Perry Werden, Baseball’s Original Home Run King
Before Babe Ruth, a much less-known player held the all-time professional baseball single-season home run record
The career of immortal slugger Babe Ruth unofficially marked the age of power hitting in professional baseball. It wasn’t like players didn’t hit home runs before him, but with that time being known as the Dead Ball Era, it’s easy to correlate how much less likely long balls were. One of the earliest sluggers, who held the pro single-season record (45 in 1895) for homers prior to the Bambino, was Perry Werden, who even as an old man believed the game was better before all the balls started flying out of the yards.
Werden, a right-handed first baseman and outfielder, was downright mammoth for his time. Standing 6'2" and weighing 220 pounds, he dwarfed most of his contemporaries during a 23-year professional career (1884–1897; 1899–1906; 1908). Nicknamed “Moose,” he played seven big-league seasons and the rest in the minors and independent leagues.
His major league totals are relatively modest, accumulating a .282 batting average with 26 home runs and 439 RBIs in 695 games. He led the league in triples twice, including 29 with the St. Louis Browns in 1893, and finished in the top 10 in home runs on two occasions. During his…
