The Daily Puig is often filled by sluggers who produce some of baseball's most stare-worthy feats of strength. Today, though, we want to shine our spotlight on Reds' center fielder Billy Hamilton. Hamilton, who is known entirely for his speed for both good and bad reasons, managed to hit a homer for the first time in his big-league career last night.
The Daily Puig: Billy Hamilton actually hit a homer!
It wasn’t even an inside-the-park job!
Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports
Obviously, it was against the Cubs. Who else was going to let this happen?
It was a legitimate shot, too, traveling 401 feet while coming off the bat at 104 miles per hour. Hit Tracker suggests it would have made it out of all 30 ballparks, so it wasn’t even thanks to the hitter-friendly confines of Great American Ballpark that Hamilton, whose power is on the low, low end of the scale, went deep.
Hamilton now removes himself from a list no hitter should want to be on: those who never hit a homer in the majors. Sure, sure, Hamilton has just 120 plate appearances in the majors total, so it’s not like he was in danger of setting any records in that regard anytime soon. Plus, he hit 13 homers in the minors over five years.
Then again, Ben Revere hit some homers in the minors, too. He's now 1,500 plate appearances into his major-league career without a single dinger, the longest such stretch of the Designated Hitter era in baseball, dating back to 1973:
| Rk | Player | PA | HR | From | To | G | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Revere | 1500 | 0 | 2010 | 2014 | 366 | .286 | .323 | .329 |
| 2 | Tim Johnson | 1408 | 0 | 1973 | 1979 | 516 | .223 | .274 | .265 |
| 3 | Luis Gomez | 1391 | 0 | 1974 | 1981 | 609 | .210 | .261 | .239 |
| 4 | Mick Kelleher | 1131 | 0 | 1973 | 1982 | 599 | .216 | .269 | .255 |
| 5 | Reggie Willits | 1014 | 0 | 2006 | 2011 | 414 | .258 | .356 | .302 |
| 6 | Ron Hunt | 999 | 0 | 1973 | 1974 | 240 | .285 | .395 | .320 |
| 7 | Craig Robinson | 773 | 0 | 1973 | 1977 | 287 | .219 | .263 | .256 |
| 8 | Larry Lintz | 756 | 0 | 1973 | 1978 | 350 | .227 | .336 | .252 |
| 9 | Glenn Beckert | 611 | 0 | 1973 | 1975 | 187 | .259 | .312 | .286 |
| 10 | Chad Fonville | 602 | 0 | 1995 | 1999 | 226 | .244 | .302 | .269 |
Even if Billy Hamilton's career never ends up taking off for any reason besides his legs, he'll always have this homer and the avoidance of this extremely powerless company.
Edit: Ron Hunt and Glenn Beckert did hit career home runs, but none after the DH era began.
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