Elevator pitching a baseball frivolity built one home run at a time
July 20, 1949 – BROOKLYN, N.Y.
The rest, they say, is history. With this home run Dixie Walker became the first player to hit a home run against every franchise in the American League and every franchise in the National League. In 1949 this would have been 16 opponents and it doesn’t seem like an insurmountable feat. History has revealed the opposite. Hitting a home run against every franchise is really tough. So why not celebrate those who do it? That’s The v30 Club.
The v30 Club operates in a baseball world dominated by advanced metrics and an abundance of empirical data and eschews all of it. There’s no concern about barrel rates, launch angles, slugging percentage, or OPS+. Topping the leader board in those measures does not guarantee your membership in our club. Simply hitting a lot of home runs doesn’t punch your ticket either. The v30 Club demands only one inarguable statistic – have you hit a home run against the White Sox? One against the Giants? One against every team? If so, you’re in.
This all seems very binary.Yes or no. But woven throughout the hundreds of home runs contributing to players’ memberships are incredible stories. There are tales of luck, circumstance, and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. The history of baseball itself in on display. Expansion and relocation, the advent of Interleague play, and the hot-of-the-press balanced schedule all contribute to v30 Club stories in important and interesting ways. And in the same way that the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is more than just the Plaque Gallery, there are many more stories to tell about the players who aren’t in the club through the lens of specific home runs.
v30 Club history has been written every day of every baseball season and will continue to be written in 2024. The low-leverage, late-inning home run hit by a backup outfielder on a Wednesday afternoon may not look like something in the moment, but it may be part of someone’s v30 story. The walk-off moonshot in the 15th inning for a pennant contender is incredibly important in the moment, but possibly forgotten in the v30 story. Everything is something. We’re here to document what’s happening now, what happened then, and how everything comes together in a way that only baseball can make happen.