also includes a number of idiosyncratic features, such as a rundown of every player who has hit a triple and then stolen home, or every reliever who has won two games in one day. Many of the lists include a comments column for key historical notes and entertaining trivia (Bob Horner hit four home runs in a 1986 game, but his team lost). This is a must-have for every fan's library. Edited by Lyle Spatz, Chairman of the Baseball Records Committee for SABR

A collection of unusual and offbeat tales taken from baseball history includes the world's shortest bona fide home run and the baseball player who literally bit himself in the posterior while sliding into second base

Baseball "by The Book."

SABR 50 at 50 celebrates and highlights the Society for American Baseball Research’s wide-ranging contributions to baseball history. Established in 1971 in Cooperstown, New York, SABR has sought to foster and disseminate the research of baseball—with groundbreaking work from statisticians, historians, and independent researchers—and has published dozens of articles with far-reaching and long-lasting impact on the game. Among its current membership are many Major and Minor League Baseball officials, broadcasters, and writers as well as numerous former players. The diversity of SABR members’ interests is reflected in this fiftieth-anniversary volume—from baseball and the arts to statistical analysis to the Deadball Era to women in baseball. SABR 50 at 50 includes the most important and influential research published by members across a multitude of topics, including the sabermetric work of Dick Cramer, Pete Palmer, and Bill James, along with Jerry Malloy on the Negro Leagues, Keith Olbermann on why the shortstop position is number 6, John Thorn and Jules Tygiel on the untold story behind Jackie Robinson’s signing with the Dodgers, and Gai Berlage on the Colorado Silver Bullets women’s team in the 1990s. To provide history and context, each notable research article is accompanied by a short introduction. As SABR celebrates fifty years this collection gathers the organization’s most notable research and baseball history for the serious baseball reader.

The home run is the single most dramatic moment in baseball. Often it has been the exclamation point that appears at the end of a game, a season, a playoff, or a World Series. For fans, certain images-such as that of Carlton Fisk urging his shot fair over Green Monster or of Kirk Gibson limping around the bases-are engraved in memory.From Babe Ruth to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, the author tells of the stories, complete with box scores and photographs, of what he has selected as the thirty most memorable home runs. Many of the stories include comments from the author's interviews with home run hitters. Other sections cover sixty additional noteworthy home runs, All Star Game home runs, and milestones such as total home run production and grand slams.In Rich Westcott's journey through baseball history, fans will encounter the most famous moments and longest blast, as well as fascinating sidelights like these about balls that didn't travel as far.Who won a home run title without hitting a single ball out of the park?*Who hit the first inside-the-park home run in a World Series game?**Who hit the shortest home run, one that failed to reach the pitcher's mound?**** Ty Cobb won the title in 1909 with nine inside-the-park home runs.** Casey Stengel for the New York Giants in 1923.*** Andy Oyler of the Minnesota Millers scored on a two-foot drive into a mud puddle in front of home plate during a game in 1900. ( Baseball historians disagree on the truth of this account.) Author note: Rich Westcott has been a writer and editor for almost 40 years. He is the author of 10 other books, including The New Phillies Encyclopedia (with Frank Bilovsky), Phillies '93: An Incredible Season, and Philadelphia's Old Ballparks, all published by Temple University Press. He is the founder of Phillies Report, the nation's oldest continuous, baseball team newspaper. Currently, Westcott teaches sportswriting at LaSalle University and is an official scorer at Phillies games.

In an unprecedented look at Babe Ruth's amazing batting power, sure to inspire debate among baseball fans of every stripe, one of the country's most respected and trusted baseball historians reveals the amazing conclusions of more than twenty years of research. Jenkinson takes readers through Ruth's 1921 season, in which his pattern of battled balls would have accounted for more than 100 home runs in today's ballparks and under today's rules. Yet, 1921 is just tip of the iceberg, for Jenkinson's research reveals that during an era of mammoth field dimensions Ruth hit more 450-plus-feet shots than anybody in history, and the conclusions one can draw are mind boggling.