In light of Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's Major League Baseball (MLB) home run record, now's as good a time as any to put Babe Ruth into proper perspective.
Here is the simple, unvarnished truth, not only was Babe Ruth the BEST home run hitter ever, he dominated his sport in a way that no other athlete has ever dominated ANY sport at ANY time! Here's why;
(1) Babe Ruth hit his home runs in the "dead ball era," when a baseball was more like a "wet sock" than today's baseballs that are closer to a superball, then an original baseball, and he hit them out of ball parks that would be considered cavernous by today's standards.
(2) Babe Ruth was MLB's THIRD home run king. Harry Stovie held the record until 1895 with 120 dingers, a record broken by Roger Conner who hit, a then astounding, 138 homers. Conner's record lasted until 1921, when it was broken by Ruth on July 18th of that year.
(3) Pre-Ruth, the best home run hitter in MLB was a player named Frank "Home Run" Baker, who led the league in homers from around 1910 to 1914, with a high of 12 homers in a season in1913. These were Ruth's contemporaries - the "best" of his day.
(4) Ruth began his career as a pitcher and a very good one, going 18-8 in his rookie season in 1915 while hitting .315 helping the Red Sox to a 101 win season. He went 23-12 with a 1.75 ERA an 9 shutouts in 1916, 24-13 with a 2.01 ERA and 6 shutouts, and 13-7 in 1918 with a 2.22 ERA. He also extended his World Series scoreless streak to 29 2/3 inning that year. he didn't play every day until 1919!
(5) When Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927 he hit more home runs than any other team in MLB. In 1920, when he hit 54 homers, only the Philadelphia Phillies hit more as a team (64) in what was then known as the "hitter friendly" Baker Bowl.
Sure, you can only directly compare athletes to those of their own era, but you can compare how the best athletes of each era dominated their own eras. For a modern MLB player to dominate the sport the way Ruth did, he'd have to hit somewhere around 250 home runs! That last fact (#5) is why Ruth is on a completely different level than virtually any other athlete. Surely Ruth never played night baseball, nor travelled cross-country for games, and he never played against ball players like Satchel Page and the other stars of the Negro Leagues, but he did dominate that era in a way that no other player dominated any other era, and that's really the only comparison one can make.
For Barry Bonds, or Hank Aaron or Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams or A-Rod to match Ruth they'd have to hit more home runs in their eras than any other team did!
In all of sports perhaps only Wilt Chamberlain, who once averaged fifty points for entire NBA season and scored an incredible 100 points in an NBA game comes close to dominating a sport the way that Ruth did, and only Mohammed Ali transcended sports the way Ruth did. In fact, Ruth is the prototype of the "modern athlete," a person possessed of incredible athletic prowess, combined with immense personal charisma and failings almost as super-human as their talents.
It's so easy to forget how incredibly great Babe Ruth is because of all the changes in the game since his day - the increasinly juiced ball, the smaller ball parks and the lowered pitcher's mounds. Even changes in the fair/foul poles instituted in 1934, at the end of Ruth's career (he hit his last home run on May 25th, 1934 with the Boston Braves.
An example is vividly given in Bill Jenkinson's 2006 book The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs http://www.amazon.com/Year-Babe-Ruth-Home-Runs/dp/0786719060/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6624297-1395135?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186676499&sr=8-1 In Jenkinson's book, he makes the case that had the foul pole been moved to the modern standards adopted in 1935 and had Ruth played in the modern ball parks, he would've hit 104 homers in 1927!
I don't blame modern athletes for using "performance enhancing drugs," almost everyone, including "weekend warriors" routinely use some of those same drugs - HgH, Andro and other such performance enhancers are all too common among both athletes and those interested in longevity or "life extension." If Ruth were alive today, he'd almost undoubtedly use them himself. Hell, it'd have been a better regimine than his traditional hot dogs and beer.
In fact, in Ruth's case, the other changes - smaller ball parks, wider foul poles and a baseball that's more like a super ball then the "wet sock" Ruth hit, have had a far greater impact on any comparisons. The game itself has changed. In many ways, Ruth himself transformed the game of baseball, as many of the changes were the result of MLB looking to find "another Ruth."
Hail Bonds, hail and recall the great Hank Aaron, but remember and revere George Herman "Babe" Ruth, for he was not merely a record holder, but remains a sports legend!
