page_title: List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders
section_title: American League
hierarchical_section_title: List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders / American League
caption_attribution_description: Alex Rodriguez sharing his thoughts on a called strike. Photograph by Googie Man
context_page_description: In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit so far that the batter is able to circle all the bases ending at home plate, scoring himself plus any runners already on base, with no errors by the defensive team on the play. An automatic home run is achieved by hitting the ball on the fly over the outfield fence in fair territory. More rarely, an inside-the-park home run occurs when the hitter reaches home plate while the baseball remains in play on the field. In Major League Baseball, a player in each league wins the home run title each season by hitting the most home runs that year. Only home runs hit in a particular league count towards that league's seasonal lead. Mark McGwire, for example, hit 58 home runs in 1997, more than any other player that year. However, McGwire was traded from the American League's Oakland Athletics to the National League's St. Louis Cardinals midway through the season and his individual AL and NL home run totals did not qualify to lead either league.
  The first home run champion in the National League was George Hall. In the league's inaugural 1876 season, Hall hit five home runs for the short-lived National League Philadelphia Athletics.
caption: Alex Rodriguez led the American League in home runs five times, three with the Texas Rangers and twice with the New York Yankees.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:07:17 22:58:58", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1058", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5233", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:05:04 09:40:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:05:04 09:40:49", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "108853/16384", "EXIF ApertureValue": "162885/32768", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "176", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "334", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "500", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "932", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1728000/437", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "384000/97", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}