The Pecan Park Eagle

On June 19, 1921, The Galveston Daily News reported the following on San Antonio’s Joe Connolly and his 3-HR Texas League game:

Galveston Daily News
June 19, 1921
Submitted by Darrell Pittman

It wasn’t really a case of minor leaguer Joe Connolly bragging upon himself for having done something that even the up and coming HR “phenom”, Babe Ruth, had done by this date in history. The Associated Press writer who flipped this quick thumb-to-nose salute to Babe Ruth for never having yet, as of that June 19, 1921 date, done what Joe Connolly had done that previous day for the Sa Antonio Bears in a losing cause to Shreveport. Left handed batting Connolly had pounded out 3 home runs is one game, albeit, in a losing 11-10 cause.

Joe Connolly
Major Leagues
1921-1924

http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=connol002jos

Connolly would begin his brief, spotty major league career (1921-24) that same season, but he would never hit 3 home runs in a single big time game. In fact, “3” would be the total of his MLB homers over the face of a four-season big league career.

Meanwhile, as history notes, Babe Ruth would go on to have four “3-HR games” in the big leagues, with the first two of those momentous occasions occurring in the 1926 and 1928 Worlds Series actions against the same club, each time, the St. Louis Cardinals.  The third 3-HR Ruthian game came least conspicuously of the four against the Philadelphia Athletics during the 1930 season and his fourth and last 3-HR splurge came as probably the most famous of them all for its place and timing in the career of baseball’s greatest historical figure.

Babe Ruth’s 4th and Final 3-HR game came dramatically in 1935 at the tail end of his great and fabled MLB  career as “THE”  legendary slugger.

On May 25, 1935, and now playing out the last gate-attraction dregs of his fabled career briefly as a Boston Brave in the National League, Ruth his three home runs in a game at Forbes Field, with one being a prodigious shot, just days prior to his retirement for all time after a game at Cincinnati. The 3-HR game in Pittsburgh would have been the ideal time for the Babe’s cold turkey end as a big leaguer, but real life did not play out as it did in the 1948 movie, “The Babe Ruth Story”.

If you care to check out Babe Ruth among the others in the MLB 3-hr Games Club, check out this link:

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?103023-3-home-run-games

The Babe never had 4-HR big league game, but his Yankee teammate, Lou Gehrig, did reach that mark on one occasion.

It didn’t matter. Several players have broken some of Babe Ruth’s most iconic records. They simply couldn’t be Babe Ruth, even when they tried and beat his numbers on the field.

If there’s a “There Will Never Be Another Babe Ruth Club” out there, sign me up.