A few years back, Barry Bonds was thinking of a number. Not just
any number, but the number 714, the home run total of one George
Herman Ruth. Why, you might ask, would Bonds concern himself with a
record broken 30 years ago? Why not focus on the established Major
League record of 755 dingers held by Hank Aaron? Well, for what
it’s worth, here was Barry’s answer:
“755 isn’t a number that’s always caught my eye…the only
number I care about is Babe Ruth’s. As a left-handed hitter, I
wiped him out. And in the baseball world, Babe Ruth’s everything,
right? I got his (single season) slugging percentage, I got him on
on-base, I got him on walks and then I’ll take his home run record
and that’s it. Don’t talk about him no more.”
Barry then expanded on his thoughtful and eloquent
commentary with this cryptic remark on Josh Gibson, who hit 84 home
runs in 1936: “Why doesn’t that count? Why don’t any of those
statistics count? You can tell me that in 1886, the Pittsburgh
Pirates won a game by 20 runs, but the statistics in the Negro
Leagues don’t count?”
So was Barry dissing the Babe on account of race? That would
seem to be the point, given his history. Studying history is always
a good thing, but one wishes that Barry would broaden his research
to include all manner of baseball’s greatest players across the
racial spectrum, including the fact that the Pittsburgh Pirates
didn’t begin play until 1887.
He could begin by taking a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame at
Cooperstown. There he would find the plaques of 26 veterans of the
Negro and Mexican leagues hanging on its hallowed walls, proving
that at least to some, their stats do count. It’s just that they
count as a different set of numbers as well they should. For better
or for worse, you can’t change history. (Luckily for Mr. Bonds, as
he might have the number 962 in his sights; the career home run
total of Mr. Gibson.)
And, when whiling away the day in that quaint western New York
town, he might do a little brushing up on the stats of the
aforementioned Mr. Ruth, who ironically, throughout his career was
savaged by bigoted fans for his “Negro-ish” looks. Yes, Bonds has
surpassed some of the Babe’s numbers, but there are others he
cannot hope to equal.
For example, he will not retire with a .342 batting average, nor
will he ever catch the Bambino in lifetime slugging average,
runs-batted-in, or World Series rings. And while it is
well-chronicled that Ruth out-homered every other American League
team twice, for Bonds to have come close to this in his
record-breaking year of 2001, he would have had to hit 131 taters,
just to tie the lowest total of any other NL team.
Speaking of home run dominance, the Babe led the league in that
category an incredible 12 times while Bonds has managed that feat a
total of twice, which is twice less than the esteemed Mr. Aaron,
who had the class to challenge and surpass Ruth only where it
mattered, on the field. And while it is true that they only have
three batting titles between them, consider that Bonds’ excellent
high-water mark of .370 was topped by the Babe six times.
And not to beat a dead horse, but then there’s that darned
pitching issue. Had Ruth not pitched for five years (94-46,
lifetime), Bonds would have no chance at any of the Babe’s career
marks. But pitch he did, which only elevates him in baseball’s
pantheon. Only the Babe, over those five magic seasons, can lay
claim to hitting more home runs (20) than he allowed (7).
And even if, like most modern baseball apologists, you believe
that today’s pitchers are bigger, stronger, etc., and that Ruth
didn’t have to face the Negro League pitchers who managed to serve
up 962 fat ones to Josh Gibson, consider that the Bambino didn’t
have the benefit of today’s postage stamp-sized strike zone or a
brand new, tightly-wound ball on nearly every pitch.
George Herman Ruth is the only player to have a stadium, a WWII
profanity, and a curse associated with his name. Add to this that
many people vividly remember where they were the day he died, and
you can still feel the electricity and charisma generated by the
great man these long decades after his passing. The bitter Mr.
Bonds plays in a stadium that is named after a phone company, and
the only curse associated with his name seems to apply to the World
Series aspirations of the teams graced by his presence.
