Originally Posted by
Bully13
You could not be more wrong. NOBODY, not Jr or even Hank Aaron deserves to be mentioned in the same paragraph as Babe Ruth.
The only way to fairly compare today's players with yesterday's is to see how much separation they created between their contemporaries. NOBODY came close to creating such wide gaps in the statistics of their respective eras than George Herman Ruth.
He single handily brought baseball into a new era and some would even argue he saved the game all by himself. He was physically unique, possessed of a rare combination of lightning reflexes, superb judgment and timing, and excellent eyesight.
He started his career as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox and had a great run from 1914 thru 1918, went 78-40, including leading the league in 1916 with 1.75 era, 9 shutouts, and a 23-12 record. he was 3-0 in world series competition with a .87 era for 31 innings and pitched 29 2/3 scoreless innings , a world series record held until broken by Whitey Ford in 1961. in 1918 he alternated between pitching and the outfield and led the league with 11 HR's and a .555 slugging average.
He went on to either lead or tie for the lead in dingers 12 times. what is so amazing is when you look at how many the runner ups had during that streak.
1919--Ruth had 29, runner up with 10
1920--Ruth had 54, runner up had 19
1921--Ruth had 59, runner up had 24
1922--injury year with only 406 at bats, had 35 while Hornsby had 42 with 623 at bats
1923--Ruth had 41---runner up with 29
1924--Ruth had 46---runner up with 25
1925--don't think he played that year
1926--Ruth 47--r/u 19
1927--Ruth 60---r/u Gehrig with 47 and 3rd place 30
1928--Ruth 54--r/u 31
1929--Ruth 46---r/u 43
to give you an idea of this separation, consider years like 1921 when ONE out of EVERY 8 home runs hit in the American League, ONE of those was hit by Babe Ruth.
His lifetime batting avg is .342 and slugging avg is .690 which is 56 points higher than runner up Ted Williams.
During an 8 year run, he led the league in walks 7 of those years despite having Lou Gehrig hitting behind him every time. Leaving little doubt he was the most feared man to every step into a batter's box.
the only thing he was not dominant in was speed, but despite that, he was always up there in the top 5 in triples. showing that when he wasn't knocking it out of the park, he was still knocking the ever loving shit off the cover of the ball when contact was made.
one of the stats you didn't see back then was outfielder's throwing out runners. when you look at the newspaper clippings, the writers were always talking about his cannon of an arm and how he would throw out runners routinely trying to stretch their long singles into doubles. he had a CANNON of an arm from right field. opposing hitters learned quickly throughout his career to be careful of Ruth's arm in right field.
NOBODY is in the same category with Babe Ruth and I doubt anybody ever will.
