The Hall of Fame Case for Lip Pike, the First Jewish Baseball Slugger

Had there been a Baseball Hall of Fame at the turn of the 19th century, Lipman Emanuel “Lip” Pike would have been an overwhelming choice. The Jewish superstar, who died in 1893, led the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (the forerunner to the present-day National League in home runs the first three years of professional ball. Pike once hit six home runs in a single game; in 1872 for the Baltimore Canaries, Pike hit 17.2 percent of all homers in the league, a number not bested until 1920 when Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees broke Pike’s record (20.07 percent).

When the Baseball Hall of Fame was founded in 1936, Pike was on the ballot and received only one vote. The five players who were inducted into that inaugural Hall of Fame class were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. These ballplayers, especially the first three, are household names, but Pike has been slowly forgotten, forced out of the public imagination as the game grew in popularity. His legacy remains in relative obscurity—and there is no plaque for him in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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