Chinese home run

In baseball, a Chinese home run, also a Chinese homer, Harlem home run, or Pekinese poke, is a derogatory and archaic term for a hit that just barely clears the outfield fence at its closest distance to home plate, essentially the shortest home run possible in the ballpark in question, particularly if the park is known to have an atypically short fence to begin with. The term was most commonly used in reference to home runs hit along the right field foul line at the Polo Grounds, home of the New York Giants, where that distance was short even by contemporary standards. When the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, the Los Angeles Coliseum, temporary home of the newly relocated Los Angeles Dodgers, took over the reputation for four seasons until the team took up residence in its permanent home at Dodger Stadium in 1962. Following two seasons of use by the expansion New York Mets in the early 1960s, the Polo Grounds were demolished, and the term gradually dropped out of use.

The exact origins of the term are unknown, but it is believed to have reflected an early 20th-century perception that Chinese immigrants did the menial labor they were consigned to with a bare minimum of adequacy, and were content with minimal reward for it. It has been suggested that it originated with a Tad Dorgan cartoon, but that has not been proven. In the 1950s, an extended take on the term in the New York Daily News led to a petition in the Chinese-American community calling on sportswriters to stop using it. This perception of ethnic insensitivity has further contributed to its disuse today.

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