Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs.
Babe Ruth, a Baltimore native, hit 714.
And Barry Bonds, with perhaps some help from steroids, had 713 in games through Thursday.
But none of those sluggers acquired the nickname “Home Run.” That moniker belonged to Frank “Home Run” Baker, who was born in the small Eastern Shore town of Trappe.
“He was a farmer first and a baseball player second,” said journalist Barry Sparks, whose biography on Baker was published last year.
Leroy Muir, the curator of the Eastern Shore Baseball Museum in Salisbury, noted that Baker hit only 96 home runs in his Major League career, which lasted from 1908 to 1922.
So how did Baker get his nickname? Muir and Sparks noted that Baker hit two key home runs for the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1911 World Series, during a time when the long ball was a rarity.
Baker, who also played for the Yankees, led the American League in home runs from 1911-14. He had a career-high 12 homers in 1913, and he also led the league in RBIs that season with 126.
Tommy Young is on the board of the directors of the Eastern Shore Baseball Museum, which is located at the home of the Single-A Delmarva Shorebirds (a farm team of the Orioles). Young said that Baker was helpful in getting Jimmy Foxx, another Eastern Shore native, into pro baseball.
Foxx was born in Sudlersville in 1907, hit 534 homers from 1925-45 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951.
Baker was born 120 years ago in Trappe. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955. Baker died at the age of 77 in 1963, in Trappe.
THE BAKER FILE
Nickname: Home Run Baker
Baseball Hall of Fame: 1955
Career homers: 99, counting3 in the World Series
Did you know? Young, from the Eastern Shore Baseball Museum, played baseball at Salisbury State (now Salisbury University) from 1945-49. Young is related to Renie Martin, who pitched in the majors for the Royals and Giants from 1979-84 … Trappe had 1,146 people in the 2000 census … Frank “Home Run” Baker: Hall of Famer and World Series Hero, a 288-page softcover book, was published late last year. Sparks, the author, said Baker still has relatives in Trappe.
