Every good baseball fan knows that the major league record for home runs in a game is four. Most fans can name a large percentage of the players on the list. Many are great Hall of Fame members: Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt, Chuck Klein, and Big Ed Delahanty. Two are still active and have the small chance to achieve the feat an unprecedented second time: J. D. Martinez and Scooter Gennett, recently released by the Giants but only 29 years old. Some also had careers just short of Hall of Fame worthiness but still shined during their careers: Joe Adcock, Rocky Colavito, Gil Hodges, Josh Hamilton, and others. Some weren’t prolific home run hitters. But none was as unlikely to make this list as Pat Seerey. I know some very sharp baseball minds that could never come up with his name if asked to name the 18 players who have accomplished the feat.
Pat Seerey not only hit four in one game (1948), he came the closest of anyone to doing it twice. In 1945 Seerey hit three home runs and a triple in a game at Yankee Stadium. Those two games combined saw him amass 31 total bases. He shares this record with Willie Mays. Those seven home runs in only two games would be almost 10% of his final career total.
The 5’ 9”(maybe), 195 to 220-pound Seerey was a husky lad who earned the nickname “Fat Pat" and had great power, but also had a penchant for the strikeout. He was signed by the Cleveland Indians at 18 years of age. The Indians started him out in Class D where he hit 31 home runs in 104 games while batting .330. He also struck out 111 times. He was moved to their Class B franchise in 1942 where he batted .303 with 33 home runs. He also led that league in strikeouts.
In 1943, after only 31 games in Class A ball, the Indians brought him up to the big leagues at 20 years of age. He saw action in only 20 games, hitting one home run. The following season saw him start more than half of the Indians' games in the outfield. Seerey hit 15 home runs, but his 99 strikeouts led the American League. The fans loved him, and he was called “The People’s Choice” because he had the physique of the average guy and looked like a beer-guzzling softball player. The public identified with him.
It was more of the same in 1945: he hit 14 home runs, and his 97 strikeouts led the league again. But on July 13th, Seerey had the first of his two memorable games.
Playing in Yankee Stadium was almost certain death to right-handed hitters, but Seerey defied convention. In his first at-bat, he tripled into Death Valley, driving in the game’s first run and then scored on Jeff Heath’s home run as the Tribe began their assault on Atley Donald. Pat led off the third inning with a home run. In the fourth, he cleared the fences again with a grand slam. He batted again in the fifth with a runner on, but this time grounded into a double play to end the inning. In the seventh, he hit a three-run home run to extend his day’s total to three home runs, a triple and eight RBI. He would have one more at-bat in the ninth inning. With a chance to make history (no player ever hit four home runs and a triple in the same game), Pat hit a hard line drive directly at third baseman, Oscar Grimes, for the final out.
Although 1946 would see him up his home run total to 26, he again led the AL in strikeouts for the third consecutive season with 101. The 1947 season was one of injury, and he only played in 82 games. During this season, Hank Greenberg was hired by new Indians owner, Bill Veeck, to work with Pat and refine his batting skills. Veeck, who purchased the Indians in June of '46, thought he had the second coming of Hack Wilson in Seerey (in many ways he did). During the coming offseason, he hired Seerey to work on his ranch in Arizona, attempting to keep his often ballooning weight under control.
Cleveland enjoyed another great season in 1948, as they won the pennant and a World Championship; unfortunately, Seerey wouldn’t be there to see it. Veeck first put him on waivers, but four teams claimed him, so he was removed from the waiver wire. After only playing in 10 of their first 35 games, Cleveland traded him to the last place Chicago White Sox on June 2nd. (The Indians replaced him with, future Hall of Famer Larry Doby, who would become the first black player in the American League.)
Although he showed signs of greatness with Cleveland, his strikeouts and low batting average had tried the Indians' patience. But Pat would have one more day in the sun with Chicago.
On July 18, 1948, the White Sox played a doubleheader vs. the Athletics at Shibe Park. In the first game, Seerey came in batting .235 and started poorly with a second-inning strikeout. He then led off the fourth inning with a home run. In the fifth inning, he connected again for a two-run blast. In the sixth inning, Pat hit his third homer, this one a three-run belt. The game was becoming a slugfest, and he would see more at-bats. In the seventh inning, he fouled out to the catcher with two runners on base. But Philadelphia scored four runs in the bottom half of the inning, tying the game. He had another shot at tying the record in the visitor's ninth inning, but Joe Coleman pitched around him. When the A’s went down without scoring in the ninth, the game was sent into extra innings. Seerey received the reprieve he needed to make history.
With two outs in the eleventh inning, Seerey hit his fourth home run of the afternoon to give Chicago a 12-11 lead. After the A’s were dispatched without scoring (they left the bases loaded) in the bottom half of the inning, the victory went to the Sox. His final totals were 4-for-6, four home runs and seven RBI. Seerey went 0-for-2 in the five-inning shortened second game of the twin bill.
After hitting four homers in one game, he would go on to hit only three more in his MLB career. This was Seerey’s last hurrah. Although he finished the year with 18 home runs in 95 games, his low batting average (.229) and high strikeout total (94) quickly put him in the dog house of manager Ted Lyons. He only appeared in four games the following season with the Sox and new manager Jack Onslow.
After being relegated to the minors, he would hit 66 home runs in only 654 at-bats for the Chicago minor league system over the next two seasons (1950-1951), but would never again be called up to the major leagues. At only 26 years of age, his major league career was over. Pat hung on, playing both minor league and semi-professional baseball before calling it quits after the 1952 season. After retirement from the game, Seerey worked as a school janitor in St. Louis.
In 1994 Ted Williams' company produced a 181 card set aptly named "Swinging for the Fences." The set included the most prolific power hitters in baseball history; Ted included Pat Seerey (card #152). Williams received much heat for putting Seerey in a set with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and other immortals, but he would reply: "He did something I never did." It's true: In those two games, “The People’s Choice” had 12 at-bats, scored eight times, hit seven home runs, a triple, and drove in 15 runs.
✍️ Written by Skip Carpentier
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