Home Run Baker Marquee Hall of Fame 1955

Baker's nickname came from the 1911 World Series, where he homered off Rube Marquard in one game and Christy Mathewson in the next. It attached itself to a third baseman whose biggest single-season total was 12 — the deadball era in one number. He was the American League's best power hitter and never reached thirteen home runs in a season.

He played third base in Connie Mack's Philadelphia infield, the one writers called the $100,000 infield, and he led the league in home runs in 1911, 1912, 1913, and 1914, and in runs batted in with 130 in 1912 and 117 in 1913. When Mack broke up that team, Baker refused his terms and sat out all of 1915, then was sold to the Yankees.

He missed 1920 as well, staying home in Maryland after his wife died of scarlet fever, and returned for two part-time seasons in New York. He finished with 1,838 hits, 96 home runs, and a .307 average, thirteen playing seasons spread across fifteen years. The Hall of Fame elected him in 1955.