The Babe

by The Duke on Jan 10, 2009 8:01 PM EST Comment 25 comments

Still working my way through Xmas gifts. I got the complete NY Times history of great Cardinal moments. It is a newspaper with selected pages from key days in Cardinals history as written by the NYT baseball staff. Pretty interesting in that it is a non-biased view of events. Starts in 1926 and goes through modern times.

Many, many interesting features but one of the oddest is that when the Cards clinch in 1930 there is a separate article on that page discussing Babe Ruth coming out to pitch the final regular season game in 1930 for the Yankees against Boston.

Guy hasn't pitched in 9 years and to the best of anyone's knowledge was not practicing for weeks/months ahead of time. So after a nine year layoff, he comes out and throws goose eggs at Boston for eight innings. Goes the full nine for the win, and from all appearances dominates the opposition (ok, Boston only won 52 games that year).

A few quotes from the article below.

"Babe Ruth stepped to the mound for the first time in a decade..and to 12,000 visibly and audibly impressed fans demonstrated that the mighty left arm... still retains its power."

"on the pitching slab, he dealt speeds and curves in a manner that utterly bewildered the Red Sox"

"all four hits...credited to Sox in the first six innings...were scratches. Until the sixth no Sox reached second base."

"In the second inning and again in the third, the Babe, with a man on first, picked up a hot smash off the bat, and started a double play by deft throw to second."

The Babe also went 2-5 hitting.

No one on this site needs recitation of the great pitching career of the Babe, but still what an amazing story. How many ML pitchers could take nine years off and pitch a complete game win, let alone dominate, another ML team. Without practice.

Not to mention, he starts two double plays from a position he hasn't played in 9 years and goes 2-5.

Makes you wonder what he would have done had they let him pitch for the Yankees. Figure conservatively, an average of 20 wins a year for those great Yankee teams and he could have come close to 300 wins AND 714 home runs.

Final question. Does the P-D offer any historical distillation of Cardinals reporting?

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I had no idea that happened

I had to go to B-R’s page for the 1930 Yankees see for myself.

9 IP. 11H, 3R, 2BB, 3K

Not bad for a 35 YO.

Looking back at that season he had (49 HR, 153 rbi, 136 bb, only 61 Ks,with a line of
.359, .493, ..732 ), the thing that amazes me most is that he did not win the MVP. Joe Cronin won the unofficial MVP that year, I guess they really didn’t believe in it going to someone on a third place team.

* sarcasm might be involved in this comment

by mattyfrommo on Jan 10, 2009 11:14 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

A player

could only win MVP once. Ruth won in ’27.

by spants on Jan 11, 2009 12:06 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Just double-checked:

Ruth actually won in ’23. The only real competition with Ruth was Gehrig.

by spants on Jan 11, 2009 12:07 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

well it is a Saturday night

so I might be a bit more gullible than usual, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a limit in place back then.

* sarcasm might be involved in this comment

by mattyfrommo on Jan 11, 2009 1:09 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Could you

give me the actual title of the book? I’ve tried looking for it with no luck.

by spants on Jan 11, 2009 12:20 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Not a book

Actually a sheaf of newspapers. Picked it up at Cooperstown.

Just win

by The Duke on Jan 11, 2009 9:13 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Ah.

Thanks.

by spants on Jan 11, 2009 1:13 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

And that is why he is the greatest player of all time

Stat Whore

by FlimtotheFlam on Jan 11, 2009 12:47 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

This is not a comparison but

I alway thought that if our own “Natural” in the midst of his control problems would have been told to just go out and have fun, he would still be pitching. When not pitching he play the field.

Johnson City was a great example. 1 walk and 127 SO. Plus led the league in Hrs and SLG. The SO were against Rookie and could not be counted as more then Major leaguer against High Schoolers, but the 1 walk in over 100 innings told wonders.

I would love to see in extra innings of an important game, Rick go from the OF to warm up during the half inning and then go out and pitch 4 crucial innings and hit a game winning HR to win it.

The above post is the reason I also think the Babe is the Greatest of all time bar none. First five years he only pitched and was one of the best in the league. Then he realized “Rotational Hitting” and started hitting the long ball. 29 in 1919 is amazing considering that it was still using the “Dead Ball” and he hit more Hrs then any other team. If you figure that he would have hit 30 HRs a year (without the Dead Ball) in those 6 years, he would have ended with almost 900 Hrs.

Andy S

by apaul1029 on Jan 11, 2009 9:43 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Neat story

However, I also think it shows some of the differences between the game then and now. I think we need to remember that when Ruth played a sizeable portion of the population wasn’t able to play in the major leagues. Two guesses at what demographic I’m speaking about. One would assume this sort of maneuvering lowered replacement level quite a bit. I also have no proof one way or the other on this, but I’ve long suspected that pitchers back in those days didn’t necessarily need to throw every pitch at max-effort. Oh sure, I bet some could throw quite hard…but they didn’t need to throw their best stuff all the time like our era’s pitchers do. Christy Mathewson mentioned in his book “Pitching in a Pinch” that he would only really rear back in key spots where he really needed to do so.

I don’t post this to be a negative Nancy or anything; I still find this an interesting tidbit…However I think we need to remember that baseball was a different game back then…if I’m wrong about how different then I’m willing to slink back to my corner.

"Your Holiness, I'm Joseph Medwick. I, too, used to be a Cardinal."-Joe Medwick, to Pope Pius XII.

by redbirdnation8206 on Jan 11, 2009 11:00 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I agree it was different

I just wonder about how much the differences can be accounted for when we look at the numbers. Another thing to consider is that there was obviously less talent around back then if only for the fact that the population was much lower and foreign markets were still untapped.

That’s really a great story about the Babe though. That would have been just awesome to see.

The Godfather himself has decided to grace us with his presence. This is his damn house. He sleeps 20 feet away.

by thegodfather on Jan 11, 2009 2:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes the population was smaller

but more people played the game. There was less competition from other sports.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometime it rains.

by garden nome on Jan 12, 2009 6:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah but we're talking about

a difference of roughly 200 million people in the US plus the people from nations around the world who come to play here. Healthcare was much less advanced then too, so injuries could be more damaging to players. This would furthur decrease the number of players who played for long periods of time. I would argue that the competition from other sports isn’t as much of an issue as some may think but it would be highly subjective so I don’t want to go there. In brief, kids play what sports they are good at so there is no reason to think a kid that can play baseball well will quit simply because football is popular too.

The Godfather himself has decided to grace us with his presence. This is his damn house. He sleeps 20 feet away.

by thegodfather on Jan 12, 2009 8:58 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

A different game

Yes, black players couldn’t play.

Do we really need to count how much more difficult the game was back then too? Okay, here we go:

There were very few teams back then, so each team had more talented players and you played each team more often. Even though pitchers didn’t maybe throw their best stuff every day, you saw a whole lot more of the top 90% of the pitchers and very rarely got to beat up on a crappy pitcher. That’s a notable difference
The bats were probably harder, but the baseballs themselves were still hand wound and were re-used constantly throughout the game. There are a bunch of different stories describing how soft the balls were by the end of some of the games.
All the travel was by bus or train, and teams still played 145 games. While most of the teams were on the east coast, have you ever done a 6 city road trip just on a train? Didn’t think so….
There were day/night doubleheaders often, and those aren’t played at all anymore unless there’s a rainout late in the season and no makeup date.
Nobody, and I mean, NOBODY, in the game did what Ruth was doing at that time. Nobody since has done what Ruth did at that time. I’m not saying it’s not possible, I’m saying it hasn’t been done. Cy Young throwing as many games as he did is astonishing, but that frequently gets downplayed as well, because “they pitched every day back then”. Generally these comments also come from people who throw a fit when a star pitcher is used on 4 days rest to win an important game. Well, how about throwing every day with 2 days off per week for 10 years?

"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller

by fourstick on Jan 11, 2009 9:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Well...

My point was that baseball was different and was harder to put up huge offensive numbers. I would say your points sort of help that argument out there…tired players hitting crappy baseballs are easier to retire than today’s pampered players hitting pristine balls in tiny parks. Therefore, pitchers didn’t need their best stuff to retire them…good enough was just that, good enough. This helped pitchers put up the superhuman innings-pitched totals of those days. When you’re gassed, it’s easier to be an initiator than a reactor (warning: this is based on personal experience and observation and not on objective verifiable research).

I find what Ruth did on this particular afternoon amazing…He was a man ahead of his time and I think has a strong case as the second-most important person to ever play baseball (behind Jackie Robinson obviously). It is clearly amazing that he was able to go out there with limited preparation and deal for 9 innings. My point was this: that couldn’t happen in today’s game…Not because Babe Ruth was the most supremely gifted person to ever play baseball…ever. It’s because baseball was different back then and a player with the talent of Ruth could do something like this. That’s all.

"Your Holiness, I'm Joseph Medwick. I, too, used to be a Cardinal."-Joe Medwick, to Pope Pius XII.

by redbirdnation8206 on Jan 12, 2009 1:29 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

To be fair,

it was post-Dead Ball era when Ruth did this. Obviously different from today’s game, but also different from when Ruth was strictly a pitcher.

by spants on Jan 12, 2009 1:59 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

dominating peers

The point is he dominated his peers. That is the measure, and not whether he would have been able to do it today. My only question is, did he bat 8th?.

by Remember Kenny B on Jan 13, 2009 7:11 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Good pitchers today don't throw max effort every pitch

Curt Schilling will often talk about this. Carpenter saved his best pitches for tight situations.

They say that it's never too late, but you don't get any younger...

by Valatan on Jan 12, 2009 8:24 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Greg Maddux

clearly didn’t throw max-effort every pitch.

by spants on Jan 12, 2009 1:46 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Cool story, tks!

by astrostl on Jan 11, 2009 12:00 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Talent

Lot of variables in that. One argument is that certain classes of players were not involved but to counter that I would say there were far fewer teams. In 1930 there were only 16 teams so there were almost half as many players in the ML as today.

On the Mathewson quote, probably true they didn’t go full speed all the time, but the pitchers were going deeper into games — we find it amazing that Ruth went nine in this start, but probably wasn’t a big deal then.

I would also argue that baseball was truly the National Pastime with less competition from other major sports so I’d be willing to bet that the best talent gravitated to baseball first.

In Ruth’s case, I think its a moot point. He was so much better than all the players he played against that there is no doubt in my mind of his talent. The only person in my time who approached this level of dominance might have been Barry Bonds in some of his great years.

Just win

by The Duke on Jan 11, 2009 4:13 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Was this supposed to be a reply?

I am not for a second trying to sell short Ruth’s talent. He was a stud. I’m just trying to say it was a completely different time so it is difficult to compare numbers from then to numbers now.

The Godfather himself has decided to grace us with his presence. This is his damn house. He sleeps 20 feet away.

by thegodfather on Jan 11, 2009 4:31 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'm sure there is a way to do it.

I don’t know what that method is, though.

Also, another thing to consider with Babe’s pitching with the Yankees: he likely pitched during barnstorming games, so he wasn’t quite as rusty as 9 years without pitching. But still, it is pretty cool.

by spants on Jan 11, 2009 5:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs