Ned Williamson

Ned Williamson held baseball's single season home run record for thirty five years, and he hit most of those home runs over a fence so short it barely counted. In 1884, playing for Cap Anson's Chicago White Stockings in a ballpark with outfield walls under 200 feet away, Williamson hit 27 home runs, a record that stood until Babe Ruth broke it in 1919. The number was a quirk of geography as much as a feat of strength, and Williamson knew it. He was, in truth, a far better player than that one inflated total suggests, one of the finest all around men of the 1880s, a brilliant fielder and a smart, versatile star on five pennant winners. His life ended young and hard, broke and far from home, beneath a record that was never quite his.

The Best All Around Player

Williamson was born Edward Nagle Williamson in Philadelphia on October 24, 1857, and made his way to the Chicago White Stockings in 1879, where he would spend the prime of his career. He played third base and shortstop for Cap Anson's great Chicago teams, a strong, smart, versatile player who could do nearly everything well. Anson, not a man given to praise, considered Williamson one of the best all around players in the game, and the judgment was widely shared. He had a powerful and accurate throwing arm, a sure glove, and a baseball mind that made him valuable far beyond his statistics. For most of the 1880s he was a cornerstone of the best team in the National League.

The Home Run Record

In 1884 Williamson hit 27 home runs, more than doubling the previous record of 14 that Harry Stovey had set the year before, and the mark would stand for thirty five years until Babe Ruth came along. It was, by any measure, a stunning total for the era. It was also almost entirely a creation of his ballpark. Chicago played that season in Lakefront Park, which had the shortest outfield fences in the history of the major leagues, the foul lines running under 200 feet to the wall. Twenty five of Williamson's 27 home runs came at home, cheap fly balls that would have been routine outs almost anywhere else.

The Short Fences of Lakefront Park

The story of the record is really the story of a ground rule. For years the fences at Lakefront Park stood so close that balls hit over them counted only as doubles, and in 1883 Williamson took full advantage, stroking a record 49 of them. Then, for the 1884 season alone, the club changed the rule so that a ball over the short fence became a home run, and the whole White Stockings team erupted, Williamson most of all. Proof of what the park was doing came the very next year, when Chicago moved to a larger field and Williamson's home run total collapsed from 27 to about three. He never hit more than a handful again. The record was genuine, but everyone understood where it had come from.

More Than the Record

The home run record has trailed Williamson for more than a century, which is a shame, because he was a far better player than a fluky total in a tiny park. He led National League third basemen in the fielding categories year after year, a glove man of the first rank with an arm so strong that Anson swore his throws across the diamond could knock a man down. He was part of five Chicago pennant winners in the 1880s, a smart, steady presence on a dynasty. The best judges of the era rated him among the finest all around players in baseball, and they were not talking about the home runs. Take away 1884 entirely and Williamson is still one of the best third basemen of his time.

The Knee in Paris

Williamson's decline began on the other side of the world. In the winter of 1888 and 1889 he joined Albert Spalding's around the world tour, a barnstorming trip that carried two teams of major leaguers across Australia, Egypt, Europe, and beyond. In Paris, in early 1889, Williamson tore up his knee sliding into a base and landing on a stone, and the wound became infected on the voyage home. He was never the same player again, hobbled and slowed, and Spalding gave him little help with the bills he ran up trying to recover. He played only a handful of games in 1889 and limped through one final season after that. The grand tour that was meant to celebrate the game's stars instead broke one of them.

The Long Fall

By the early 1890s Williamson was finished as a player and struggling as a man. He opened a Chicago saloon with a former teammate, put on a great deal of weight, and drank heavily, his health failing along with his fortunes. The hard living caught up with him fast, the strong young infielder of the early 1880s gone in barely a decade. He had earned good money in the game and held on to little of it. By 1893 he was a sick man, ballooning past 250 pounds, his body breaking down well before its time.

A King Without a Headstone

In early 1894 Williamson's doctor sent him to a health resort near Hot Springs, Arkansas, hoping the waters might help, but his liver was failing and the dropsy had set in. He died there on March 3, 1894, at just 36 years old, far from Chicago and nearly broke. They buried him in an unmarked grave, the former home run king of baseball laid down without a stone to mark him, and there he stayed for more than a century. In 2021 the baseball research society finally gave him a headstone, a small and overdue act of remembrance. The record was a mirage, but the player was real, and the game took a hundred and twenty seven years to carve his name where it belonged.