The New York Times Strikes Out: Barry Bonds, Race, and Mr. Subliminal

I'm glad you caught this one.

It's right up your ally.

...politics; an entirely *new* dynamic being applied to the game of baseball.

Until I see Barry do these things:

Lifetime BA/OBP/SLG: .342 .474 .690

And even more impressive:

94W 46L and a 2.28 ERA

Ruth is the greatest player ever because he was a great pitcher prior to becoming an offensive juggernaut out homering entire teams.

Tell you the truth, one of the critical reasons why the 1960s Pirates or Reds didn't win anything beyond a single pennant each at decade's beginning was a lack of well-above-average pitching. Each team seemed to feature pitching staffs were a different man would put up his career year (or back to back years, in the case of 1961-62 Cincinnati's Joey Jay - whose career was a weird one, anyway, as I will soon explain) in different seasons, and they'd either be pitching over their heads a la Vernon Law in 1960 or they'd be pitching around dramatic inconsistency (think of Cincinnati's Jim Maloney from 1963-67) elsewhere on the staff. Not to mention, often as not those career years would be better than the career years which actually did mean the pennant. (Bob Purkey's 1962 was better than Joey Jay's excellent 1961 - and Jay's arrival had meant the pennant for the Reds.)

Maybe the pitcher you had to feel for the most between the two clubs was Joey Jay. For just about the entire 1950s, baseball had a rule that, if a prospect was signed for a bonus higher than about $8,000, the major league club who signed him had to keep him on the major league roster for two full seasons before they could farm him out for working experience. Joey Jay got a $20,000 bonus midway through the 1953 season from the Milwaukee Braves, keeping him on the Braves' roster through mid-1955.

Jay was already an intriguing story; he was, believe it or not, the first Little League alumnus to get signed by a major league team. (In his Little League days, in fact, he was actually the target of a petition to keep him out because he was unusually tall for his age, a tussle which - in hand with some of the mild hype around his signing with the Braves - provoked the articulate Jay to publish a magazine, "Don't Trap Your Son In Little League Madness.")

He actually got a start for the Braves in that first half-season with them, throwing a three-hit shutout at the Reds (of all people). That was his highlight; for those first three seasons, with no hope of minor league experience and a natural enough inconsistency that comes from trying to learn how to pitch in the majors when you're in the majors right off, Jay ended up a spare part (like most pitchers wouldn't, trying to crack a Warren Spahn-Lew Burdette-Bob Buhl starting rotation) until he was finally farmed in 1955. He came back to the Braves in 1957, and looked like a comer at last in 1958, going 7-5 with a 2.14 ERA, but he missed the World Series with a finger injury, had an inconsistent 1959-60, and was traded to Cincinnati.

That deal closed the deal for the Reds, who needed one more pitcher to solidfy a pennant run. Jay was almost Warren Spahn's equal in 1961 - he went 21-10 to Spahn's 21-13 but had a higher ERA (3.53) than Spahn (3.02). Jay was the Reds' best starter in 1961, ahead of Jim O'Toole (19-9, 3.10) and Bob Purkey (16-12, 3.74), and with relievers Jim Brosnan (10-4, 16 saves, 3.04) and Bill Henry (pretty much his career year: 2-1, 16 saves, 2.19) that was the pitching staff the heavy-hitting Reds usually lacked. It got them to the World Series but it couldn't keep them from getting squashed by the Yankees in five games - but don't blame Jay: Jay won the only game the Reds would win, a snappy complete-game four-hitter in Game Two.

Jay all but repeated his 1961 season in 1962; arguably, the Cincinnati pitching in 1962 was better than their pennant club. Jay went 21-14 with a 3.76 ERA; Bob Purkey, as I noted earlier, had his career year (23-5, 2.81); Jim O'Toole (16-13, 3.50) held his own in the number three spot, and a bullet throwing kid named Jim Maloney (9-7, 3.55, 105K) gave a few showings of what he was capable of doing. But the bullpen wasn't as strong as it had been in 1961. Hence did the Reds end up finishing third behind the down-to-the-wire-fighting Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants (who had to go to a playoff for the flag; the Giants won it).

Jay fell off shockingly in 1963 (7-18) and was never again the pitcher he'd been in 1961-62. It's reasonable to believe that the years of near-inactivity in Milwaukee took a huge toll on him, even if he was able to be farmed out in 1955-57. In truth, that 1950s bonus rule - aimed at keeping the "rich" teams from gobbling up mounds of hot prospects for big bucks - blew up in the game's face; the rule was pretty much abandoned by the early 1960s.

Joey Jay was finished (ironically, ending his career with the Atlanta Braves) by mid-1966. He was actually one of the luckier among the 1950s bonus rule babies. Very few of the those kids who did have to spend their first two pro years as spare parts in the majors rather than developing in the minors really made respectable careers. (A New York Giants bonus pitcher, Johnny Antonelli, is probably the best known of the bonus babies of the $8,000 rule, aside from Joey Jay). And only two, to my knowledge, proved to be even close to Hall of Famers, never mind bona fide, no questions asked Hall of Famers: Al Kaline and Sandy Koufax.

Ruth is the greatest player ever because he was a great pitcher prior to becoming an offensive juggernaut out homering entire teams

Comparing Ruth the pitcher to Ruth the position player is a fractuous business to begin with, because a) he pitched entirely in the dead ball era and b) he was a very good pitcher but was never considered the outstanding pitcher of his time. Pitching in a low-scoring era to begin with, Ruth's ERA is 0.49 below his league's ERA - a reasonable difference but not a difference which would cause you to think he might have become a Hall of Fame pitcher had he remained in that position his entire career. He might reasonably be projected to put up an ERA about 0.56 below his league's average pitching in the live ball generations, whether a particular period favours hitters or pitching. That's above average but not exactly lights out. (Sandy Koufax was 0.87 below his league's ERA lifetimw, but he was hurt even more badly than Ruth might have been by pitching four seasons in a ballpark - the insanely-set Los Angeles Coliseum - that was...well, put it this way: Fenway Park is merely difficult for a left-handed pitcher; the Coliseum as it was configured for baseball was suicide for a southpaw.)

He led his league in earned run average once; in hits per nine once; in shutouts once; in complete games once; and in a pitching-dominant era his .600+ winning percentages actually turn out to be equal to a .540 percentages in a hitter's era, if that well. He looks way better in the Gray Ink Test (top ten finishes) than the Black Ink Test (leading his league), and in neither category is he even close to where an average Hall of Famer - even one who had a comparatively short high peak value - is found.

I think a lot of the image of Babe Ruth as a great pitcher comes entirely from his postseason record: he was deadly in the World Series (his 0.87 Series ERA is a match for Sandy Koufax's), but so have a lot of pitchers been who weren't even as good as Ruth in his best regular pitching seasons. Lew Burdette in 1957 was devastating in the World Series (three wins, an 0.67 ERA) - think he's a Hall of Famer? Harry Brecheen was slightly better than Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax in the World Series by his lifetime ERA - Brecheen had an 0.83 lifetime Series ERA (he pitched strongly enough for three innings in 1943, he pitched one shutout in the Cardinals' lopsided burial of their park-sharing rivals the Browns in 1944, and he was the 1946 World Series, practically) - think Brecheen's a Hall of Famer? Mickey Lolich pitched like two Hall of Famers in the 1968 World Series - but he's not a Hall of Famer, either, though he is awfully close. Babe Ruth in the World Series pitched like a no-questions-asked Hall of Famer, but there are just too many pitchers who have pitched like that in the World Series but are anything but Hall of Fame pitchers otherwise. (And you could probably find only too many no-questions-asked Hall of Famers who pitched like anything but in the World Series or the postseason overall.)

Ruth was also not likely to secure a particularly long effectiveness as a pitcher even if he hadn't played the outfield a few seasons on days when he didn't pitch. Why? He was walking close enough to how many he was striking out to provoke the thought that he was just not going to sustain even the level where he reached. (With extremely few exceptions, pitchers who walk close enough to as many as they strike out, when they are not strikeout-particular pitchers, whether power pitchers or finesse pitchers, last less than those who walk half or less than those they strike out.) Pitching in a live-ball, heavy offence era, Ruth would likely have one 20-win season, several good-if-not-spectacular seasons (maybe averaging 14-15 wins a season and maybe 8-10 losses per). He'd be good; he'd surely be the ace of a few staffs and a number two man on a few others, and you'd win a pennant or two with a quality pitching staff that had him aboard. But he wouldn't be a Hall of Famer as a pitcher.

In other words, discussing Ruth the pitcher and Ruth the position player you are discussing, in essence, two completely different baseball players. That Babe Ruth the position player was the greatest marquee attraction baseball has ever known is indisputable; that he was probably its greatest pure power hitter may still be likewise; that he was the greatest all around baseball player who ever lived is not true any longer, if it ever really was true, because you cannot ignore the fact that a) he was an average fielder at best, and b) he was a terrible baserunner whose running-related stats (total bases, power-speed numbers, on base plus slugging) are accounted for lopsidedly by his home runs other extra base hits (he isn't even close to being among the doubles and triples leaderboards as he is with the dingdongs, which surprises people until they remember Babe Ruth was predominantly a dead pull hitter, who wasn't likely to think about using that cavernous Yankee Stadium left center field for a little extra hitting leverage - maybe the only way he could have gotten the kind of hits which depend equally on running ability as where you hit the ball). Babe Ruth could kill his own team on the bases; most of the time he couldn't take the extra base unless he had made the extra base hit himself; and, he had such a poor stolen base percentage for a guy who absolutely insisted on trying to steal whenever he bloody well felt like it that you really have to wonder why even managers afraid to stand up to his overall image didn't at least put some fire in their bellies and insist at least that he knock that crap off before he cost the Yankees another Series.

(Yep - it's true what I said above: Babe Ruth did end the World Series in the St. Louis Cardinals' favour in 1926, when he tried and failed to steal second in the ninth inning with two outs, Bob Meusel at bat, and Lou Gehrig on deck behind him. Why on earth no one troubled to tell him to keep his damn legs still and let Meusel hit, thus giving Gehrig a chance to hit, and giving the Yankees yet one more chance to win the game, set, and Series, still escapes me. But there he went, a beach ball with legs, and he was a dead duck before he was two thirds toward second base. You'd think a player with Ruth's alleged baseball intelligence would have put two and two together and decided, "Hell, Meusel can hit the crap out of the ball, and Lou can hit the damn thing as far as me, so maybe I ought to just let those boys swing." Even against an aged but last-gasping Grover Cleveland Alexander.)

Babe Ruth could get on base. But as often as not what he did or didn't do once he was on base was as much a liability as a motherlode to his teams. What's the point of having a guy who can get on base as often as the Babe got on base if he's just as liable to be wiped out before the inning is over as he is to get and stay in scoring position and come home?

By all means you should still want Ruth on your team - behind Bonds. You're not going to buck a power hitter with Ruth's ability and track record (no pun intended). But you'd better tell the Bambino you're going to take $5,000 out of his wallet any time he gets on base with a single or a double and takes off from base without a hit-and-run or run-and-hit play on, if you want to keep his baserunning from killing you.

It may yet prove to be so that, when his career finishes, Alex Rodriguez in proportion will prove to have been a better all-around baseball player than either Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth. (I'm going to tell you right now that given the absolute choice between Babe Ruth and Alex Rodriguez I'd pick A-Rod, for true all around ability and because A-Rod isn't likely to be costing my team time in service, valuable time in service, for suspensions or other disciplinary reasons even a third as often as Babe Ruth cost his teams.) But for those who think that would prove the end of civilisation as we know it (and why do few if any sit down to ponder that Ruth played in an era in which the great talent pools from among American blacks, Latinos anywhere, and even Asians, were not allowed to be tapped into by major league clubs, and projected reasonably just how he would have done if he'd played in an era as deeply integrated as baseball has now become?), be reminded of this point: There can be better baseball players than Babe Ruth - such a player had to come sooner or later; Willie Mays came the closest before the present time, and we may yet be looking at that player today - but you'd have to go just about to heaven itself to find the game's greater marquee attraction. Every last offencive stat Babe Ruth has that puts him in the top two or three of them all could be smashed to pieces and it would never destroy what he meant to baseball.

And that's bad?

While Ruth was an average fielder at best, I think you are throwing way too much weight behind his stolen base ability. His percentage was terrible (50% at best) but it's not like he attempted to steal 100 times a year.

Bonds has been playing in an inflated offensive era with 2 expansion periods and has not come close to what Ruth has put up in terms of career numbers. Ruth's .354/.474/.690 to Bond's .292/.419/.585 is no contest.

BTW your remarks on Ruth's baserunning ability is betrayed somewhat by Ruth's 506 career doubles and this one that really suprised me 136 career triples. Granted the cavernous aspects of stadiums at the time allowed for more triples but still.

My original intent with showing Ruth's pitching stats was not to prove he was a great pitcher but to point out no one has performed so well in both aspects of the game and I do not believe you can consider them seperate players. Ruth's pitching reads more like a sidenote, garnish for the steak. It is simply further evidence of his greatness.

I would put Bonds in my top 5(Williams, Mantle, Mays, Ruth) but he would still be #5 at this point.

If you take the stolen base percentage by itself, isolated, and disallow the factor that stolen base percentages are a better than fair indicator of what kind of overall baserunner you deal with, then yes, you can say I threw too much behind Ruth's stolen base ability. But it isn't how often he tries to steal that makes the difference, it is how often he succeeds. And a successful base stealer regardless of his stolen base volume is going to be a successful baserunner overall, meaning he is going to give his team that much more chance to score runs, than a guy who isn't a great or attentive baserunner (never mind a guy who couldn't run if you put a truck axle and drive shaft under him). Babe Ruth's run production as a whole is nonpareil, but if you want to keep him that way and you don't want to hurt your team, you tell him to keep his damn self still until the batter puts the bat on the ball.

Ruth's doubles and triples totals aren't as good as they look - he's 32nd all time in doubles and 71st all time in triples, respectable but a lot less than you'd expect from a hitter who had his kind of batting eye and bat control. I often wonder if he might not have piled up even more extra base hits if he hadn't been a dead pull hitter with no known care for doing it otherwise (that, by the way, was a trait that also probably hurt Joe DiMaggio's hitting statistics somewhat - a righthanded hitter in old Yankee Stadium was hurting himself by insisting on nothing other than dead pull hitting even more than a dead-pull lefthanded hitter: How many home runs Joe DiMaggio might have hit if he'd tried going the opposite way is open to speculation, just as how many more extra base hits Babe Ruth would have gotten if he'd tried going the other way).

My original intent with showing Ruth's pitching stats was not to prove he was a great pitcher but to point out no one has performed so well in both aspects of the game and I do not believe you can consider them seperate players. Ruth's pitching reads more like a sidenote, garnish for the steak. It is simply further evidence of his greatness.

He did perform well in both aspects of the game, but you have to treat him like two separate players because of the two radically different eras in which he exercised each aspect predominantly. A dead ball pitcher and a live ball position player are extremely different. It speaks well enough for Ruth that he was a very good pitcher for a few years, but you and I both know that his greatness is manifest exclusively in his offencive stats, however much it turns out that they show him less than the five tool superman he has long enough been cracked up to be.

Incidentally, someone else has performed very well as a pitcher and a position player - using the criteria that certainly applies to the Bambino, at least five or six seasons each way. In fact, this player was a near-contemporary of Ruth and, for two seasons, a Boston teammate - Smokey Joe Wood. Like Ruth, Wood pitched five high-peak seasons; his pitching life ended with arm trouble, but he converted himself to an outfielder and a very good one.

And, as a pitcher, Wood was better than Ruth. Let's look at those five top-peak pitching seasons for each, starting with Wood:

 Year Ag Tm  Lg  W   L   G   GS  CG SHO SV   IP     H   ER   HR  BB   SO   ERA *lgERAa *ERA+
+--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+------+----+----+---+----+----+-----+-----+----+
 1909 19 BOS AL  11   7  24  19  13   4  0  160.7  121   39   1   43   88  2.18  2.49  114
 1910 20 BOS AL  12  13  35  17  14   3  0  198.7  155   37   3   56  145  1.68  2.54  152
 1911 21 BOS AL  23  17  44  33  25   5  3  275.7  226   62   2   76  231  2.02  3.27  162
 1912 22 BOS AL  34   5  43  38  35  10  1  344.0  267   73   2   82  258  1.91  3.44  180
 1913 23 BOS AL  11   5  23  18  12   1  2  145.7  120   37   0   61  123  2.29  2.93  128

And now, the Babe:

 Year Ag Tm  Lg  W   L   G   GS  CG SHO SV   IP     H   ER   HR  BB   SO   ERA *lgERAa *ERA+
+--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+------+----+----+---+----+----+-----+-----+----+
 1915 20 BOS AL  18   8  32  28  16   1  0  217.7  166   59   3   85  112  2.44  2.79  114
 1916 21 BOS AL  23  12  44  41  23   9  1  323.7  230   63   0  118  170  1.75  2.77  158
 1917 22 BOS AL  24  13  41  38  35   6  2  326.3  244   73   2  108  128  2.01  2.58  128
 1918 23 BOS AL  13   7  20  19  18   1  0  166.3  125   41   1   49   40  2.22  2.68  121
 1919 24 BOS AL   9   5  17  15  12   0  1  133.3  148   44   2   58   30  2.97  3.02  102





This would give Smokey Joe Wood a top-peak ERA of 2.02 (league ERA: 2.93) and Babe Ruth a top-peak 2.28 (league ERA: 2.76). Ruth's top-peak years saw slightly better pitching around the American League than Wood's did, but Wood's top-peak ERA was 0.91 below his league's compared to an 0.48 difference for Ruth below his league. Won-lost record? Ruth: 87-45; Wood: 91-45. Their winning percentages are damn near even up, but Wood was pitching more efficiently and run-preventively than Ruth. But come to strikeouts and walks and it becomes no contest: it's Wood in, er, a walk:



Wood: 845K, 318BB

Ruth: 480K, 418BB



Both men pitched very well in the heat of a pennant race; Ruth in the World Series had a lights-out ERA (0.87) and three wins in two Series; Wood had a one-Series ERA of 3.68 but he went 3-1 in that Series (the 1912 Series, which the Red Sox took from the New York Giants, was a best-of-nine). To borrow a phrase from Bill James, as pitchers there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two but I think my nickel would go to Wood, who was a slightly better regular season performer, was a far better strikeout pitcher, pitched further below his league's ERA than Ruth did, and, for better or worse, you simply can't erase Wood's spectacular 1912 season.



So what happened to Smokey Joe Wood? In 1913, he slipped in the grass fielding a ground ball and broke his thumb, and he pitched in pain for the remainder of his pitching life, even though he led the league in winning percentage and ERA in 1915. - nor, given his pitching career was ruined by arm trouble, can you dismiss it as a fluke because you don't really know, and neither does anyone, whether Wood would have continued pitching in that neighbourhood had he been able to continue pitching, though his strikeouts-to-walks for his final pitching season indicate he probably would have had a lot of excellent pitching left.



He sat out the 1916 season and then joined the Cleveland Indians as an outfielder. His batting average over his five full Cleveland seasons was practically the league's average (.282), but his on-base percentage was .057 above the league (Wood:.357) and his slugging percentage (.411) is damn good for a dead ball hitter (the league was slugging .379; the lively ball era had begun while Wood was playing the Cleveland outfield). He was, in short, a very good man to have around playing the outfield, even if a half-timer, in those five Indian summers. In 1922, his final season, he got into 142 games and drove in 92 runs.



Joe Wood and Babe Ruth may be aberrations of a kind - I don't know of any two other players who played both ways even very good, never mind playing one good and one great, even allowing for Ruth's dead-ball life as a pitcher and live-ball life as Paul Bunyan. The injury that wrecked Wood's pitching career has eliminated a lot of fair assessment of him, but it's probably fair to say that had he not been injured he would have had a cleaner shot at the Hall of Fame as a pitcher. And I don't think today you could find, really, any player who could go from pitcher to position player and end up with records showing them very good at both, never mind very good at one and Hall of Fame (or potentially so) at the other.

If you take the stolen base percentage by itself, isolated, and disallow the factor that stolen base percentages are a better than fair indicator of what kind of overall baserunner you deal with, then yes, you can say I threw too much behind Ruth's stolen base ability. But it isn't how often he tries to steal that makes the difference, it is how often he succeeds. And a successful base stealer regardless of his stolen base volume is going to be a successful baserunner overall, meaning he is going to give his team that much more chance to score runs, than a guy who isn't a great or attentive baserunner (never mind a guy who couldn't run if you put a truck axle and drive shaft under him). Babe Ruth's run production as a whole is nonpareil, but if you want to keep him that way and you don't want to hurt your team, you tell him to keep his damn self still until the batter puts the bat on the ball.

Ruth's doubles and triples totals aren't as good as they look - he's 32nd all time in doubles and 71st all time in triples, respectable but a lot less than you'd expect from a hitter who had his kind of batting eye and bat control. I often wonder if he might not have piled up even more extra base hits if he hadn't been a dead pull hitter with no known care for doing it otherwise (that, by the way, was a trait that also probably hurt Joe DiMaggio's hitting statistics somewhat - a righthanded hitter in old Yankee Stadium was hurting himself by insisting on nothing other than dead pull hitting even more than a dead-pull lefthanded hitter: How many home runs Joe DiMaggio might have hit if he'd tried going the opposite way is open to speculation, just as how many more extra base hits Babe Ruth would have gotten if he'd tried going the other way).

My original intent with showing Ruth's pitching stats was not to prove he was a great pitcher but to point out no one has performed so well in both aspects of the game and I do not believe you can consider them seperate players. Ruth's pitching reads more like a sidenote, garnish for the steak. It is simply further evidence of his greatness.

He did perform well in both aspects of the game, but you have to treat him like two separate players because of the two radically different eras in which he exercised each aspect predominantly. A dead ball pitcher and a live ball position player are extremely different. It speaks well enough for Ruth that he was a very good pitcher for a few years, but you and I both know that his greatness is manifest exclusively in his offencive stats, however much it turns out that they show him less than the five tool superman he has long enough been cracked up to be.

Incidentally, someone else has performed very well as a pitcher and a position player - using the criteria that certainly applies to the Bambino, at least five or six seasons each way. In fact, this player was a near-contemporary of Ruth and, for two seasons, a Boston teammate - Smokey Joe Wood. Like Ruth, Wood pitched five high-peak seasons; his pitching life ended with arm trouble, but he converted himself to an outfielder and a very good one.

And, as a pitcher, Wood was better than Ruth. Let's look at those five top-peak pitching seasons for each, starting with Wood:

 Year Ag Tm  Lg  W   L   G   GS  CG SHO SV   IP     H   ER   HR  BB   SO   ERA *lgERAa *ERA+
+--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+------+----+----+---+----+----+-----+-----+----+
 1909 19 BOS AL  11   7  24  19  13   4  0  160.7  121   39   1   43   88  2.18  2.49  114
 1910 20 BOS AL  12  13  35  17  14   3  0  198.7  155   37   3   56  145  1.68  2.54  152
 1911 21 BOS AL  23  17  44  33  25   5  3  275.7  226   62   2   76  231  2.02  3.27  162
 1912 22 BOS AL  34   5  43  38  35  10  1  344.0  267   73   2   82  258  1.91  3.44  180
 1913 23 BOS AL  11   5  23  18  12   1  2  145.7  120   37   0   61  123  2.29  2.93  128

And now, the Babe:

 Year Ag Tm  Lg  W   L   G   GS  CG SHO SV   IP     H   ER   HR  BB   SO   ERA *lgERAa *ERA+
+--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+------+----+----+---+----+----+-----+-----+----+
 1915 20 BOS AL  18   8  32  28  16   1  0  217.7  166   59   3   85  112  2.44  2.79  114
 1916 21 BOS AL  23  12  44  41  23   9  1  323.7  230   63   0  118  170  1.75  2.77  158
 1917 22 BOS AL  24  13  41  38  35   6  2  326.3  244   73   2  108  128  2.01  2.58  128
 1918 23 BOS AL  13   7  20  19  18   1  0  166.3  125   41   1   49   40  2.22  2.68  121
 1919 24 BOS AL   9   5  17  15  12   0  1  133.3  148   44   2   58   30  2.97  3.02  102

This would give Smokey Joe Wood a top-peak ERA of 2.02 (league ERA: 2.93) and Babe Ruth a top-peak 2.28 (league ERA: 2.76). Ruth's top-peak years saw slightly better pitching around the American League than Wood's did, but Wood's top-peak ERA was 0.91 below his league's compared to an 0.48 difference for Ruth below his league. Won-lost record? Ruth: 87-45; Wood: 91-45. Their winning percentages are damn near even up, but Wood was pitching more efficiently and run-preventively than Ruth. But come to strikeouts and walks and it becomes no contest: it's Wood in, er, a walk:

Wood: 845K, 318BB
Ruth: 480K, 418BB

Both men pitched very well in the heat of a pennant race; Ruth in the World Series had a lights-out ERA (0.87) and three wins in two Series; Wood had a one-Series ERA of 3.68 but he went 3-1 in that Series (the 1912 Series, which the Red Sox took from the New York Giants, was a best-of-nine). To borrow a phrase from Bill James, as pitchers there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two but I think my nickel would go to Wood, who was a slightly better regular season performer, was a far better strikeout pitcher, pitched further below his league's ERA than Ruth did, and, for better or worse, you simply can't erase Wood's spectacular 1912 season.

So what happened to Smokey Joe Wood? In 1913, he slipped in the grass fielding a ground ball and broke his thumb, and he pitched in pain for the remainder of his pitching life, even though he led the league in winning percentage and ERA in 1915. - nor, given his pitching career was ruined by arm trouble, can you dismiss it as a fluke because you don't really know, and neither does anyone, whether Wood would have continued pitching in that neighbourhood had he been able to continue pitching, though his strikeouts-to-walks for his final pitching season indicate he probably would have had a lot of excellent pitching left.

He sat out the 1916 season and then joined the Cleveland Indians as an outfielder. His batting average over his five full Cleveland seasons was practically the league's average (.282), but his on-base percentage was .057 above the league (Wood:.357) and his slugging percentage (.411) is damn good for a dead ball hitter (the league was slugging .379; the lively ball era had begun while Wood was playing the Cleveland outfield). He was, in short, a very good man to have around playing the outfield, even if a half-timer, in those five Indian summers. In 1922, his final season, he got into 142 games and drove in 92 runs.

Joe Wood and Babe Ruth may be aberrations of a kind - I don't know of any two other players who played both ways even very good, never mind playing one good and one great, even allowing for Ruth's dead-ball life as a pitcher and live-ball life as Paul Bunyan. The injury that wrecked Wood's pitching career has eliminated a lot of fair assessment of him, but it's probably fair to say that had he not been injured he would have had a cleaner shot at the Hall of Fame as a pitcher. And I don't think today you could find, really, any player who could go from pitcher to position player and end up with records showing them very good at both, never mind very good at one and Hall of Fame (or potentially so) at the other.

oopsie! Sowwy about the double disaster!

This is so much fun I almost forgot this is a political site ;-).

What was that blog site you were starting or currently run? I would like to pass it along to some of the more stat minded posters of a Yankee NG I frequent.

With pleasure! It's http://pologrounds.crimsonzine.com . Or, The Polo Grounds: A Calm Review of Baseball. I haven't put up any new essays since last week, but I plan to put one up about The Settlement and the immediate wake some time this weekend.

And so this is a political site. It's also a culture/society site, and baseball is American culture and American, period - in all its metaphor, all the grandeur of its play, and all its nuance and balance in array and goal. (What, after all, is more distinctly American than that, however far you aim or travel or walk or run, your penultimate hope is to find your way home?) I've been enjoying our little exchanges immensely.

baseball is American culture and American, period - in all its metaphor, all the grandeur of its play, and all its nuance and balance in array and goal. (What, after all, is more distinctly American than that, however far you aim or travel or walk or run, your penultimate hope is to find your way home?)

Inside every bleacher creature lurks the heart of a poet. ;-)

Just started reading some of your essays, great stuff so far.