Barry who?

August 7, 2007 11:40 PM

Okay, so you may have heard that Barry Bonds is the new Major League home run champion, with 756. But what about Sadaharu Oh? He hit 868 home runs for the Yomiuri Giants, and some think he ought to be in the Hall of Fame. Josh Gibson of the Negro Leagues has been in the hall since 1972, but no one knows how many homers he hit, and his total may have been even greater than Oh's. Incidentally, the first home run king, with a whopping career total of 20, was a guy named Lip Pike. He was also the first Jewish baseball player, and he once beat a horse in a 100-yard race.
posted by Silune (11 comments total)

I actually heard about Sadaharu Oh from the FPP right below this one.
posted by Poolio at 11:45 PM on August 7, 2007

I heard about him from the Beastie Boys.
posted by Bookhouse at 12:07 AM on August 8, 2007

That must have been a damn slow horse.
posted by puke & cry at 12:32 AM on August 8, 2007

Speaking of beating horses...
posted by Hicksu at 12:48 AM on August 8, 2007

Lip Pike was a son of a bitch.
posted by GooseOnTheLoose at 1:59 AM on August 8, 2007

I just did some research on horses and humans. He beat a trotting horse, according to Wikipedia; and according to the second link the horse trotted most of the way, breaking into a run at the very end. According to Wikipedia a horse trots at around 8-12 km/h, and I can run much faster than that. This morning in the gym I had the treadmill on 16 km/h, which equals a 6-minute-mile pace. To the human's credit, though, he apparently ran the 100 meters in 10 seconds flat, which is fast. The men's world record is 9.77 seconds.
posted by creasy boy at 2:11 AM on August 8, 2007

puke & cry writes "That must have been a damn slow horse."

He probably did it the same way Amarillo Slim won his famous prop bet.

You race the horse over two laps of a 50 yard track. Though the horse beats you on the first fifty, you make up for that time while the horse is turning.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:59 AM on August 8, 2007

Looking up the Amarillo Slim claim I found this thread with lots of speculation on horse vs. man. The upshot seems to be that a human's initial accelaration is faster, but no way he maintains his lead for 100 meters in any fair race. Like I said, this guy beat a trotting horse. I could outrace a meandering cheetah for 250 bucks. His time of 10 seconds is very fast, his achievement rather undermined by the gimmickry of having a horse trot next to him.

Apparently Jesse Owens beat a horse at 100m because the starting gun scared it. And at 50 m a human might be a decent match for a horse given faster acceleration.
posted by creasy boy at 5:07 AM on August 8, 2007

Sadaharu Oh's case for getting into the hall would depend on what exchange rate they use for Japanese home runs.
posted by gspm at 5:14 AM on August 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I don't get why you didn't put all this in the other thread.
posted by hermitosis at 5:36 AM on August 8, 2007

Are the Japanese pitchers as good?
posted by delmoi at 5:51 AM on August 8, 2007