I've heard that before, and I think it's a crap argument. How many pitchers did Dimaggio face that were named "Alouicius?" None? Then he gets an asterisk by any record he may have set.
No need for an asterisk next to Babe Ruth's name, but it is true that---through absolutely no fault of his own
---Ruth didn't face a complete offering of baseball talent pool in his time and place. He also didn't play night
baseball, which
really would have had an impact on his statistics. I've seen assorted calculations that
say if he'd played in the night ball era his batting average would have been somewhere around .303 lifetime
(and that would only have put him in the company of, oh, Willie Mays), whereby someone like Ralph Kiner
(to whom Branch Rickey insanely compared Ruth in his bids to keep Kiner's salaries suppressed, when
Rickey ran the Pirates) would have seen his batting average jump to about .312 if he'd played in the
strictly day-ball era. Those calculations debated whether Ruth would have hit 714 lifetime home runs
in the night ball era, though he might have gotten within the neighbourhood.
Sometimes forgotten factor involving Babe Ruth: All those triples he hit. He was mostly a dead pull hitter
but when he went the other way, especially in Yankee Stadium, he could pick up a
lot of extra triples
no matter how much of a leadfoot he was on the bases because of that left center field you usually
needed to call a cab to reach from the plate. He had the same benefit when the Yankees played in the
Polo Grounds during his first three Yankee seasons.
Branch Rickey's nastiest lie about Ralph Kiner: that the Pirates built a short-porch specifically for Kiner
whereas the Yankees didn't for Babe Ruth. It simply wasn't true. The Yankees built Yankee Stadium
especially to accommodate Ruth's primary power, and why would they not? If you have a left-
handed hitter with that kind of thump and you're building a new park, and he's your number one
box office draw before Lou Gehrig arrives to match him, are you
really going to build
a park that would kill him? Or build one that's great for him? The Pirates actually brought in the fence
not for Kiner but for Hank Greenberg, whom they acquired before bringing up Kiner. Greenberg in
fact became Kiner's mentor, teaching him how to modify and control his powerful swing and how
to play the outfield two batters ahead. The new short porch was first nicknamed Greenberg Gardens;
when Greenberg retired and Kiner became the power hitting draw for the Pirates the nickname
was changed to Kiner's Korner.
