The Twelve Major League Baseball Players with the Most World Series Homers

Of the twelve Major League Baseball players that have hit the most home runs in World Series play, nine are in the Hall of Fame. Not surprisingly, given the frequency of their post-season visits, of the dozen that have hit the most homers in the World Series, nine played for the Yankees, eight for all or for the vast majority of their careers in baseball. Not all of these fellows were big sluggers, as some just simply rose to the occasion. And one has a record that will never be broken; Mickey Mantle clobbered eighteen home runs in the twelve World Series he participated in.

Of all the many records in Major League Baseball that are considered untouchable, this one truly is. Mantle played for New York from 1951 until 1968, and in his first fourteen years in the sport he was in every World Series except for two, in 1954 and again in 1959. He had an amazing 230 post-season at-bats, so the home run record is not the only one he owns. His 40 runs batted in, 123 total bases, 43 walks, 54 strike outs, and 26 extra base hits will never be topped. Players like current standouts Manny Ramirez and Barry Bonds have hit four World Series home runs, so one can see that Mantle's standard will stand the test of time.

In second to Mantle in the World Series home run race is the great Babe Ruth. The Bambino swatted fifteen long balls out of the various parks he played in during the Yankees' Fall Classics of the Twenties and Thirties. Ruth hit his fifteen in 167 plate appearances, or 106 fewer than Mantle. Ruth hit his over the course of ten different World Series, but in three of those he was pitching for Boston and had he been a full time outfielder, Mantle's mark might not have been enough. Ruth hit three homers in a WS game against the Cardinals on October 6th, 1926; only Reggie Jackson has duplicated that feat.

In his fourteen trips to the World Series, Yankee catcher Yogi Berra smashed twelve home runs to sit all alone in third on the all-time World Series home run roster. Berra came up one short in the RBI department to Mantle, as Yogi had 39 in these tilts. The Duke of Flatbush, Duke Snider, saved some of his best hitting for the World Series, as he sent eleven balls over the outfield fences in the half dozen he played in for the Dodgers, including four each in 1952 and 1955 against the Yanks in losing efforts. Lou Gehrig and the aforementioned Jackson are tied with ten, Gehrig was 6-1 in seven World Series with New York and Jackson's Yankee and Oakland teams went 4-1, his lone defeat to the 1981 Dodgers. Jackson was called Mr. October for a reason, and he might be higher up still on this list had he not broken his leg during the ALCS and missed the 1972 Series versus the Reds, a seven game affair. In the final game against Los Angeles in the 1977 version, Reggie hit three home runs to do what Ruth had done 51 years prior, and it has not been done since.

Joe DiMaggio, Frank Robinson, and Bill "Moose" Skowron have eight home runs in World Series Play. Joltin' Joe hit his in the ten he helped New York reach, while Robinson went to the post-season with the Reds and then the Orioles. Skowron is the first name of these twelve that might evoke some wonder, as all of the rest are Hall of Fame inductees, but he did play in eight of these playoffs, seven with New York and one with Los Angeles. However, he was a platoon player even in the Series that he got to, making this accomplishment even more impressive. The last three names on the list for most World Series home runs belong to a pair of Bronx Bombers and the great Goose Goslin. Cooperstown also called for Goose; the lifetime .316 hitter poled seven with the Senators and Tigers from 1924 through 1935, while the two Yanks, Gil McDougald and Hank Bauer, were on the great Yankee clubs of the Fifties. Bauer had some clutch homers among his total, while McDougald had the least regular season home runs of anybody on this roll call with 112.