Baseball: What is an Inside-the-Park Home Run?

An inside-the-park home run is a fairly rare occurrence that happens when a player hits the balls and it stays inside the park. However, he is able to run and touch all four bases and can reach home before he tagged out. This also must occur without the occurrence of an error or else the batter will not be credited with a home run. Ballparks in the early days of baseball were very large, which correlated to a high amount of inside-the-park home runs. In today's game, because the parks have gotten smaller, they are less common. The average is about 1 out of every 160 home runs in the history were inside-the-park, but this ratio is far off of the occurrence of today.

You don't necessarily need speed in order to hit an inside-the-park home run. However, having fast speed is also a must, as you must round all the bases before the ball is thrown in. The majority of these kind of home runs happen due to the outfielder misjudging the angle or ball flight or the ball bouncing. In the event of two players colliding in the outfield, the third outfielder must run to retrieve the ball, meaning a higher percentage of a home run occurring.

Jesse Burkett had fifty-five inside-the-park home runs in his career, which is the most. However, all of his occurred before the 1950's and occurred in the much larger stadiums. Willie Wilson has had thirteen in the post-1950 Major League Era. Ichiro Suzuki was able to hit one during an All-Star game. He is the only player to have done this. Nine inside-the-park home runs have occurred in the World Series. All of them have occurred before 1930, though. Roberto Clemente has probably has had the rarest home run happen. He hit a game winning inside-the-park grand slam, the only one ever. Jimmy Sheckard was able to hit inside-the-park grand slams on back to back days, though. Ed Delahanty, who is one of the rare players to hit four homers in one game, hit two of those four inside of the park. Another notable home run was by Prince Fielder. Weighing 260 pounds, his baseball got wedged under the wall. He was able to round the bases. So far, forty inside-the-park grand slams have occurred, but only eight have happened since 1990. Honus Wagner has had five inside-the-park grand slams, which stands as the most.

Wikipedia, Inside-the-park home run