WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK. By Baseball Bailey. August 9, 2007: Barry finally belted the big blow, number 756, to far more tumult than the original Babe did when he hit his 714th in 1935 before a few thousand fans in Pittsburgh.
Barry’s Blast was an electrifying humpback line drive in the first five rows of bleachers at AT & T Park. And the homerun crown was passed to a new homerun king. Congratulations to Mr. Bonds who drove for his goal despite the controversy, the criticism, the negativism that has stalked him for a decade.
However, the Babe’s achievement so far and away above and beyond what hitters had achieved at the time in the 1930s still has to be viewed as the magical figure.
Mr. Bonds has surpassed the original breaker of Ruth’s record, Henry Aaron who did not attend the Bonds Watch. Neither did the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig. Since no one has definitively proved Mr. Bonds took sterioids, though the circumstantial evidence is damning, the failure of Selig or Aaron to attend cheapens the achievement.
However Henry Aaron’s statement about the blast of how it inspired others to achieve their dreams is what the game is about.
Mr. Aaron, facing fierce racial threats when he pursued the Babe had his demons as he pursued the record. Mr. Bonds has his. Barry and Hank still had to hit them.
However the homerun in Ruth’s time was an achievement. A far greater achievement than today.
Today homeruns are just 4 singles strung together, aided and abetted by organized baseball’s chemical alterations to their game.
What do I mean by chemical?
1. The baseball was juiced in the mid-90s to hype fan interest again after the 1994 baseball strike. Tom Seaver proved this on television, comparing a baseball from his era the 1970s to today’s. Consequently, Mr. Seaver has not gotten much work as a commentator. I saw Mr. Seaver compare the cores of the 1969 baseball with the baseball the late 90s. Seaver noted and showed graphically with a pencil to show how tightly wound the core was compared to the ball of this day. He also showed how sunken the seams were on the modern baseball. Seaver said this made the ball less aerodynamically resistant.
2. The ballparks were shrunken. As the new wave of ballparks developed – Camden Yards, Jacobs Field, Turner Field, The All-American Ballpark, The Ballpark at Arlington, Coors Field, PacBell Park, the new Detroit Park, power alleys were shrunken, foul lines shortened, foul territory shrunken.
The combination of shorter fences and livelier baseballs, (pitchers have said throwing today’s ball is like throwing a handgrenade), set up a situation where the ball would when hit reasonably squarely, would carry farther and have less distance to travel to clear the fence.
Hitters in the Babe’s era had big ballyards to clear: The Polo Grounds, Shibe Park, Comiskey Park, Muncipal Stadium, League Park, Forbes Field, Griffith Stadium, Yankee Stadium (the biggest park of all), Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium), Sportsman’s Park. The only parks remaining from yesteryear are Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.
So right away, Mr. Bonds has a large advantage over the Babe. Henry Aaron played one more year than the Babe…who pitched the first five years of his career, splitting time in the outfield, and the Babe had to hit a dead ball for the first five years of his career. The Babe hit 49 homers in his first five years in the bigs. He was up for a cup of coffee with the Red Sox in 1914, appearing in only 5 games, then 42,67,52, and 95 and 130 from 1915 to 1919 respectively. Taken into perspective the Sultan of Swat hit 665 of his 714 homeruns in his final 15 years, averaging 44 a year. Aaron, in his first five years belted 140 from 1954 to 1959, and in his last 18 years hit 615. The Babe was the more prolific belter, after a slow start.
Mr. Bonds had a dramatic surge in the 90s in his production, coinciding with baseball’s doctoring of its baseballs and shortening its fences. Going into 1995 season, with 10 years in the bigs, Barry had 259 homeruns after the shortened 1994 strike season. In 1995, before he began receiving the personal training of Greg Anderson, Bonds in his first full season after the strike hit 33 homeruns.
Bonds, after five years in “The Show” had hit 117 homers by 1991, leading the Babe by 51 homers After ten years Bonds had 292. Both modern sluggers well ahead of the Babe’s pace. Over his last 17 years Babe, hit 665 into the seats compared to Bonds hitting 464 in his last 10 years. Bonds prodigiously upped his homer output, as did the Babe. The Babe was also helped by a livelier ball in the 1920s.
Ruth also had three poor years in those last 17 seasons, hitting only 35 (1922), 25 (1925),34(1933), then tailing to 22 and 6 in 1934 and 1935. My point being that the Babe was hitting them out in deeper ballparks, with a harder to drive baseball.
Bonds also had 1,375 more official at bats than the Babe (9,774 to 8,399). But Barry’s blasting since 1995 has been phenomenal – 464 homeruns –an average of 45 a year, when in his first decade in the bigs he averaged 29.
Still in the 10 best years of the Babe—1920 to 1930 the Sultan of Swat, playing less games than Mr. Bonds and Mr. Aaron blasted 516 out of the yard against grizzled ornery take no prisoners pitchers —outhomering Bonds 516 to 462 In his prime years.
Conversely it says a lot about Mr. Bonds consistency and his ability to double his homer output with help from a lively ball, shallower ballparks, lousy pitching and better conditioning. Actually Mr. Bonds body and Babe Ruth’s body are similar with similar swings if you observe the photos.
The numbers that the Bambino puts up are beyond respectable. Here we have Mr. Bonds and Mr. Aaron eclipsing the Babe numerically, but in perspective, the Babe is still awesome, despite his womanizing, his hot dog addiction, his cigar-smoking habit, his hard-drinking. The Babe’s contemporary sluggers —Jimmie Foxx(534), Mel Ott (511)Lou Gehrig (493), Hack Wilson(244), Al Simmons (307) – do not touch him.
Some other factors in the Aaron-Bonds-Ruth comparisons on numbers
When I was a young fan, old fans then talked about how good the pitching was in the 20s and 30s compared to the pitching in the 1950s. However, they had a point – the relief pitching just was not a big factor in the 20s and 30s. Starters went all the way mostly. But they were ornerous. Nasty. They threw all sorts of pitches with a bigger strike zone: curves, changes, spitballs, emery balls The Men in Blue gave them the letters strike, the knees strike, the corners. Sure there were bad pitchers then, most of them on the 1930 Philadelphia Phils who hit .315 as a team and finished last, their team ERA was 6.71 runs per game. But not many. Most teams had 3 solid pitchers in the Babe’s day.
In Aaron’s time, the 50s and 60s and 70s the pitching was still strong and there were pitchers in better shape, and closers to contend with.
However in the last ten years, pitching was changed to favor the hitter, in the following ways:
1. The strike zone was closed down dropping from the letters to the belt and knees. The high strike was no longer called. The corners were still in play. This forced pitchers to throw more down the middle in the wheel house and gave hitters more leeway as to where to expect the pitch when pitchers fell behind on the count. This is evidenced by the vast number of homers on 2-0 counts and on first pitches.
The caveat here is today’s pitching is far thinner than it was in Aaron’s day or in Ruth’s day as a player. Pitchers reach the big leagues today and they are learning on the job and their mistakes are homers – not singles or doubles.
The pitching started to really go south in the mid-90s when pitch counts came into vogue. The six inning start is now considered a quality start. Very suspect middle relief is then relied on – and this is when a lot of shots get hit. But anyway this is a completely other column.
My point is the Sosa-McGwire-Bonds home run era is a far more conducive environment to hit homeruns. Baseball has taken on the element of a pinball game with all the homers.
Bonds at the present pace may blast a hundred more because the pitching is so horrendous.
Nonetheless, he still has to hit them, regardless of whether the fences are shorter, the pitching less competent. He is doing it and has done it. If baseball or authorities ever tie him directly to steroids unequivocably I have to think about the asterisk issue, but so far they have not.
You could say that the Babe with his massive chest and fast bat was a model for Bonds.
I wrote this because the Babe will never be forgotten. When you think homerun, you think Babe Ruth, and the achievements of Mr. Aaron and Mr. Bonds pay homage to the once and future home run king. The Sultan of Swat.
I leave you with this description of the Babe on one of his great days in 1928, beating the great Lefty Grove in the eighth, and snapping Lefty’s 14-game winning streak on September 9 and to send the Philadelphia A’s two and a half games behind the Bronx Bombers on – taken from Lefty Grove: American Original by Jim Kaplan:
The Yankees had tied the score…Been handed two runs, really.What more? Ruth, with his wonderful sense of theater, bunted on the first pitch – foul by inches. Just think of it: Babe Ruth giving himself up to move Gehrig ninety feet. Or beat out a bunt. The Babe was saying simply this: I can beat you every which way, busher.
Ruth took a ball. Then on a 1-1 fastball – mano a mano—combat, you give me your best, I’ll give you mine – Ruth homered deep to right to give the Yankees their final 5-3 margin. Not even old Ty Cobb, popping out in his last official at bat, could bring the A’s back….
Vidmer (Richards Vidmer, a Times sportswriter) fleshed it out: “His big bat swung, a crackling sound split the tense silence. A ball sailed high and far toward the bleachers and then the thunder broke loose. A scream of delight went up from the multitude that echoed and reechoed while the mighty busters of the Bronx trotted around the bases. Straw hats rained on the field, mingling with the torn and tattered bits of paper that had fluttered down when Gehrig had driven in the tying run with a single a moment before. The Yankees had beaten back the enemy for the third straight day.”
Then in his last days with the Yankees in 1934, the Babe was playing for the Yankees for what turned out to be the last time in Fenway Park. A crowd of 46,000 turned out in the Fens to see the Yankees and the Sox play two. The Babe went 2 for 6. When he left after his last at bat, this is what happened:
Whitman wrote in the Boston Herald:
Spontaneously and as one man, the huge crowd, all the way around the field, stood up and applauded. There was little shouting. It was hand clapping, steadily swelling in volume until the big fellow was lost to sight as he entered the Red Sox dugut – the one he first entered as a major leaguer twenty years ago – and passed out of sight to the intimacies of the Yankee clubhouse under the grandstand.
The Red Sox said there were tears in the Babe’s eyes as he passed through the dugout on the way out because he was touched by the mass applause.
On opening day in Boston after being signed by the Boston Braves in 35, before 20,000, an aging Babe who could hardly run around the bases faced “King Carl” Hubbell of the old New York Giants and blasted a solo shot into the Braves Field bleachers…in May in Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, the Babe was hitting .180. He was doing nothing at the plate, but somehow the old magic returned. The Bambino belted three majestic homeruns at Forbes Field, one over the double decked grandstand in right, but basically had to walk around the bases.
That was the Babe, rising to the occasion more often than not. Leaving us laughing, crying, remembering always.
In the final paragraph of Babe Ruth and The American Dream, Ken Sobol writes why The Babe will continue to be the once and future home run king:
Death is a fact of life, a serious matter that has to be faced eventually, and the central ignigma of Babe’s fifty-three years was that he always found such things beyond his grasp. Year after year, his associates watched him, wondering when he would grow up, expecting that he would eventually have to learn to face facts as they themselves had to learn, that he would start behaving in a manner consistent with the adulation he received from millions of worshipful kids, but he managed to fool them all. He just stayed Babe Ruth – a wary, self-centered, exuberant, ignorant boy who by an accident of physical coordination happened to be the most exciting figure of his time.
So kudos to Mr. Bonds and Mr. Aaron, for in Mr. Bonds achievement, he ironically is upstaged by The Babe.
The Babe would have been there, his arms around Mr. Aaron and Mr. Bonds, talking hitting, saying “Hiya Keeds.”
Yes, definitely The Babe would have been there.
