Not sure if 1968 is considered Nolan Ryan’s rookie year or not, because he pitched two games in 1966 and none in 1967. On April 19, 1968, Ryan struck out the Dodgers side on 9 pitches in the top of the third. He did it twice in his career, also in 1972.
Williams hit 2654 hits, 521 HRs, and .344. He also missed 5 seasons due to military duty, all of 1943, 1944, and 1945 then most of 1952 and 1953. The 1943-45 were his prime. He led the AL in runs, HRs, batting average, walks, OBP, and slugging each year in 1941 and 1942. Hit .406 in 41 and hit for the triple crown in 42. He returned in 46 to win the AL MVP. From 1941-1949, he never finished lower than 3rd in the AL MVP and never hit lower than .342. What makes him dblplay1212 favorite player is that he also led the league in walks in 8 out of 9 full seasons he played from 1941-1954, while also hitting above .342 in 7 of them.
We had this debate a few weeks ago. Musial is comparable, but Williams was better. Williams is number one all time in OBP and still hit .344 career. You really can’t find anyone outside the deadball era who is comparable.
Musial also underrated, imo. I factor in what he likely does if not gone to the war from 43-45 and 52-53. We're talking 680+ HRs probably another MVP or two and likely the all-time leader in RBI.
Whoa slow down. Don't re-frame the discussion we had. The discussion was a contemporary that was comparable to WIlliams; so DiMaggio, Foxx, etc. If we're talking all-time, Ruth was better.
In that case he would have gotten close to what Ruth actually did. Even going off per AB numbers to account for missed AB's due to war, Ruth was better. Same avg. Better SLG. More hr per ab. Higher OPS. He was just a better hitter. And he did it in a time that nobody was doing anything remotely close to him. He hit more HR than any TEAM... TWICE. Idk why people romanticize Williams so much. He was a great great great hitter. An all-timer. Ruth was just the GOAT.
Ruth is my favorite player of all-time. I think he is the best all around player. I'm still going with Williams as the best hitter. Wish we could have seen an interrupted career. also, Williams was my dad's favorite player and he still has a huge framed poster in his home office of him. One other reason I probably think so highly of him.
Ruth changed the game, but Williams was a better hitter. Ruth also saw the transition from dead ball to live ball era before other teams built batting lineups for power so the fact that his HR hitting was unique is a little misleading. A lot of comparable stats are a wash. Ruth is the career leader in slugging and OPS, Williams is number two in both. Williams is the career leader in on base percentage, Ruth is second. Williams has a slightly better batting average. Where Williams is different is he took more walks and significantly fewer strikeouts. He had almost half the strikeouts that Ruth whiffed on his career. If we are looking at aggregate numbers on a career, Williams served in the WWII and Korea when he was 25-27 and 34-35. For Ruth, that would be like eliminating 1920-1922 and 1929-30. 1920-1921 are Ruth’s two best seasons aside from 1927. Knock out 1929-30 and we’re talking four of his six best HR years. That’s 243 HRs in those 5 seasons from 1920-22 and 1929-30. You can’t discount what Williams lost in his prime. He had two of the best seasons in baseball history in 1941-1942, skipped three years, then led the AL in OBP and OPS another four years in a row from 1946-1949.
No, I'm not looking at career totals. I'm going off modern stats. Walks - 19.4 to 20.6. Not a huge difference. ISO - .348 to .289 in favor of Ruth. HUGE gap. OBP - .008 very slight lead for William's SLG - .56 lead for Ruth. Pretty significant. OPS - 1.1636 to 1.155. That's a pretty decent gap. wRC+ - 197 to 188 lead for Ruth. The only thing Williams did much better was strike out less. Ruth was even or better at pretty much everything else. Ruth got on at the same clip yet did more damage when he did. The numbers show that. Ruth was the better overall hitter. FWIW Williams only had 700 less AB's.
It still amazes me that neither Babe Ruth nor Ted Williams were unanimously elected to the hall of fame. Mariano Rivera is the only one to ever do so. I don't understand that.
A lot of it was "Well Babe Ruth and Ted Williams weren't unanimous so Ken Griffey Jr shouldn't be either" and then a lot of "Well Griffey is getting in anyways so I'll use my vote for Edgar Martinez" bc I'm capped at 10 votes.
Makes sense but damn I can't imagine submitting a ballot and not vote for babe Ruth if he's an optiom
Kirby Puckett making in a year what Mike Trout makes in about a half a week. And $2.25 for SI in 1987? FOH.
That’s the newsstand price. Subscription price per mag was probably less than half that, if I remember right.
I’m not sure the use of relievers was much different in the Williams era. What was fundamentally different, however, was the transition from dead ball to live ball. Every pitcher in baseball had to change their pitching style and Ruth feasted on that.
This makes no sense. If the pitching was so bad, why weren't other hitters putting up similar numbers? Why was Ruth hitting more HR's than teams? Your post implies that Ruth's numbers are bloated bc of bad pitching when in fact the numbers show that not to be the case at all. Overall offensive numbers from the 20s, 30s, and 40s were pretty similar. The 20s weren't a juiced era where pitchers got slaughtered. It's right in line with Williams era.
Ruth was the greatest player of his era and way ahead of the curve as the style of baseball changed. Pitching adjusted, but so did hitting. It’s not like baseball was stocked full of rosters of power hitters ready to take advantage of the live ball. Ruth was ready. In the last two dead ball years, Ruth led the league with 11 and 29 HRs. In the first two years of live ball, he hit 54 and 59. George Sisler was second in 1920 with 19, but he was a singles hitter who only hit 102 in a ball of fame career. Bob Muesel was second in 1921 with 24. By 1922, third season of live ball, the league caught up. Ruth finished 4th in HRs in 1922. Ruth tied in 1923. There were still seasons when Ruth was way ahead of the rest, because no one was as good as him, but the numbers even out. There are almost no pitchers who made a successful transition from dead ball to live ball. Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, and that’s about it. Even Ruth was a premier pitcher until 1918. He started 15 games in the last year of dead ball, then quit pitching when the ball went live.
I don't even get what you're trying to say. It comes across as if you're suggesting that Ruth's numbers are bloated bc of bad pitching. Overall numbers from the 20s, 30s, and 40s are pretty similar. Idk why you keep acting like the 20's was the 90s/00s. They weren't. Ruth played in a similar offensive era as Williams. He just put up better numbers. I get that you're a Williams fan but using era as a reason to brush off Ruth's superior numbers is pretty ridiculous. Fyi Ruth only played 110 games in 1922. He missed 44 of 154 games. He still finished 4th in HR's. The league didnt catch up. He just got suspended for 6 weeks for barnstorming in the offseason. https://calltothepen.com/2011/12/18/baseball-history-babe-ruths-1921-suspension/
I think it was $50 for the year, they'd advertise less than $1 per issues. And, we'd get the Year in Sports videos. I recently found a bunch on YouTube...all the nostalgia.
We have reached the “Ezekiel Elliott didn’t have a great game against Alabama” point in this discussion. Moving on.
I got to meet Henderson when he was playing with the Yankees and I was 11 years old. At Cleveland Municipal, players used to have to walk from the locker room through a small parking lot to get to the team bus. They used to let fans collect autographs there, usually only 10-15 people. Henderson stood in the door way of the locker room, basically teasing everyone, then told us he would sign for any kid who could catch him running to the bus. He was joking and signed for everyone, but 11 year old me had a moment when I thought I might have to run down Henderson.
Ruth is the greatest hitter of all time. There’s a quote where he said had he wanted to hit for average he would have but wanted to hit HR’s. Ruth was essentially a part time player for the first 4/5 years of his career when he pitched. If you take out the years Williams left for service then cancel out 1914-1918. Ruth’s 1921 season is the greatest ever.
No, but Dave Winfield threw my baseball cards all over the parking lot and my dad almost got arrested. I also got Dave Pasqua’s autograph on a ball, because he was going to be the Yankees next big power hitter.
I’m not sure. Also, it was Dan Pasqua, not Dave. I think I still have it in a trunk full of old collectible stuff. I have no idea how stadiums are set up now, but it’s crazy to think you used to be able to just show up at the door of Cleveland Municipal and wait for opposing players to walk out.
Winfield was a colossal douche. Rickey made me fetch him a newspaper from across the street for an autograph.
My favorite Rickey story: After the 1990 season, the A’s finance department tried to balance the books, only to find a $1 million overage – they had too much money in the bank, given what they thought they had paid out. An inquest showed the likely culprit: for some reason, the million-dollar check made out to Henderson had never cleared. The A’s called up Rickey and asked if he knew what had happened, and luckily for the finance people, he did. Henderson never cashed the check. Instead he had it framed and hung it on one of his walls. The check, as Henderson would later explain, was a constant reminder that he had made it – that he was a millionaire – and he wanted it to be in a place where he’d see it every day. The A’s asked him to make a copy of the check, frame that copy and deposit the actual one. Henderson, fortunately, agreed.
I got Winfield's autograph in spring training '93. He seemed like a decent enough dude, but I was getting his autograph at a time when players expected to be asked for autographs. He wasn't as generous as Kirby Puckett though.
I’ve told this story a million times, so apologies to everyone who has heard it before. I asked Winfield for an autograph in the parking lot of Municipal. He took a stack of cards I was holding and threw them in the air like confetti. Complete dick. Didn’t even speak, just grabbed my cards and threw them. I was 11 and my dad had to be restrained by Cleveland police as he was screaming at Winfield.