BABE RUTH WOULD HIT MORE THAN 60 NOW!
Expert Estimates Vary From 68 To 100
"The questions recur as insidiously as a wife's memory of her husband's past misdeeds ...
How would Babe Ruth do today?
Or- How would Ernie Banks do in New York?
The consensus of opinion:
The Babe would do even better today.
The old-timers think that Babe would hit more than 60 home runs a year.
Ted Lyons, the old White Sox pitcher, thinks he'd be good for 68 or 70 homers a year.
George Hildebrand, for many years an American League umpire, says he'd be good for at least 100 a year.
But he may have to change his style.
Ruth was a 'muscleman' hitter; Banks is a 'wrist' hitter.
Ruth was almost 50 pounds heavier than Banks.
Ruth used a bat weighing from 11 ounces to a full pound more than the 31-ounce bat used by Banks.
All this adds up to a different style in slugging. Today we have the era of the slim slugger.
Ruth touched off the 'lively ball' era; he played when the ball was becoming so 'radioactive' that it almost went off in the pitcher's hand.
Banks came along in the 'lively bat' era; he gets his power through the speed- not the weight- of the bat.
'This new era has been developing for ten years,' says Ted Kluszewski, a muscleman who plays for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
'When I came into the league, the average weight of the bat was 35 or 36 ounces. Now, that's considered a heavy bat.
'Home runs today are not due so much to the lively ball as to the lively bat.'
The Babe, aside from his natural talent- had this advantage over Banks: an amiable fence in Yankee Stadium that snuggled comfortingly close to the plate.
The fence in Yankee Stadium was designed to be alluringly close to a left-handed batter like Ruth.
Along the right field foul line, it is only 296 feet. (If Banks pulls to his power field- left field- he has to clear a taller barrier some 355 feet from the plate.)
From home plate to right center in Yankee Stadium- where the Babe hit many of his homers- is about 367 feet.
The distance to left center in Wrigley Field- where Banks hits most of his homers- is about 375 feet.
They differed, too, in their personalities.
The Babe was a man on robust and gargantuan good cheer who was often getting into trouble. Banks is a quiet, reserved young man who goes home after a game.
But until we can transfer man in terms of time as well as space, the final answer will never be known"
-Bill Furlong, Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)
RUTH'S TARGETS 232 FEET FURTHER
"Old George Hildebrand, venturing the guess that Babe Ruth would hit 100 home runs or more if he were batting under today's conditions, made much more of the fact that today's rules alone would enormously help the Babe in his output.
'Ruth batted in a tougher era,' he said, and he ought to know for he umpired in the American League all through the Babe's career. 'A ball that sailed out of the park fair but then curved foul while we could still see it we had to call foul. Under today's rules, that kind of ball would be fair. It makes no difference now what it does after it clears the fence. And the Babe hit plenty of those we called foul.' (The rule was changed in 1931).
Probably as Hildebrand suggests, today's rules would be the greatest single factor in letting the Babe break his record of 60 in a season (1927). To me, though, the most intriguing thing about today's conditions, if not the most important, are the parks themselves- the shorter fences today's sluggers have to shoot at.
There isn't a park today, except Yankee Stadium, which hasn't undergone a face lifting of some kind since the Babe swung his mace. A little research by the American League office in Chicago has produced some interesting comparative measurements of the two eras. Yankee Stadium, with a left field foul line of 301 feet and a right field line of 296, remains as it was in the Babe's day. But look at the others:
Left Field Today Babe's Day
Boston 315 320
Chicago 352 362
Cleveland 352 362
Detroit 340 340
New York 301 301
Philadelphia-
Kansas City 330 334
St. Louis-
Baltimore 309 360
Washington 350 358
Right Field Today Babe's Day
Boston 302 358
Chicago 352 362
Cleveland 320 290
Detroit 325 372
New York 296 296
Philadelphia-
Kansas City 353 331
St. Louis-
Baltimore 309 320
Washington 320 328
The Babe, a mighty man was he, indeed. In the aggregate, he swung at fences 232 feet farther from the plate than today's. The few instances where the fences were shorter in his day are plentifully offset by those longer now.
The Babe did have some advantages he wouldn't have today. Pitching repertoires, for instance, have improved, although he did have to hit against the spitter and a slightly 'deader' ball. And the rules did count a hit that bounced into the stands as a home run. (He hit about eight or ten of these 'bouncers' in his career, but none in his all-time record year of 1927.)
What occasional slight advantages he might have had, though, can never dim the luster of his record. One phase of it is particularly significant. In the year in which he hit his 60 homers, the entire American League hit only 439. This past season Mickey Mantle led the same league with 42- and the entire league hit 1,057.
Maybe the Babe wouldn't hit 100 today as Hildebrand thinks, but he'd certainly break his record of 60 and break it easily."
-Oliver E. Kuechle, Milwaukee Journal (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)
THE BABE STRUCK OUT, TOO
Like Mantle, He Sacrificed Average For Home Runs
"Mickey confesses that this past year his strikeouts mounted and his batting averages declined because of his eagerness to hit home runs. In other words, he was swinging with one eye on the ball and the other on the distant stands or fences. Other hitters have had the same trouble. Mickey is the only one sufficiently candid to admit it.
Babe Ruth had it. He always was well up in the numbers when it came to striking out. In the course of his career, he struck out more times than anybody. That means anybody since 1876, when the National League came into existence, and the keeping of major league records was begun. The Babe's awe-inspiring mark is 1,330. Of these, 1,306 of these were with the Yankees and Red Sox and 24 with the Boston Braves in his final, brief whirl in 1935. And when he struck out, it was a great show, almost as great a show as when he hit a ball over the hill and far away.
Striking out, though, never bothered him. He'd taken his cut and missed and to hell with it. In his best years, when he stood alone as a home run hitter and was rolling toward his strikeout record, his batting averages from .359 to .393.
That was one reason why he was the greatest home run hitter. Some day, perhaps, someone will equal or shatter his mark of 60 for one year, which he set in 1927. But you should live ... and be in good health ... long enough to see someone else hit 714.
There were other reasons. Among them were the sheer joy he derived from watching a ball he'd hit soar into the blue and the ease with which he bore the responsibility he owed to the fans. On both, this is what he said, unaware of the significance of what he was saying:
There was this day in Indianapolis, where the Yankees had stopped off for an exhibition game on their way to Chicago to open a Western tour. Before an overflow crowd in the old ball park down near the freight yards, he failed to hit a ball out the infield in three times at bat. When he walked to the plate for the fourth time, the fans were giving him the hoarse hoot. He responded with a smash high over the right field fence, and when last seen from the vantage point of a rickety press box on the roof of the wooden stand, the ball was bouncing from track to track, on the tops of the box cars.
He had delivered the blow in the top half of the ninth inning. When the game ended, shortly thereafter, and the Yankees, who had dressed at the old Hotel Claypool, were running for the waiting line of cabs, he said:
'Well, I guess I showed those buzzards something!'
So he had. He showed them something they'd always remember. What they couldn't possibly have known was that at that moment it was just as important to him as though he'd hit it in a World Series.
Then there was this day, after he had retired and he and Frank Frisch were cutting up old touches, that he said:
'The way the other clubs used to play for me, with the infield and the outfield shifted to the right, with the second baseman on the grass near first base, the shortstop back of second base, and the third baseman playing shortstop, I could have hit .600 if I wanted to. All I had to do was bunt the ball past third base and walk down to first.'
Then, as the vision of what he could have done rose before his eyes, he said:
'Why, -------- it! With the left fielder almost in center field, I could have walked to second!'
'That's right,' Frisch said. 'Why didn't you?'
'Why didn't I?' the Babe roared. 'That wasn't what the fans paid to see! They paid to see me hit home runs!' "
-Frank Graham, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)
WRITING OFF A COUPLE OF INNINGS
"Waite Hoyt, Cincinnati broadcaster who was a star with the Yankees during Babe Ruth's heyday, always has a new story to tell about the Babe. This spring Hoyt was watching some kids besiege Roy Sievers for autographs and it reminded Waite of a Ruth story.
'Babe hated to play nine innings in an exhibition game,' Hoyt recalled with a chuckle. 'So, before the game, Babe would bribe some kid to come out on the field for autographs about the seventh inning. The one kid out there would open the floodgates and there'd be so many kids that the umpires had to hustle Babe out of there and he'd have a short day.' "
-Bob Addie, Washington Post, Baseball Digest (June 1959)
