Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
-Clemente never hit 30 HR's in a season
Now, for those of you not old enough to remember Forbes Field, let me acknowledge it gave Clemente a lot of his triples and cost him a lot of HR's. It was second only to Griffith Stadium (Washington's home park) as a bad park for hitters. But if you compensate for that, Clemente gets what, maybe 60-80 more HR's, for a career total of 300-320, and loses a bunch of those triples. It will not significantly alter his career numbers, except to perhaps give him a slugging title--whereas it would have hugely altered the numbers of the more powerful Willie Stargell, probably giving him 600 HR's.
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Willie Stargell hit 30 HRs once in Forbes Field, 33 in 1966. That season Clemente hit 29. That was the season that Harry Walker asked Clemente to try to hit home runs. Willie Stargell in his first full season in 3 Rivers Stadium hit 48 HRs and went on to hit more HRs than any other player in the 70s. The Pirates moved out of Forbes Field in the middle of 1970.
I agree that Stargell would have hit 600+ HRs if he had played in an average stadium his whole career. I think your estimate is very low for Clemente, I believe he could have hit 500. It has already been posted how far he could hit the ball. The HR of Sandy Koufax was the hardest hit ball and longest hit ball off Koufax, that is from Sandy himself. Clemente hit the only HR that really mattered, in game 7 of the 1971 World Series that led to a world championship. He could hit HRs when he wanted to.