home run leaders by presidential administration

One of the Twitterati I follow wished his favorite baseball player a happy birthday. And noted an achievement. Of course, PrezWisdom subsequently noted that Griffey doesn't actually hold the record cited in that tweet. Alex Rodriguez owns the two-term record for most home runs hit during a presidency, with 364 during the administration of George W. Bush. PrezWisdom prefers not to acknowledge Rodriguez because the latter is an admitted steroid user. The wacky-face emojis tell me he has tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Anyway, that got me to thinking...

Who holds the record for one term presidencies? For partial-term presidencies. Aw, heck...who hit the most home runs in each presidential administration since the advent of Major league Baseball? Is there a way to look that up? This sounds like a job for stoopidstats!

The full table is below. But first a few comments.

For the purposes of this task, it's fortunate that the normal succession date of January 20 is during the offseason. Even before it was moved to January, it was in early March which was during the offseason. Thus, for the most part the task is easy. With a downloadable database (I use Sean Lahman's), it's mostly a matter of simply pivoting on sets of years (e.g., for Wilson, see player totals for the years 1913-1920). The complications come in on the few occasions where presidential succession occurred during a season. As necessary for those seasons, I used the game logs available on Baseball Reference to determine who hit how many home runs during whose presidencies. Fortunately, I never ran across a situation where a contender for a lead actually hit a home run on the day that the presidency changed hands. I'd have hated trying to research times of day to see if I could figure out things like "did he hit that homer before or after President Whosiwhats died.

Even so, I couldn't get full information. Baseball Reference doesn't seem to have game logs from the 19th century. So I was left high and dry trying to parse who hit how many homers when during the 1881 season. President Garfield died during that season. Garfield's presidency was the second-shortest, running from his inauguration on March 4, 1881 until his death on September 19, 1881. 41 players hit homers in 1881, led by Dan Brouthers, who hit 8. But without a game log I can't say definitively who hit the most while Garfield was president.

Similarly, the lack of game logs for 1881 means that I don't have full information for President Arthur. Ned Williamson hit 32 home runs in 1882-1884. He also hit one homer in 1881. No one else hit more than 31 during 1881-1884, so Williamson has the most. But I don't know if his total is 32 or 33.

A few other fun facts before I show the full list. Please note that, in these fun facts, I am sadly leaving out whoever it was who had the most homers during Garfield's presidency:

• The only tie came during Grover Cleveland's first presidency. Yes, I treated his two nonconsecutive terms as separate presidencies. Dan Brothers and Roger Connor each hit 39 homers during the Cleveland I administration.
• Babe Ruth and Mike Schmidt are the only two players who led in homers during more than one administration. And they each did it for three.
• Even though Franklin Roosevelt served more than three terms, Jimmie Foxx's administration-leading total of 353 home runs falls short of Alex Rodriguez' 364 home runs during George W. Bush' presidency. In fairness, Roosevelt died so early during his fourth term that no baseball had been played. So, for these purposes, it's the same as if he had only served three terms.
• Maybe PrezWisdom can take comfort in the knowledge that Griffey's home run total during the Clinton administration might have topped Rodriguez' total during the Bush administration if not for that strike in 1994-1995. Or maybe that makes it worse.

a) insufficient information available to determine. Dan Brouthers hit 8 home runs in 1881, but it is unclear how many he hit during the Garfield presidency.

b) Ned Williamson hit one home run in 1881. It is unclear whether that was before or after Arthur assumed the presidency.

c) Includes all 12 of the home runs Freeman hit in 1901. All 12 were hit before McKinley's death.

d) Does not include any of the 8 home runs Davis hit in 1901. All 8 were hit before McKinley's death.

e) Includes the 25 home runs Ruth hit in 1923 before Harding died. Does not include the 16 home runs he hit in 1923 after Harding died.

f) Includes the 16 home runs Ruth hit in 1923 after Harding died. Does not include the 25 home runs he hit in 1923 before Harding died.

g) Includes the 15 home runs Aaron hit in 1974 before Nixon resigned. Does not include the 5 home runs he hit in 1974 after Nixon resigned.

h) Includes the 11 home runs Schmidt hit in 1974 after Nixon resigned. Does not include the 25 home runs he hit in 1974 before Nixon resigned.