HOME RUN BAKER

They called him Home Run — John Franklin Baker of Trappe, Maryland — and for a decade he made third base look like a rented porch with thunder in the lease. Left-handed bat, right-handed glove, he lofted dead-ball homers until the ledger gave him a nickname that stuck: ninety-six career shots and a .307 lifetime clip that still sits in the air like a dare.

Connie Mack got him first; the $100,000 infield kept him on the hot corner through Philadelphia's October weather. Nineteen eleven's World Series punches vs the Giants minted the name, then nineteen twelve answered with a .347 clip, two hundred hits, and one hundred thirty ribbies when SkillScore peaked at one hundred forty-one point two eight.

What stayed was two hundred thirty-five steals, nearly a thousand ribbies, and the memory of a Maryland farm bat who treated the left-field porch like a personal mailbox.