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Readers' Research: Only Career HR Off of a Hall of Famer

Posted by Raphy
A week ago there was the following  comment was posted on our  suggestions page by Psychump  :
I am currently collecting the 1963 Topps baseball set and today I received card #117 Jacke Davis. As with each card I get I look up his career on B-R. I noticed he only played a few games(48) in the majors and saw he only one home run. I checked the game logs and noticed his only home run was against Sandy Koufax(two out ninth inning pinch hit 3 run job no less! Ruining A 2 hit shutout as well!). Which leads me to this question, Who else(if any) has hit his only home run against a Hall Of Famer?
I found this comment interesting because for a while now, I have been thinking about using something similar in a trivia question. Instead, let's use it as a readers research question and I'll explain how you can use the Baseball-Reference.com Play-Index to find this on a case-by-case basis.

On every player page on BB-R there is a section called HR log. This information which was gathered by the SABR is available for both home runs by hitters and home runs allowed by pitchers. If saved as a URL (by clicking share) it is also searchable by the season finder.

Therefore, if you save all the home runs allowed by Sandy Koufax and use that saved search as the basis for a batting career home run search, you can see which players that homered off Koufax and had only 1 career HR. Of course, it would be prudent to check if anyone hit multiple HRs off Koufax and not anyone else, but that can also be easily done with the new list.

To create a complete list, all we would have to do is check all of the HOF pitchers, which may be somewhat time consuming  individually, but should be quite easy as a group.

Here are the 68 Hall-of Famers who pitched at least 450 innings in the major leagues. If you check one of them, even if there result is that there are none, let me know in the comments and I'll put it in the chart:


Rk Player IP Players
1 Cy Young 7356.0 Benny Bowcock, Tom Nagle
2 Pud Galvin 6003.1Bob Casey
3 Walter Johnson 5914.1 Slim HarrissLuke Stuart
4 Phil Niekro 5404.0 Lee SmithJoe NiekroJoe Decker
5 Nolan Ryan 5386.0 -----------------
6 Gaylord Perry 5350.0 -----------------
7 Don Sutton 5282.1 Glenn GulliverRick Stelmaszek
8 Warren Spahn 5243.2 Al Jackson, Al Moran
9 Steve Carlton 5217.2 Tim Leary
10 Pete Alexander 5190.0 Ray Keating
11 Kid Nichols 5067.1 Fred Lake
12 Tim Keefe 5049.2 Gus Krock, Pete Sweeney
13 Bert Blyleven 4970.0 --------------
14 Mickey Welch 4802.0 Hi Ebright
15 Christy Mathewson 4788.2 Willie SudhoffDick Bayless
16 Tom Seaver 4783.0 Dan McGinn
17 Robin Roberts 4688.2 Al Worthington
18 Early Wynn 4564.0 Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi
19 John Clarkson 4536.1 Tun Berger, Guerdon Whiteley
20 Old Hoss Radbourn 4527.1 -------------------------
21 Fergie Jenkins 4500.2 Jeff Russell, Craig Swan, Joe Hoerner, Guy Sularz,
Ricky Seilheimer, Kevin Pasley
22 Eddie Plank 4495.2 Oscar Graham
23 Eppa Rixey 4494.2 ----------------------
24 Red Ruffing 4344.0 Al Niemiec
25 Burleigh Grimes 4180.0 Bill DreesenFred Bailey
26 TEd Lyons 4161.0 George Stumpf , Rip Collins
27 Red Faber 4086.2 George Quellich
28 Vic Willis 3996.0 Claude Elliott
29 Jim Palmer 3948.0 Bill Parsons
30 Lefty Grove 3940.2 --------------------------
31 Bob Gibson">Bob Gibson 3884.1 Clay Carroll
32 Bob Feller 3827.0 -------------------------
33 Amos Rusie 3778.2 Jack Harper, George Sharrott
34 Waite Hoyt 3762.1 Dick Reichle, Ed Morris
35 Jim Bunning 3760.1 ----------------------
36 Carl Hubbell 3590.1 ---------------------
37 Herb Pennock 3571.2 Larry Woodall
38 Juan Marichal 3507.0 ----------------------
39 Catfish Hunter 3449.1-----------------------
40 Joe McGinnity 3441.1 Chick FraserRoy PattersonHenry Thielman
41 Don Drysdale 3432.0 ------------------------
42 Clark Griffith 3385.2 Red Donahue, Dad Clarkson, Willard Mains
43 Rube Marquard 3306.2 Peaches Graham
44 Dennis Eckersley 3285.2 -------------------------
45 Jesse Haines 3208.2 Socks SeiboldRowdy Elliott
46 Mordecai Brown 3172.1 Larry Pratt
47 Whitey Ford 3170.1 -------------------------
48 Stan Coveleski 3082.0 -----------------------
49 Chief Bender 3017.0 ----------------------
50 Hal Newhouser 2993.0 Willard Brown
51 Dazzy Vance 2966.2 Mack Hillis and Herb Thomas
52 Ed Walsh">Ed Walsh 2964.1 ------------------------
53 Rube Waddell 2961.1 ---------------------
54 Jack Chesbro 2896.2 -----------------------
55 Al Spalding 2886.1 ???????????????
56 Bob Lemon 2850.0 Dixie UprightFred Sanford
57 Lefty Gomez 2503.0 --------------------
58 Monte Ward 2469.2 Joe Quest
59 Addie Joss 2327.0 --------------------
60 Sandy Koufax 2324.1 Jacke Davis
61 Hoyt Wilhelm 2254.1 Jack Meyer
62 Candy Cummings 2149.2 ??????????????
63 Dizzy Dean 1967.1 ---------------------
64 Rich Gossage 1809.1 ---------------------
65 Rollie Fingers 1701.1 ---------------------
66 Babe Ruth 1221.1 ---------------------
67 Bruce Sutter 1042.0 ---------------------
68 Satchel Paige 476.0 -------------------
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/18/2011.

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