The Grand Ole Game

Picture the possibilities.

Runners on every base, leading away cautiously. The pitcher left with no margin for mistakes, no place to park the next hitter. The batter taking his practice swings, looking menacing, largely because of the danger he represents.

One swing, four runs.

The grand slam home run is baseball’s ultimate exclamation point, a defining moment that changes the whole complexion of a ball game. It is a game-turner that touches off home plate celebrations, a convention of three runners, the batboy and the on-deck hitter as the batter completes his triumphant trot around the bases.

Major league hitters have been taking those trots at a record pace this season. A little more than one-third of the way through the season, 58 slams were hit. That pace would produce 168 of them, breaking the single-season record of 141 hit in 1996.

But way before that there was Lou Gehrig, who had a record 23 slams among his 493 career homers. When he hit them, they were just bases-loaded homers, not yet anointed with the more glamorous title.

The term grand slam, which has its origins in bridge, was first used in sports to describe Bobby Jones’ sweep of four major golf championships--the British and U.S. Opens and Amateurs--in 1930. Later, it was extended to tennis’ four majors--Australia, the French, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Don Budge became the first American to complete a tennis Grand Slam in 1938 and two years later, baseball discovered the phrase.

It first appeared Aug. 20, 1940, in the San Francisco News when a home run with the bases loaded by Jim Tabor was described as a “grand slammer.” Tabor knew all about those bases-loaded shots. He had hit two of them in one game a year earlier, on July 4, 1939, the day an ailing Gehrig was honored at Yankee Stadium.

Gehrig, however, never bunched his slams the way modern sluggers are this season.

Robin Ventura hit two on May 20, one in each game of a doubleheader. Nomar Garciaparra also hit two on May 10 but needed just one game to do it.

Pretty good stuff except that on April 23, Fernando Tatis hit two, not only in one night, or one game, but in one inning.

Ventura’s feat--two slams in two games in one night--was a record and made him the first player to hit two slams in a single day twice. He also did it for the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 4, 1995. Nobody had ever hit two in one inning before Muscles Tatis, all 175 pounds of him, unloaded.

Willie McCovey, who owns the National League record with 18 slams, has a theory.

“I don’t think pitchers work on weaknesses as well as they did in my day,” he said. “I also think the ball is livelier. I see some funny-looking swings and the ball winds up in the upper deck. They’re not that much stronger than we were.”

Grand slams are no simple matter. Consider that when Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, just two came with the bases loaded. And he hit them in consecutive games on Sept. 27 and Sept. 29, No. 57 and No. 59, making the Babe the first modern hitter to connect for slams in two straight games.

Mark McGwire had just two slams among his record 70 homers last season. And when Roger Maris broke Ruth’s record with 61 in 1961, none were grand slams.

McCovey thought his success with the bases loaded was a matter of concentration.

“I approached at-bats differently when there were men in scoring position,” he said. “That’s why I was a good RBI man. Mostly, it was concentration and determination. I seemed to be able to concentrate more on the pitcher and how he was going to pitch me.

“No at-bat is meaningless, but when nobody was on base, I wasn’t able to concentrate as well. That’s one of the reasons I admired Pete Rose. He approached every at-bat as if the game was on the line. I was not able to do that.”

Perhaps the most remarkable grand slam statistics belong to a couple of pitchers, Jim Palmer and Tony Cloninger.

Palmer pitched for 19 seasons, threw 3,948 innings and never once gave up a home run with the bases loaded. And Cloninger, who had a career batting average of .192, is one of just 11 players to hit two slams in a single game.

Cloninger’s big game came on July 3, 1966, in Candlestick Park. Besides the two homers, he had an RBI single, a bases-loaded fly to the fence and a chance at a third slam in the ninth inning.

“Denis Menke swung at a 3-1 pitch with the bases loaded to make the last out,” he said. “It would’ve been ball four. The crowd was rooting for me to get up one more time.

“People don’t remember that I won 113 games in the big leagues or that I won 24 one year and 19 in another. They just remember me as the pitcher who hit the two grand slams.”

Palmer’s record is not totally unblemished. Freddie Patek, hardly a slugger, got him in spring training one year, and Johnny Bench, a more legitimate threat, tagged one off him in the minors. Palmer blamed old pal Earl Weaver--who else?--for the Bench slam.

“I was pitching a game--it was when I hurt my shoulder in 1967--and Earl was managing Rochester,” Palmer said. “I was throwing about 80 mph. I couldn’t throw at all. I struck out Bench the first time and I didn’t know who he was. I’d seen him hit a little broken bat single and someone said he was a little Punch-and-Judy hitter. I had no idea he had 22 home runs in 30 games or something.

“I got a 6-0 lead. I walked the bases loaded and Weaver was incensed. Bench was the hitter. He said to throw the ball down the middle and I did. He hit it about 475 feet to left center field. And that was the last time I listened to Earl.”

So how did Palmer avoid surrendering slams? The same way McCovey hit so many of them. Concentration.

“You don’t give in,” he said. “My first game in the big leagues, I came in in relief in Boston when I was 19 to face Tony Conigliaro. I’m a high fastball pitcher and he’s a high fastball hitter. I ended up striking him out on three pitches. I never wanted to give in. You don’t have to be a math major to know one’s a lot better [to give up] than four.”

The term grand slam is also found in cocktail lounges nowadays. Bartenders in the know construct them by mixing a half-jigger of blended whiskey, a quarter-jigger of vermouth, an eighth-jigger of curacao and an eighth-jigger of lime juice.

Or, by just hanging a curve ball with the bases loaded.