Inside-the-park home run

In baseball parlance, an inside-the-park home run is a play where a hitter scores a home run without hitting the ball out of play. Inside-the-park home runs are rare events, generally occurring only a handful of times during any given season. The play requires both a fast base runner and often some sort of fielding mishap by the defense, or a strange bounce in the outfield. If the fielder commits an error during the act, however, the play is not scored as a home run, but rather advancing on an error.

An inside-the-park grand slam is the same event but, like a grand slam, features the bases loaded for an inside-the-park home run. Even more rare than an inside-the-park home run, there have only been 40 inside-the-park grand slams in Major League Baseball since 1950 and only eight since 1990 (as of 2002). Honus Wagner had the most in MLB history with five.

Jimmy Sheckard completed a phenomenal feat in 1901, hitting inside-the-park grand slams in consecutive games on consecutive days with the Brooklyn Superbas (later the Brooklyn Dodgers). Sheckard is the only person in Major League Baseball history to do so.

A rare event occurred on July 13, 1896, when Ed Delahanty of the Philadelphia Phillies hit four inside-the-park home runs against the Chicago Cubs. It's considered one of the most challenging records in baseball game.

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