The Babe Ruth Epidemic in Baseball
Lively ball? Ban on spitballs? No, it was the Bambino who gave us the modern game; a lost story by stats pioneer F. C. Lane from 1921
THREE years ago home runs had declined to the lowest point, both in the number made and in the estimation of baseball fans, recorded in the past decade. “Batting science” was the watchword both of those who coached from the sidelines and those who howled from the bleachers, and the spectacular home run did not appeal.
Then came Babe Ruth, the same who is now going stronger than ever, and “overthrew the whole system of batting science” in favor of a “brand-new system of his own.” The home-run epidemic might better be called the Babe-Ruth epidemic, for the habit began with the so-called and so-much admired “Bambino.” This is the moral which F. C. Lane, one of the Baseball Magazine’s experts of the diamond, draws from the present “mad scramble for circuit clouts.” The career of Babe Ruth well illustrates the power of a dominating personality, says Mr. Lane:
Most of us plod along and seem to exert little influence on the scheme of things. But now and again a superman arises in the domain of politics or finance or science and plays havoc with kingdoms or fortunes or established theories. Such a superman in a narrow but none-the-less obvious field is Babe Ruth. The big bat-wielder might not make much impression in the fine arts or classical literature. Doubtless, Thomas Edison, applying his celebrated questionnaire test, would label Babe as “amazingly ignorant.” Nevertheless, in his own particular field Babe is a true superman.
The influence of the redoubtable slugger individual records has made a lasting impression on the records. And y this we dot refer to the individual records he has hung up, however marvelous they may be. To get a true vision of Babe’s influence on the sport he has come so thoroughly to dominate, we must search below mere surface indications. And the deeper we search the more impressive grows the evidence of Babe’s masterful presence.
The geologist in examining strata of slate or sandstone will trace the faint but unmistakable footprints of some prehistoric monster. Ten thousand centuries may have passed since that lumbering creature of a remote age left that footprint, but there it is in enduring stone for those whose eye is trained to see it. The baseball records offer to the statistician a field as interesting and extensive as the hundred varieties of rock strata are to the geologist. In those records the impressions left by individual players are indelibly recorded. Only one must have an eye to see those things and to draw from them their logical conclusions.
We shall not delve very deeply into the musty recesses of the dope. A ten-year period will suffice for our purpose. Let us trace the history of the Major-League home run for the past ten seasons and see if we can explain its variations.
Ten years ago, in the season of 1911, the two Major Leagues taken collectively made 507 home runs. The following season that number had slumped to 433. One year later the total rose a trifle (the course of an underlying tendency is never smooth). It rose temporarily, however, only to slump to still greater depths the following season. In 1915, after the passage of five years, the number of home runs hit in the Major Leagues had declined from 507 to 384. One year later saw a further decline, slight, to be sure, but a decline nevertheless. Another season yet and the home-run total had slumped to 335. The next year we notice a surprising falling off, surprising until we reflect that 1918 saw baseball eclipsed by the world-war. That season, curtailed by Secretary Baker’s historic decree, could hardly be expected to furnish its due quota of home runs or anything else pertaining to baseball. Consequently it marked the lowest level of the home-run plane, which stood at 235.
Grant that 1918 was an exceptional year. Admit that the evidence of that particular season must be viewed with suspicion. We are nevertheless confronted with the fact that for several seasons the total of home runs made in the Major circuits had steadily declined. What caused the decline?
The answer to that question seems clear enough. Baseball, year by year, had grown more scientific, more a thing of accepted rules, of set routine.
This slow evolution of the sport, says the writer, displayed itself, in batting, “in the form of the bunt, the place-hit, and other manifestations of skill.” Ty Cobb, we are told, perhaps had as much to do with this batting evolution as any one man. “Ty taught the world the supreme value of place-hitting.” But then came Babe Ruth, and now, the writer goes on, “We do say, and the records bear us out, that almost any batter that has it in him to wallop the ball is swinging from the handle of the bat with every ounce of strength that nature placed in his wrists and shoulders.” Mr. Ruth, it appears, has done more than upset the home-run record:
He has also upset the long-established order in batting circles. He has batted home runs at so dizzy a pace that he has fired the enthusiasm of the entire country. He has not only slugged his way to fame, but he has got everybody else doing it. The home-run fever is in the air. It is infectious. There is a disposition on the part of the managers not to hold their men back, but rather to encourage them. Every manager of the sixteen Big-League clubs devoutly hopes that some of his players will develop a home-run talent faintly reflecting Babe Ruth’s unchallenged prowess. Every owner of the sixteen Big-League clubs unites with his manager in the prayer that somehow, somewhere, he can dig up a player who can remotely parallel Babe Ruth. Babe has not only smashed all records, he has smashed the long accepted system of things in the batting world, and on the ruins of that system he has erected another system, or rather lack of system, whose dominant quality is brute force.
Home runs are not hit by carefully drilling the ball through a hole in the infield. They are hit by banging the ball over the fence, or, at least, over the outfielders’ heads. In this there is a certain science, to be sure, but there is still more brute strength. Reverting to the time-worn proverb, it is essentially a “Triumph of brawn over brain.”
Does Babe’s advent into baseball herald a new era of development? We cannot say. For a time, at least, the old order of things is in complete eclipse. The home run total in the two Big Leagues has increased enormously in the past two seasons. It bears every indication of rising to new heights in the present season. Already far more home runs have been scored in the Major Leagues this year than were scored at the same time last season. Babe himself, as we go to press, is considerably ahead of his last year’s record up to date, and what is even more surprising he has encountered the strongest kind of opposition, a formidable antagonist in the person of George Kelly, of the Giants, who actually led Babe Ruth in number of home runs made well into the month of May. From every ball park on the circuits there comes the crash of bat on ball and a tumult of applause as the whirling sphere clears the fences or lodges in the stand. We are in for a true carnival of true home-run hitting, which evidently has not yet reached its peak.
Skeptics may doubt the influence of Ruth in all this. They may claim that part at least of the surprising revival of the homer is due to the passing of freak deliveries and the advent of a livelier ball. Freak deliveries, however, do not influence home runs any more than they influence singles. If the abolishment of these deliveries was the cause, all kinds of batting would have increased no less than the home run. True, batting has improved somewhat, but the progress made in other types of hits is as nothing compared with the tremendous advance in homers.
The livelier ball may have influenced the situation to some extent. But the livelier ball is a thing so elusive that it offers the scantiest evidence. For example, the manufacturers claim that the ball in use last year was no livelier than the ball employed some seasons ago. The manufacturers ought to know what they are talking about, and we can see no reason why they should deceive the public on this point. Anyway, a livelier ball would improve all types of batting quite as much as the home run, and that result we have already seen has not followed.
We are irresistibly impelled, therefore, to see in Babe Ruth the true cause for the amazing advance in home runs. He it is who has taught the managers the supreme value of apparently unscientific methods. Babe Ruth is the true Home-Run King in a larger sense than is commonly under stood. For he has taken the place-hit from its pedestal as the batter’s universal model and has set up in its place the home run.
Source: The Literary Digest, June 25, 1921
