There are many Giants players names who are instantly recognizable by die-hard Giants fans. Of course, there are Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, and Willie McCovey. Not as remembered but up there with those three is Mel Ott. The next tier of homerun hitters include Orlando Cepeda, Bobby Bonds, Matt Williams, Bobby Thompson, Will Clark, Jack Clark, Dave Kingman, Jeff Kent, Kevin Mitchell, and Jim Ray Hart. But the first of the Giants big homerun hitters was Roger Connor.
One Who Contributed To Our Team Name
Part of the original New York Giants team, the big guy - at 6' 3", 220 lb. - was one of the players contributing to the "Giants" nickname that was given to the team. Roger Connor spent most of his career with the NY Giants. His first three seasons were with the Troy Trojans, a precursor to the Giants as a number of their players moved on to the Giants when the Trojans folded, before joining the Giants for most of his next 11 seasons, with one season stints with the New York Giants of the Players League in 1890 and the Philadephia Phillies in 1892. Then he was traded to the St. Louis Browns in 1894 and finished his career with them in 1897.
He didn't hit many homers for the Giants initially but in the year he turned 30, he went from 7 homers the year before to 17 homers. When his career ended, he played 18 seasons, 1997 games, with 138 homers, good for the career lead in homeruns in the MLB until someone named George Herman Ruth passed him up like he was standing still in 1921. He ended up playing 1120 games for the Giants and in his 4,346 Giants at bats he hit 76 homeruns for the Giants.
He Was THE Original Giants Homerun Hitting All-Around Hitter
In all, Roger Connor had a career batting average of .358 (league average of .282 according to baseball-reference.com, from whence I gathered all my data for him), on-base percentage of .434 (league average of .341), slugging percentage of .577 (league average of .390), and OPS of 1.010 (league average of .731).
While Connor's homerun mark is road kill after the offensive era arrived, he is still 86th in hits with 2,467, 5th in triples with 233 and 85th in doubles in 441. In addition, he is still 38th in runs scored and 79th in RBI with 1322, despite not being in the leaders in career at bats. He was in the top 5 in homeruns in 8 seasons – leading the league once – and in the top 10 in 12 seasons. He eventually held the MLB career mark for homeruns from 1895 to 1920, a total of 25 years.
Not too shabby for a player he hasn't played in nearly 110 years and who has been dead 75 years. Roger Connor was the Barry Bonds of his times. My main surprise, besides that the SF Giants organization hasn't done much to acknowledge his history with the team, is that it took the Hall of Fame until 1976 to include him, when he was a leader in so many different offensive categories.
And it seems a bit negligent to me that the SF Giants have not decided yet to honor, literally, the First Giant Giant, the Giant who lent his stature to the team and to their teamname, the Giant who still has his name on various Top 100 lists despite the offensive explosion that occurred after Babe Ruth popularized the homerun, despite the offensive explosion that followed the integration of baseball with Jackie Robinson joining the Dodgers, the offensive explosion that happened in the 60's and 70's, the offensive explosion that happened with the steroid era. The First Giant: Roger Connor.
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