I've already gone over this with EasyAce who makes some nice points. Nevertheless, I disagree. One of teammates was quoted as saying that Ruth dropped out of a tree. His way of saying that nobody could fathom a talent like Ruth at that time.
"In September 1921, Ruth underwent three hours of tests at Columbia University to determine his athletic and psychological capabilities. Sportswriter Hugh Fullerton wrote up the findings for Popular Science Monthly:
“The tests revealed the fact that Ruth is 90 per cent efficient compared with a human average of 60 per cent. That his eyes are about 12 per cent faster than those of the average human being. That his ears function at least 10 per cent faster than those of the ordinary man. That his nerves are steadier than those of 499 out of 500 persons. That in attention and quickness of perception he rated one and a half times above the human average. That in intelligence, as demonstrated by the quickness and accuracy of understanding, he is approximately 10 per cent above normal.â€
500 young, healthy males took the test. Ruth finished number one.
In short, Ruth was way ahead of the curve as far as physical abilities of the times.
In a book called "The Year Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs" author/researched Bill Jenkinson detailed how in 1921 Ruth hit 104 balls that would have been home runs in the parks of today. His actual home run total for the year was 59.
That year the Yankees were still playing in the Polo Grounds which had a 490 foot center field fence and distances to right and left center which weren't much shorter. Pitchers regularly pitched outside to Ruth forcing him to walk or swing at bad pitches. He chose to swing at a number of them many which became extremely long 450 ft plus outs.
I took a close look at Ruth's 1921 season. Aside from his then-home park Polo Grounds, here is how the road ballparks were rated that season according to Baseball Reference:
Dunn Field (Cleveland)---hitter's park.
Sportsman's Park (St. Louis)---hitter's park.
Griffith Stadium (Washington)---pitcher's park.
Fenway Park (Boston)---hitter's park.
Navin Field (Detroit)---pitcher's park.
Comiskey Park (Chicago)---pitcher's park.
Shibe Park (Philadelphia)---hitter's park.
That's four hitter's parks and three pitcher's parks. And, since the World Series was played between the Yankees and the Giants, the Polo Grounds technically became a road park for Ruth as well as a home park---and we know that for pull hitters like him (and, for pull-hitting righthanded hitters) the Polo Grounds could be considered something of a borderline hitter's park for him. So that gives him five hitter's parks.
And remember that Yankee Stadium was originally built to accommodate Ruth's power. Why wouldn't they? If you're going to build a new ballpark for your team why would you build it
against your number one hitter's strength?
I remember a specious argument Branch Rickey once made, when he was running the Pirates, involving Ralph Kiner:
Babe Ruth never requested a diminutive field to fit him. Our man does. Rickey was referring to the left field fences moved in somewhat. And they were---
to accommodate the veteran Hank Greenberg, whom the Pirates acquired well before Ralph Kiner made the team. Ruth may not have asked the Yankees to build their new playpen to accommodate him, but Rickey---desperate to cut Kiner down in a contract negotiation---lied speciously about Kiner asking for a shorter left field fence in Forbes Field when Rickey knew good and g@ddam well the fence was cut to accommodate Greenberg. (Fans nicknamed the new shorter porch Greenberg Gardens; only
after Greenberg was through and Kiner came into his own did they change the nickname to Kiner's Korner.)
Let's look at today's ballparks and imagine Babe Ruth the American Leaguer hitting last season in them, including the third Yankee Stadium, and again using Baseball Reference's rankings:
Fenway Park (Boston)---hitter's park
Yankee Stadium (New York)---hitter's park
Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay)---pitcher's park
Rogers Centre (Toronto)---pitcher's park
Camden Yards (Baltimore)---pitcher's park
Progressive Field (Cleveland)---hitter's park
Target Field (Minnesota)---hitter's park
Comerica Park (Detroit)---neutral
Kauffmann Stadium (Kansas City)---neutral
Minute Maid Park (Houston)---just about neutral
Oakland Coliseum (three guesses)---pitcher's park
Safeco Field (Seattle)---pitcher's park
Angel Stadium (Anaheim)---pitcher's park
Globe Life Park (a.k.a. the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas)---hitter's park.
That's five hitter's parks, three neutral or just-about-neutral, and six pitcher's parks in the American League. Since 2018's game included regular season interleague play, let's look at the National League ballparks for that season:
Sun Trust Park (Atlanta)---hitter's park
Nationals Park (Washington)---hitter's park
Citizen's Bank Park (Philadelphia)---hitter's park
Citi Field (New York)---pitcher's park
Marlins Park (Miami)---pitcher's park
Miller Park (Milwaukee)---hitter's park
Wrigley Field (Chicago)---hitter's park
The third Busch Stadium (St. Louis)---pitcher's park
PNC Park (Pittsburgh)---pitcher's park
Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati)---hitter's park
Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles)---pitcher's park
Coors Field (Denver)---hitter's park, and how!
Chase Field (Arizona)---hitter's park
AT&T Park (San Francisco)---more or less neutral
Petco Park (San Diego)---pitcher's park.
The National League has eight hitter's parks, six pitchers' parks, and one more or less neutral park. It would depend on his team's interleague schedule whether Babe Ruth the American Leaguer would hit today commensurate to how he hit in his era. If you assume he'd have been a National Leaguer, you might have the case that he'd equal many of his actual batting statistics in today's game. But even there you must allow that today's pitchers, who've learned more than a few tricks about it, would be pitching against his prototypical launch-angling batting style, feeding him a diet of either rising fastballs or under-the-knees sliders and sinkers. Against that kind of pitching Ruth would likely strike out quite a bit more
and whack a few more on the ground when not hitting a few more fly outs. And if you're going to get him whacking them on the ground, you won't have very many occasions on which he could beat them out for hits with his lack of speed.
Now, would Ruth have a combination batting average and home run total today like in the times he played?
No, I'm guessing he'd strike out more, have about a 40 50 points lower BA, but he might hit more home runs.
I based my observation on several analyses that showed Ruth in the night ball era would probably shake out with a batting average closer to the .300-.310 range, a lot more strikeouts, and lifetime home runs more in line with what Willie Mays and Ken Griffey, Jr. actually did hit (and, remember, Mays lost two seasons early to the Army). That plus a couple of other things would
still make him a Hall of Famer, no question about it.
Keep in mind, too, that Ruth didn't face the overall quality of pitching in his time that the Mayses and Aarons faced in theirs. I looked up the pitchers the three faced. Based on facing any pitchers 100 times or more, Ruth faced three Hall of Famers during his career: Lefty Grove, Ted Lyons, and Red Faber. (He hit Grove and Lyons reasonably well but against Faber Ruth did pretty poorly: he hit only .233 against him in 102 plate appearances with a .760 OPS.)
Then, I looked up Mays and Aaron. Mays had 100+ plate appearances against five Hall of Famers: Warren Spahn, Don Drysdale, Robin Roberts, Sandy Koufax, and Bob Gibson. He did his poorest against Gibson (.196 BA/.619 OPS) and his best against Drysdale (.330 BA/.978 OPS). Aaron had 100+ plate appearances against six Hall of Famers: Drysdale, Gibson, Juan Marichal, Roberts, Koufax, and Gaylord Perry. Like Mays, Aaron did his worst against Gibson, but what a surprise that Koufax nicknamed him Bad Henry: Aaron
owned Koufax---a 1.077 OPS plus a .362 BA against him.
Taking
all their plate appearances, Ruth faced eight Hall of Famers at all during his career. Mays and Aaron each faced seventeen. I submit based on that that the quality of pitching was better and broader in their time than in Ruth's time. And Mays and Aaron didn't have to face such wickedness as, say, a Jack Morris or a Bruce Sutter splitter, a Randy Johnson slider, a Mariano Rivera cutter, a Mike Mussina knuckle curve, or a Pedro Martinez changeup. Even if they had to deal with Warren Spahn's scroogie, Sandy Koufax's curve, Hoyt Wilhelm's knuckleball, or Nolan Ryan's heater.
Jenkinson analyzed many of Ruth's blasts and compared them to other players (like Mickey Mantle). He found as yet nobody has hit balls as far as Ruth hit them.
Aside from how true that actually
isn't (anyone who thinks it is didn't see the kind of moonshots often hit by the like of Mickey Mantle, Dick Allen, Frank Howard, Dave Kingman, Mike Schmidt, Darryl Strawberry, or even the
clean Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds), saying Babe Ruth hit them farther is like saying Nolan Ryan threw them harder: the question isn't whether they hit them farther or threw them harder, the question is what the results were. Dave Kingman could and often did hit home runs for distances even Ruth only fantasised about (I saw a few of those myself), but he isn't anywhere
near top two hundred players who ever played. You need a
lot more than just hitting them farther to be
any kind of great player. Ruth's distances alone didn't make him great, merely jaw-dropping when he did hit one for that kind of distance. I used to find myself in pitching debates and a running theme came down to, "Nolan Ryan was the greatest because he threw the hardest." Well, now. If
all it took to be a great pitcher was throwing the hardest ever, then minor league legend Steve Dalkowski would be the greatest pitcher who ever lived.
Except that he wasn't. And come to think of it neither was Nolan Ryan. When all is said and done, Ryan---a no questions asked Hall of Famer---shakes out as maybe the 25th best starting pitcher in the game's history. He's what Steve Dalkowski
might have been as a major league pitcher if Dalkowski had a little more control. (As it turned out, Dalkowski, tragically, had even less control over his own self than he did on the mound.)
Babe Ruth's greatness as a player has nothing to do with how far he could hit the ball. And I think I discussed elsewhere (you might have seen it or been part of it) that one of the most ridiculous arguments I knew of during the 1961 chase to meet or break Ruth's single-season home run record was that Roger Maris was an "illegitimate" contender for it because he didn't hit the mammoth Ruthian punt but, instead, hit booming line drives. When the ball clears the fence, it doesn't matter how it got there other than for the jaw-dropping factor, it's
still a home run. Henry Aaron didn't hit big booming punts either, most of the time. (Of any man who could have broken Ruth's career home run record Aaron was probably the
least ostentatious a hitter. But he did it. Remember, there were those who said Aaron wasn't a "legitimate" challenger to Ruth because he didn't have The Big Seasons---but if you look at his averages per 162 games lifetime, you figure out fast that just about
every Henry Aaron season would have been a Big Season for anyone
else.)
I argued then that those despairing of talking today's hitters out of thinking about their launch angles first could point to Maris and Aaron as examples of power hitters who weren't half as concerned about what we'd call their launch angles today but
were concerned about getting the bat on the ball, knowing they'd get their home runs
anyway. It still holds true. You'll have those hitters who can forget their launch angles, make contact, and
still hit parabolic home runs. Aaron Judge isn't going to be any less jaw-dropping a home run hitter if he forgets his launch angles and just hits the damn ball; he's still going to hit a boatload of bombs.
I don't know if Judge will prove to be a great power/speed combination. (He
has speed; he doesn't try to steal bases very often (the Yankees would probably fine him if he tried more than a few times a year), but he does have a .652 stolen base percentage so far. But he hasn't been anywhere near his league's top ten power/speed combinations yet in his career.) But then neither was Ruth. If you're going to cut Barry Bonds out of the picture because of his involvement with actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances, then the single greatest power/speed combination of all time is Rickey Henderson, who edges out Willie Mays by 43+ points. The top 25 power/speed combinations include eleven Hall of Famers, in descending order: Henderson, Mays, Joe Morgan, Andre Dawson (I bet that surprises you), Henry Aaron, Craig Biggio, Reggie Jackson (I bet
that surprises you, too), Paul Molitor, Ryne Sandberg, Frank Robinson, and Dave Winfield.
Ruth ranks number 84 on the career power/speed combination list.
I rank Mays far ahead of Ruth as an all-around player. He could and did win with more tools than Ruth; it wasn't Mays's fault that his teams weren't as good as Ruth's teams. Mays played a far more demanding outfield position and was just about the best in the business at it, with a better throwing arm and better overall range; he hit for power and for average (lifetime, he hit .302, but if he'd played in Ruth's era without night ball he might well have hit over .340); and he had a power/speed combination that leaves everyone else except Henderson behind. (Mickey Mantle might have gotten up there if not for the legs he could have tried for treason with all those injuries.) A lot of Mays's home runs were out-bloody-rageous punts, but he could drop jaws with his center field play equal to how he could drop jaws hitting his home runs, and not just with the famous 1954 World Series catch.
Babe Ruth would have been Hall of Fame great playing in any era. But in equalised conditions I doubt seriously that he'd still be considered the greatest of his time. I repeat: It's absolutely right to call him the greatest player of the pre-World War II/pre-integration/pre-night ball era. And that's about it.
As far as arguing because Ruth won "only" four WS and Gehrig and DiMaggio won more is not a valid argument.
It
is if you're talking about Ruth the
team player, not Ruth the individual powerhouse. With Ruth
alone as their best player, the Yankees went to three World Series and won only one of them. Of
course this isn't Ruth's fault, but it
is what it is.
With Ruth
and Gehrig
together they won three out of four Series. Ruth and Gehrig played together for two more seasons in which the Yankees didn't win; Gehrig was the best player on the 1935 Yankees but they were beaten out by the Tigers for the pennant. Then, Gehrig went to three straight World Series and won them. And he had a new teammate of equivalent ability at his side to do it: Joe DiMaggio.
By themselves
neither Babe Ruth nor Lou Gehrig could carry a World Series winner. I don't know of
any player who
really can. (They used to call Sandy Koufax half a pennant by himself, but even that's only
half.) Even Joe DiMaggio, who had a
better championship jacket than
either Ruth or Gehrig, though you look at DiMaggio's and conclude there was something else there when in thirteen major league seasons (it might have been sixteen if DiMaggio hadn't missed three to military service) DiMaggio's Yankees won ten pennants and nine World Series, a better run than
either Ruth and Gehrig had. DiMaggio didn't really have a single near-equal teammate after Gehrig's tragic career end and Dickey's retirement. He got to play with Yogi Berra four seasons and Mickey Mantle, one. Yogi came into his own in 1949; Mantle was an obviously talented but still inexperienced rookie in 1951. DiMaggio really got Berra's better play for only two seasons; he never really got to play aside Mantle's best.
I often think Yogi Berra may be the single most underrated team player in baseball history simply because his character and image became
so out-sized (there were even times I thought that he was so popular a character and a man that there were people who forgot he was a Hall of Famer), but think about it a moment: Berra's job included responsibility for what Yankee pitchers threw, the first job you see any catcher perform in a major league game, usually, since he isn't likely to be batting high in the order. And a deep review of how those pitchers did with Berra as their receiver shows something I never thought about myself until about fifteen years ago---with the obvious exception of Whitey Ford, the only Hall of Famer whom Berra caught and who was Berra's teammate for as long as Yogi was the regular catcher,
every one of the pitchers who threw to him as Yankees did better
as Yankee pitchers than they did throwing to any other Yankee catcher when Yogi needed a break, or pitching to anyone else for anyone else at any other time in their careers. There isn't one major league catcher otherwise---not even Johnny Bench (Berra's nearest competitor as the game's greatest catcher), not even Ivan Rodriguez, not even Bill Dickey (the man who "learned me all his experience," Berra once chirped), not even Gary Carter or Mickey Cochrane---whose pitchers did
that much better with him as their receiver than they did with other catchers and for other teams. (Bench, in fairness, operated under a kind of handicap: I still can't fathom to this day how it was that the Reds of the 1960s and 1970s developed
so many pitchers whose talents were great but who were
so prone to arm and shoulder issues that compromised their careers.)
Now, marry all that to the fact that when he was the Yankees' regular catcher (1949-1961), Yogi's teams won eleven pennants and nine World Series rings. (When he was moved to more part-time play and shifted between catching and playing left field, Berra's teams still won two more pennants and one more World Series ring. Clearly he was still valued as a team leader; in fact, I'd argue that---considering Mickey Mantle's personal issues---the Yankees relied on Berra as a leader far more.) I'd say it makes Berra the equal to DiMaggio as a team player and slightly superior to Ruth and Gehrig as team players, with "team play" defined
on the Yankees' terms---namely, I repeat, that of all the cliches about the Yankees the truest one is that they judge their seasons by whether they win pennants and/or World Series. And by
that judgment, the case is
very powerful that Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra were the greatest
team players in the history of the Yankees, if not the history of the game itself.