Five Home Runs In One Game

Pete Schneider in 1923

Five Home Runs In One Game

I wrote yesterday about why the record for most home runs in a single minor league game is almost certainly not 8.

It’s likely still 5.

Baseball Reference mentions that Jack Crooks may have had 5 home runs in one game in 1889. However, his SABR biography makes no mention of this feat. I haven’t looked into it yet, though I think it’s likely apocryphal.

It seems that the first man to hit 5 in one game was actually Pete Schneider for the Vernon team, who did so in Salt Lake City back in 1923:

From The Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1923, page 33

Of course, we saw yesterday that 35 runs was likely not the minor league record, though it was almost certainly the Pacific Coast League record at the time. And, naturally, records like that are kind of hard to track, given the uneven level of competition and the spotty quality of record keeping in some of those leagues.

Now, the nice thing about this game is that it took place in a better established league, and it took place at a time when sports journalism was a bit more established. As a result, we’ve also got an excellent account of the feat from The Salt Lake Tribune:

There was also this short biography of Schneider — though the photo is sadly not visible:

Incidentally, Schneider had pitched for Cincinnati from 1914 to 1918, and then briefly for the Yankees in 1919. Despite his offensive feats in the west, he never played in the major leagues again.