The greatest baseball player of all times

There will not be another Babe Ruth, because no one will be the pitcher and hitter he was.

“100 years ago, in 1915, the Boston Red Sox were establishing themselves as one of baseball’s first dynasties, a thought that, for decades following, must have felt so impossibly far-fetched for New Englanders as to be some joke rotely planted in every official history of the game.

“In that same year, in which the Sox would win the World Series — a feat they would achieve again in 1916 and 1918 — the team featured a 20-year-old Ruth in his breakout season. As a pitcher. The lefty was 18-8, for a winning percentage just under 70%, with a 2.44 earned run average, a number he would lower to a paltry 1.75 the next year, taking the ERA crown in a field that featured no less a hurler than Walter Johnson, a man you could very well argue is the best pitcher in the history of the sport.”

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What Ruth did with the Yankees “over the course of the 1920s would thrill a mathematician. The numbers, any way you crunch them, are surreal, folkloric, with Ruth out-homering teams, doubling and tripling the outputs of other stars, other all-timers. He wasn’t even as good an overall hitter as previously when he had his epic 1927 season, with a career best of sixty home runs.”

http://thesmartset.com/leaving-the-mound/

Hitting has been much the same since Ruth began launching bombs. Pitching has been trying to adjust ever since.

What baseball fans do when having nothing to do

Babe Ruth’s first major league game was on July 11, 1914, with the Boston Red Sox. The oldest player on that team was catcher Bill Carrigan, 30. Carrigan broke in on July 7, 1906, with Boston. The oldest player on the 1906 team was Cy Young, 39. Young broke in with the Cleveland Spiders on Aug. 6, 1890. The oldest player on that team was Joe Ardner, age 32. Ardner broke in with the Cleveland Blues on May 1, 1884. The oldest player on that team was Doc Bushong, who was 28. Bushong broke in with the Philadelphia Athletics on July 19, 1876. The oldest player on that team was Nealy Phelps, age 35. Phelps broke in with the New York Mutuals on July 1, 1876. The oldest player on the Mutuals was Joe Start, age 33. Start broke in with the Mutuals on May 18, 1876. Major league baseball started in 1876, so you can’t go farther back than that.

Major league baseball was 38 years old when 19-year-old George Ruth put on his Boston uniform.

Stats at www.baseball-almanac.com