Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The Babe

Babe Ruth was a superfreak.

We all get used to the image of Ruth as that fat guy mincing through his home run trot on his tiny legs. It's much easier to categorize that home run trot than the numbers he put up, which were as enormous as they were incomprehensible.

That's not why he was a superfreak, though.

As crazy as it sounds, Babe Ruth was almost certainly the most incredible player in the history of baseball. That seems impossible, because he certainly wasn't the fastest or strongest athlete, but he did do something no other great hitter in the game has ever done.

He was a great pitcher.

Babe Ruth's career pitching record was 94-46. He went 18-8 in the majors--when he was 20 years old. The next year, he went 23-12 with a 1.75 ERA (over a run below the league average). He pitched 323 innings and had 23 complete games with 9 shutouts. He followed that with a 24-13 record in 1917. In both years, he was in the top three in the league in wins. At age 22, he had 67 career wins.

In 1918, he started spending more time in the outfield, and after 1919, he became a full-time outfielder, but in those two years combined he still went 22-12.

The guy was a witch, basically.

In 1930, at age 35, and after not pitching for nine years, he pitched a complete game, giving up three earned runs. And pitched another complete game in 1933 at age 38. Those were the last two starts of his career.

Over 1200 innings pitched during his career. 94 career wins. 107 complete games and 17 shutouts.

The hitting stats are videogame numbers, obviously. His first full year as an outfielder, in 1920, he hit more home runs (54) than all but one other team. He led the league in slugging percentage 13 out of 14 years from 1918 to 1931. I don't think a single athlete will ever dominate a league the way that Ruth dominated major league baseball.

Ruth lived a wild life, and not a particularly honorable one, if his biographers are accurate. But if you want to know who was the original superfreak, he's your man.

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