If you go by WAR alone, Graig Nettles and his 68 WAR and .248 batting average gets into Cooperstown. Nettles was a fine player but was he the second coming of Lou Gehrig?
"The greatest Mexican-American player was slugger Ted Williams, whose mother was slightly mestizo-looking. "
Williams was about 75-80% European. It's a bit mech, since Ted never seriously identified as being Mexican during his lifetime. Perhaps because in his autobiography he seems to harbor some deep seated resentment vs his mother (half Mexican) whose life centered around her participation in the Salvation Army at the expense of taking care of her family (and by extension, not devoting enough time to his upbringing).
In his autobiography, Cuban born Jose Canseco devotes nearly half a chapter to players from various nations. One prominent example he uses is the DR Miguel Tejada, who started out slow with below average stats but within a few years, was putting up stats that were simply amazing. Without directly saying it, Canseco attributes Tejada's sudden rise to PEDS, and in his mind the answer is fairly simple. In the DR and other Caribbean nations, there is abject poverty for most locals, and the one way out of that hard life is thru baseball. He makes the point that if you had one chance in a million to get out of that poor nation, play in MLB where you could potentially make tons of money and thus take care of your family for life, wouldn't you take that chance, even if it meant using PEDS? In Canseco's mind, in order to guarantee a consistently amazing on field performance (and thus score big money contracts) is thru PEDS. As Carribbean nations laws and regulations at the time weren't as strict as the US regarding PEDS, it was fairly easy for local players to obtain them and thus have a better opportunity at reaching the MLB. In Canseco's view, failure wasn't an option for impoverished Caribbean locals playing ball. and thus PEDS in his view was the one guarantor of success (playing in MLB).
"What is WAR? A typical regular is worth about two additional wins per season for his team over a generic replacement player that can be picked up from Triple A minors or off the waiver wire, while a superstar is worth six or eight incremental wins per season, with a Judge or Ohtani approaching ten WAR)."
This is the one Sabermetric based stat that Steve has finally convinced me to endorse (with perhaps some cautious corrolaries, namely, don't completely ignore and neglect starting pitchers who traditionally pitched 30% or more complete games during their careers).
IF Ohtani and Judge are worth 10 WAR, then Babe Ruth would certainly have to be ca. 12-15, and we have a definitive link to demonstrate it.
In Ruth's first five years with NY, the Yankees won the AL Pennant 3 times and finished no lower than 3rd place.
In 1925 due to a still mysterious illness, Ruth was out for most of the season, and the Yankees finished in 7th place, at 69-85. A record they wouldn't finish that low again until 1965, two generations later. By pretty much every metric, Ruth had the worst statistics of his career as an everyday player. During the offseason Ruth worked out, lost weight, dieted and was ready for the following season to return to his usual superstar form.
In 1926 with Babe Ruth back in the lineup healthy, the Yankees went 91-63 and won the AL Pennant. That's a 22 W noticable difference over the previous season. The lineup was basically the same (except for a healthy Ruth. It was also Lazzeri's rookie season and Gehrigs first full season so that certainly helped, so that must be noted as well).
But the main factor remains that Ruth was healthy again and his stats were up to where they had been pre-1925 levels.
If anything, this should demonstrate that of the 22 W's NY gained with Ruth back in the lineup*, that he was directly responsible for at least 15, if not say 16-18 of those additional wins. Going from next to last place to winning the pennant mainly because one of the greatest players to have played in MLB made all the difference to NY's standings.
*(In '26, Ruth played in 152 out of NY's 154 games that season)
Excellent post. I never thought of Williams as part-Mexican until I was fairly old. He resented his Mexican-American mother because of her close association with the Salvation Army and he hated going to Salvation Army events. Williams was essentially an atheist which is why his body was frozen cryogenically. His brother, who died of leukemia at a relatively young age, looked much more Mexican than Williams. Williams was a very conservative Republican except when it came to racial issues. Williams was also an excellent fisherman, upper one-percentile.
When Steve posted his awesome catch (along with his father) of an amazing Marlin off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, I remarked that it was Hemingway-esque in proportions--could just've easily said that it was in the same league as Ted Williams.
For example, In 1954 during his off season, Williams caught In December 1954, Ted Williams caught a massive 1,235-pound black marlin off the coast of Cabo Blanco, Peru. This impressive catch was notable at the time, as it was the eighth-largest fish ever caught on rod and reel. The location, Cabo Blanco, is known for its excellent big-game fishing, particularly for black marlin. Williams' experience there, including this specific catch, was even documented in a film according to the Orange County Register.
That's incredible.
Also regarding his Mexican roots, Wiki is stating that it was diverse in that it also claimed Basque, Russian, and American Indian roots as well.
I'm not sure exactly why Williams was an atheist, even allowing that it was a personal spite vs his mother's over devotion to religion via the Salvation Army. In that sense, he inherited from her her stubborn, devotional single mindedness to hitting (and also to hunting and fishing).
For the record, his .406 is NOT the record. Sometimes people conflate the fact that so far he's the last to have batted over .400 in a regular season as THE actual single season BA record in MLB when it isn't. Hornsby's .424 BA in 1924 was higher.
Also, Williams wasn't THE greatest hitter of the 20th century--that honor goes to Babe Ruth.
To be fair to Williams, he missed I believe three full seasons due to World War Two and one due to Korea so his WAR would have likely approached 150. And Ruth was a fine pitcher and some of his WAR came from that. I would guess that Ruth might have had a WAR over 200 if he had continued pitching.
To be fair to Ruth, he missed most of 1925 due to an illness. IF he had played full time OF/P, from 1915-1918, he would've had closer to 800 career HRs, over 2400 RBI's etc. His WAR would've been well over 250.
Most of Ruth's WAR is because he's the greatest hitter to have played in MLB, period. If he had stayed a P, he'd have been remembered only by hardcore classic era MLB fans. An excellent to perhaps great pitcher, who maybe would've made it into the HOF by the early 50's. But his hitting made him transcend the sport itself, something Williams never did.
I understand the shoulda coulda woulda argument of WW2/Korea, but neither do things don't exist in a vacuum. And by the same token have to include Ruth's 5 yrs of non full time hitting. By doing that, Ruth still comes out the greatest hitter of all time in MLB.
And we can see just how valuable Ruth was to NY, by the season he missed while in his prime--Yankees finished below .500 in next to last place. Ruth comes back the following season healthy and NY wins the AL Pennant with essentially the same lineup that they had the previous year. That fact alone is directly traced to Babe Ruth. He directly helped increase NY's standings. When Williams returned from WW2, BOS won the AL Pennant, but I would question how much was that due to him directly as opposed to the rest of the team? Also, when Williams returned from Korea, BOS finished the rest of the decade below or around 500--basiclly they were mediocre for most of the 50's. So as far as contributing to BOS's standings, Ted didn't do much for them.
Or as HOF GM Branch Rickey mentioned on why he traded away HOF Slugger Ralph Kiner "We can finish in last place without you." Whereas NY needed Ruth to remain competitive throughout the 20's and into the early 30's. By just about every single metric, Babe Ruth is greater, and more instantly recalled (due in no small part to Ohtani's comparisons to him). I daresay, that in 2025, people under 50 haven't much of a clue as to who Ted Williams was (unless they're from BOS area). Yet they still have heard of Babe Ruth.
Babe Ruth was probably the greatest player in history. Son of Baltimore. As bad as Baltimore has declined, it can claim Edgar Allen Poe, HL Mencken, Babe Ruth, David Byrne and Nancy Pelosi.
I've never seen anybody else arguing this, but it seems like Ruth's fastball was fading after age 22, so taking up batting might have saved him from being a Smokey Joe Wood flash-in-the-pan. Wood went 34-5 in 1912, then hurt his arm, and later came back to the majors as a pretty good outfielder. I wouldn't be surprised if Ruth looked at this teammate and decided to get ahead of the process rather than react to it like Wood had had to.
Possible. Except we have to take into account that by 1916, Ruth's batting (admittedly for a pitcher) was starting to get some eyes raised. Also, we have to read the contemporary accounts to gauge what Ruth's primary pitches were. Not every pitcher then was like Walter Johnson, whose main pitch was the fastball. In fact often times in that era pitchers didn't usually throw exceptionally hard since it was the Dead Ball Era and HR's as a whole were low across the board.
That's the irony about Joe Wood. His prime pitching years were during the Dead Ball Era (like Babe Ruth as well), and HRs weren't yet a thing. In that point, there really wasn't a main reason to rely primarily on the fastball pitch during the Dead Ball Era, when a curve, screwball and spitball were just as well to get batters out.
Also keep in mind that MLB during the Dead Ball Era used very few clean baseballs in a single 9 inning game. In the Glory of their Times, players recall using about 3 or 5 balls total for the entire game (nowadays a single AB will use more than that total). If a ball was hit foul into the stands, the groundskeepers would often attempt to get the ball away from the fans so the players could continue to use the same ball. After a few innings of being scuffed, spit on by tobacco juices, knicked and cut up, that same ball could be very, very dark indeed to see coming out of the pitcher's hand. Add to that that the games sometimes started by 4 and the late afternoon shadows depending on where the ballpark was located--pitchers basically had it their own way during the Dead Ball Era, which is why Cobb Speaker, Jackson Wagner Lajoie etc who consistently hit well over .300 were greatly admired, because there were other things going vs them as the P's had most of the advantages.
I almost forgot and it's in the Glory of their Times. Wood's fastball did NOT fade because of overthrowing. He suffered a major injury, that wasn't related to pitching at all.
Per wiki:
The following year, (1913) Wood slipped on wet grass while fielding a bunt in a game against the Detroit Tigers. He fell and broke his thumb, and pitched in pain for the following three seasons. Although he maintained a winning record and a low ERA, his appearances were limited, as he could no longer recover quickly from pitching a game. Wood sat out the 1916 season and most of the 1917 season, and for all intents and purposes ended his pitching career.
Had Wood not slipped and fell on wet grass, perhaps he'd be in the HOF following an illustrious pitching career.
"Can I throw faster than Smoky Joe Wood? Listen my friend, there's no one alive that can throw faster than Smoky Joe Wood"--Walter Johnson
But Walter may have been his usual self-effacing self. Still it shows a certain class in the man.
I dont understand your last point, "except when it came to racial issues". Not as much on google about it and it could be interpreted either way. BOS was the last MLB team to integrate, with Pumpsie Green joining BOS in 1959, which was Williams' next to last season.
Also of note as to how well beloved Williams was in BOS...
"Ted Williams' final career home run, hit on September 28, 1960, was not before a packed stadium. The game, which was his last at Fenway Park, had an attendance of just over 10,000 fans, described as a "nearly empty house"
Very, very telling, especially since it was well known that he was playing in his final season and he had been a mainstay in BOS since '39. You'd think that Fenway would've packed to view his final home stretch in BOS especially. And yet it wasn't.
Compare Williams final game in BOS to NY's Derek Jeter's.
Derek Jeter's final games in Boston were packed. Specifically, his very last game at Fenway Park on September 28, 2014, had an attendance of 36,879, which was a sellout.
Fans and media noted the large crowds and special atmosphere surrounding Jeter's final appearances, especially in Boston. The Red Sox even held a pregame ceremony to honor him, featuring Boston sports legends.
While it was the end of the season for both teams, the presence of Jeter for his final games created a buzz at the ballpark, with high demand for tickets and higher-than-usual prices. It's worth noting that the final six innings of the game, after Jeter left, were less impactful in terms of attendance as many fans who primarily came to see him left the ballpark.
BOS HONORED, HONORED a member of the HATED YANKEES! That's more than they did in 1960 for Williams final game. They WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO HONOR A YANKEE, and Fenway was PACKED a SELLOUT CROWD to see hiim play for the final time.
Roger Maris hit number 61 in 1961 before 20,000 fans. He went to Catholic Mass afterwards with his wife and ate a supper out. America is so much wealthier now than it was in 1960. Paying for professional sports was a luxury in 1960 but not so much today.
Respectfully, I have to disagree in part. Yes it was a luxury back then. But for most of the 20th century MLBers were paid paltry peanuts compared to what they could've been making. And since free agency began in the late '70's, the pendulum has swung to the other side. If the players are overpaid in 2025, what about the owners? They're not going to the poorhouse any time soon either, and many of the owners are billionaires, so they're doing just fine.
After his bad 1925 season, Babe Ruth hired a personal trainer and worked out a lot each winter after that, extending his career far longer than was expected.
Ruth was one of the few players who didn't have an off-season job, so he could train during the off-season like a modern player.
Yes, that's true. But the main point remains. After their dreadful 1925 seventh place finish, with a healthy Ruth back in the lineup, the 1926 Yankees won the AL Pennant. I'm actually coming around to the Sabermetrics WAR stat, and this example would tend to prove it. WITH Ruth healthy, NY won often. WiTHOUT Ruth healthy (and we have a full season to demonstrate this), NY didn't win. Certainly WAR would apply in this situation, as Ruth perhaps gave the Yankees an additional 10 or 15 wins for the '26 season.
For the Yankees in 1927, considered one of the greatest single season teams, Ruth had one of his best statistical seasons as well.
"If anything, this should demonstrate that of the 22 W's NY gained with Ruth back in the lineup*, that he was directly responsible for at least 15, if not say 16-18 of those additional wins."
Interestingly, Baseball Reference gives Ruth 11.4 WAR for 1926, Gehrig 7 WAR and Lazzeri 2.9 accounting for almost precisely 22 wins.
2.9 WAR = one of the reasons why it took Lazzeri until 1991 to be inducted into the HOF. He was very good, but not great. '26 was Gehrig's first full season. It was okay, but nothing special.
11.4 has to be set within the full context of Ruth's career up to that point. Remember, he had been out for most of 25 and NY finished 7th. He comes back healthy in 26 and they win the AL Pennant. And yes, the bulk of the credit goes to Ruth, since it was essentially the same lineup/starting pitchers from 25. Only thing that changed was that they got their superstar back.
Before there was the whole straw that stirred the drink, Babe Ruth was the drink, the straw, the ice cubes, etc. If Ruth didn't come back healthy in 26, NY doesn't win the Pennant. Perhaps 1927 isn't so magical a season for them without him in the lineup.
Fascinating. A question. Unless a Latino is very good, is he worth having on your team if there is an American with similar ability? Is a mediocre Latino worth all the language and cultural problems? I know that the Nationals have an interpreter for their Latinos. Juan Soto is so good he is worth dealing with the language barrier. Kelbert Ruiz is not.
How do Americans and Latinos converse on the playing diamond?
WAR for pitchers is kind of a funky calculation, looking at runs allowed and innings pitched. With the more recent trend of openers and finishers (as well as saving multi-million dollar contracts from throwing out their arms), WAR will need adjustment.
Given that the "average" pitcher has a win-loss record of .500 (by definition) you might think that WAR would be the pitchers wins over breakeven. Record of 20-10 = WAR of 10. But then you don't get the first and second decimal place that sabermetric gurus covet. Also need a separate calculation for relievers (which should probably be primarily saves).
The most "diverse" place I ever lived was in southeast Atlanta, near the infamous Mariel Cuban Riot federal pen and also a quick stroll to the then-Braves Stadium. 30% white, mostly old-timers (no white flight there), a few gay gentrifiers. 30% black. 30% Mexican, almost all illegal. 10% Czech, Bosnian and others: illegal immigrants (Czech, Polish, and Ukranian), and refugees (Bosnian). When Katrina gangsters were relocated by the feds to public and refugee housing in the area, the Bosnians quickly drove them out. We didn't interact with the Bosnians.
Lots of crack whores, neighborhood goat roasts, tiny European smokehouses, chihuahuas, and BBQ. And a Vietnamese temple with what we call swastikas on the gates, which do-gooders repeatedly went after, despite being told that it is an ancient Asian symbol. Plus the retired legendary Swat Team Captain who personally caught Wayne Williams.
Poorer people of all races lived for a long time in far, far closer proximity in the South. It's not like that anymore. Thank meddling university graduates. I liked my neighbors, but I didn't like having illegals take jobs; I didn't like having to support so many of them, and I hated paying for the Atlanta K-12 schools that literally taught them to hate me.
...I learned that in its earliest days baseball was mostly a working class game. Amazing that back then many little towns across America with enough guys to field a decent team would be playing another little town's team during the weekends. Don't that sound like fun? "The Glory Of Their Times" is a great book about baseball.
Modern sports emerged out of the transportation revolution of the 19th Century in the Anglosphere. Towns had been playing ball sports forever, but each town usually had its own rules since playing a town 20 miles away was too far to bother with. Then the train came along and playing towns hundreds of miles away became reasonable. But if New York and Boston were going to play baseball, they needed to agree on whether the field would be a diamond or a square, etc.
Makes me think of the (probably held here before) discussion of Kenyan and Ethiopian marathon runners. I remember the early debates about what made them so good: training conditions, especially at elevations; escaping poverty; inherited physical differences. The ones I had the pleasure to watch while racing (briefly, as they outpaced us) had miniscule torsos, slightly longer limbs, and no body fat. This was before modern sports medicine, measurement, and training, so hypotheses leaned heavily on the romantic/sociological "escaping poverty" theme. But it seemed to me that many successful far-northern European-origin female runners shared those traits, including having narrow hips.
But some females with wider hips and legs now do well at ultramarathoning.
I wonder if genetic testing would reveal advantages from origin countries of players lumped together as "American." Look at Dwight Gooden (an obsession of mine, but only because I met him a few times, am a generational Mets fan, and he is pretty odd-looking). Tiny torso, long arms and legs, larger than African runners likely due to nurture and genetic mixing, but by my sights, he used his body the way those first-generation African marathoners ran, with discipline but also an utter focus on limb release.
Only my non-scientific observation. But I lived for running and made good spare money in grad school taking part in several experiments related to the then-new computerized sports training sciences and some vitamin/suppliment ones, being at the school muddled in with the CDC. A genetic and national breakdown of baseball players would be interesting.
You'd be right. In fact, the current women's world record (2:09) is better than the 1965 men's world record.
(One caveat: the current women's record was helped by male pacesetters running the whole way, so it's not a perfect comparison. The women's-only world record, with only female pacers, is 2:15, which would've been better than the men's record in the 1950s.)
I could see a woman running a 4 minute mile with male pacesetters and another breakthrough in shoe technology like the one about 7 years ago. I think the women's mile record is now about 4:07, which is really fast.
Well, Thursday is the day. Faith Kipyegon (the WR holder) will be going for sub-4 in Paris. I personally think she has no chance unless there's something really crazy going on with the shoes. The male pacers will probably only get her an extra two seconds. When Nike first tried to have Eliud Kipchoge run a sub-2 marathon, they came up short (he ran 2:00:25). I'm expecting something similar here. I think she runs about 4:03.
Kipyegon is a phenomenon. After giving birth by C-section, I expected her to stop breaking records, but she kept improving. There's something stuntish, though, about these efforts to break time using specially designed shoes and clothes, and truck or human pacers.
There are a couple of main Wins Above Replacement methodologies. The Baseball Reference one has Dwight Gooden's 1985 season when he went 24-4 1.53 ERA as the best single season since Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson, when you count not just his pitching but also his batting and base-running. I saw Gooden play that year at Wrigley Field and he knocked a double over the outfielder's head. He was so fast that he looked like he could have a triple easily but the third base coach held him up at second. The Cubs fans went nuts in appreciation of this amazing 20 year old talent.
Yeah, a shame. When I saw him in Tampa in 2012, he looked good and was clean, but I don't think things stayed that way. You forget how young he was in '85, '86.
Which region of America produces the best or most players, I guess by place of birth?
An interesting background for a ballplayer. Compared to Max Kepler being the child of ballet dancers in Berlin, Pete Crow-Armstrong is practically an Alou.
In Canada, baseball is played and watched but hockey is bigger. Outdoor rinks were common when I was a child (except for the Pacific coast where it’s not cold enough).
"in recent decades as the NFL and NBA have won the hearts of African-Americans, the few American black ballplayers tend to get funneled toward centerfield or shortstop (for fast blacks) or first base (for slow, strong blacks)"
I recently saw an interview with Junior Griffey who gave a sort of time preference answer to why Black college athletes prefer Football and Basketball. He claimed that the difference was time spent in the minor leagues which is de rigueur in MLB but non-existent in NBA/NFL
Indeed so but if you are confident of making the big show, mlb players have guaranteed contracts, better pay, longer careers, less chance of injury,(incidence of concussion/cte is far, far lower than nfl). For that cohort it's basically a time preference issue.
One of my high school friends went to Virginia Tech on scholarship but he was in the engineering program. He played four years and was drafted by the Twins. He played in the Appalachian League with Kirby Puckett. My friend hit .300 and Puckett hit .350. My friend decided to quit baseball after one year and get his engineering degree. Puckett made the Hall of Fame.
Fun and informative! However, the WAR calculation looks subjective and biased, so I disregarded it.
If you go by WAR alone, Graig Nettles and his 68 WAR and .248 batting average gets into Cooperstown. Nettles was a fine player but was he the second coming of Lou Gehrig?
Would be nice to see a trend line.
Moe Drabowsky played in the majors for 20 years. He was born in 1930s Poland to an American mother, and the family got out in time
"The greatest Mexican-American player was slugger Ted Williams, whose mother was slightly mestizo-looking. "
Williams was about 75-80% European. It's a bit mech, since Ted never seriously identified as being Mexican during his lifetime. Perhaps because in his autobiography he seems to harbor some deep seated resentment vs his mother (half Mexican) whose life centered around her participation in the Salvation Army at the expense of taking care of her family (and by extension, not devoting enough time to his upbringing).
In his autobiography, Cuban born Jose Canseco devotes nearly half a chapter to players from various nations. One prominent example he uses is the DR Miguel Tejada, who started out slow with below average stats but within a few years, was putting up stats that were simply amazing. Without directly saying it, Canseco attributes Tejada's sudden rise to PEDS, and in his mind the answer is fairly simple. In the DR and other Caribbean nations, there is abject poverty for most locals, and the one way out of that hard life is thru baseball. He makes the point that if you had one chance in a million to get out of that poor nation, play in MLB where you could potentially make tons of money and thus take care of your family for life, wouldn't you take that chance, even if it meant using PEDS? In Canseco's mind, in order to guarantee a consistently amazing on field performance (and thus score big money contracts) is thru PEDS. As Carribbean nations laws and regulations at the time weren't as strict as the US regarding PEDS, it was fairly easy for local players to obtain them and thus have a better opportunity at reaching the MLB. In Canseco's view, failure wasn't an option for impoverished Caribbean locals playing ball. and thus PEDS in his view was the one guarantor of success (playing in MLB).
"What is WAR? A typical regular is worth about two additional wins per season for his team over a generic replacement player that can be picked up from Triple A minors or off the waiver wire, while a superstar is worth six or eight incremental wins per season, with a Judge or Ohtani approaching ten WAR)."
This is the one Sabermetric based stat that Steve has finally convinced me to endorse (with perhaps some cautious corrolaries, namely, don't completely ignore and neglect starting pitchers who traditionally pitched 30% or more complete games during their careers).
IF Ohtani and Judge are worth 10 WAR, then Babe Ruth would certainly have to be ca. 12-15, and we have a definitive link to demonstrate it.
In Ruth's first five years with NY, the Yankees won the AL Pennant 3 times and finished no lower than 3rd place.
In 1925 due to a still mysterious illness, Ruth was out for most of the season, and the Yankees finished in 7th place, at 69-85. A record they wouldn't finish that low again until 1965, two generations later. By pretty much every metric, Ruth had the worst statistics of his career as an everyday player. During the offseason Ruth worked out, lost weight, dieted and was ready for the following season to return to his usual superstar form.
In 1926 with Babe Ruth back in the lineup healthy, the Yankees went 91-63 and won the AL Pennant. That's a 22 W noticable difference over the previous season. The lineup was basically the same (except for a healthy Ruth. It was also Lazzeri's rookie season and Gehrigs first full season so that certainly helped, so that must be noted as well).
But the main factor remains that Ruth was healthy again and his stats were up to where they had been pre-1925 levels.
If anything, this should demonstrate that of the 22 W's NY gained with Ruth back in the lineup*, that he was directly responsible for at least 15, if not say 16-18 of those additional wins. Going from next to last place to winning the pennant mainly because one of the greatest players to have played in MLB made all the difference to NY's standings.
*(In '26, Ruth played in 152 out of NY's 154 games that season)
Excellent post. I never thought of Williams as part-Mexican until I was fairly old. He resented his Mexican-American mother because of her close association with the Salvation Army and he hated going to Salvation Army events. Williams was essentially an atheist which is why his body was frozen cryogenically. His brother, who died of leukemia at a relatively young age, looked much more Mexican than Williams. Williams was a very conservative Republican except when it came to racial issues. Williams was also an excellent fisherman, upper one-percentile.
When Steve posted his awesome catch (along with his father) of an amazing Marlin off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, I remarked that it was Hemingway-esque in proportions--could just've easily said that it was in the same league as Ted Williams.
For example, In 1954 during his off season, Williams caught In December 1954, Ted Williams caught a massive 1,235-pound black marlin off the coast of Cabo Blanco, Peru. This impressive catch was notable at the time, as it was the eighth-largest fish ever caught on rod and reel. The location, Cabo Blanco, is known for its excellent big-game fishing, particularly for black marlin. Williams' experience there, including this specific catch, was even documented in a film according to the Orange County Register.
That's incredible.
Also regarding his Mexican roots, Wiki is stating that it was diverse in that it also claimed Basque, Russian, and American Indian roots as well.
I'm not sure exactly why Williams was an atheist, even allowing that it was a personal spite vs his mother's over devotion to religion via the Salvation Army. In that sense, he inherited from her her stubborn, devotional single mindedness to hitting (and also to hunting and fishing).
For the record, his .406 is NOT the record. Sometimes people conflate the fact that so far he's the last to have batted over .400 in a regular season as THE actual single season BA record in MLB when it isn't. Hornsby's .424 BA in 1924 was higher.
Also, Williams wasn't THE greatest hitter of the 20th century--that honor goes to Babe Ruth.
e.g. Williams' WAR = 121
Ruth's WAR = 182
To be fair to Williams, he missed I believe three full seasons due to World War Two and one due to Korea so his WAR would have likely approached 150. And Ruth was a fine pitcher and some of his WAR came from that. I would guess that Ruth might have had a WAR over 200 if he had continued pitching.
To be fair to Ruth, he missed most of 1925 due to an illness. IF he had played full time OF/P, from 1915-1918, he would've had closer to 800 career HRs, over 2400 RBI's etc. His WAR would've been well over 250.
Most of Ruth's WAR is because he's the greatest hitter to have played in MLB, period. If he had stayed a P, he'd have been remembered only by hardcore classic era MLB fans. An excellent to perhaps great pitcher, who maybe would've made it into the HOF by the early 50's. But his hitting made him transcend the sport itself, something Williams never did.
I understand the shoulda coulda woulda argument of WW2/Korea, but neither do things don't exist in a vacuum. And by the same token have to include Ruth's 5 yrs of non full time hitting. By doing that, Ruth still comes out the greatest hitter of all time in MLB.
And we can see just how valuable Ruth was to NY, by the season he missed while in his prime--Yankees finished below .500 in next to last place. Ruth comes back the following season healthy and NY wins the AL Pennant with essentially the same lineup that they had the previous year. That fact alone is directly traced to Babe Ruth. He directly helped increase NY's standings. When Williams returned from WW2, BOS won the AL Pennant, but I would question how much was that due to him directly as opposed to the rest of the team? Also, when Williams returned from Korea, BOS finished the rest of the decade below or around 500--basiclly they were mediocre for most of the 50's. So as far as contributing to BOS's standings, Ted didn't do much for them.
Or as HOF GM Branch Rickey mentioned on why he traded away HOF Slugger Ralph Kiner "We can finish in last place without you." Whereas NY needed Ruth to remain competitive throughout the 20's and into the early 30's. By just about every single metric, Babe Ruth is greater, and more instantly recalled (due in no small part to Ohtani's comparisons to him). I daresay, that in 2025, people under 50 haven't much of a clue as to who Ted Williams was (unless they're from BOS area). Yet they still have heard of Babe Ruth.
Babe Ruth was probably the greatest player in history. Son of Baltimore. As bad as Baltimore has declined, it can claim Edgar Allen Poe, HL Mencken, Babe Ruth, David Byrne and Nancy Pelosi.
Nixay on Pelosi-ay.
I've never seen anybody else arguing this, but it seems like Ruth's fastball was fading after age 22, so taking up batting might have saved him from being a Smokey Joe Wood flash-in-the-pan. Wood went 34-5 in 1912, then hurt his arm, and later came back to the majors as a pretty good outfielder. I wouldn't be surprised if Ruth looked at this teammate and decided to get ahead of the process rather than react to it like Wood had had to.
Possible. Except we have to take into account that by 1916, Ruth's batting (admittedly for a pitcher) was starting to get some eyes raised. Also, we have to read the contemporary accounts to gauge what Ruth's primary pitches were. Not every pitcher then was like Walter Johnson, whose main pitch was the fastball. In fact often times in that era pitchers didn't usually throw exceptionally hard since it was the Dead Ball Era and HR's as a whole were low across the board.
That's the irony about Joe Wood. His prime pitching years were during the Dead Ball Era (like Babe Ruth as well), and HRs weren't yet a thing. In that point, there really wasn't a main reason to rely primarily on the fastball pitch during the Dead Ball Era, when a curve, screwball and spitball were just as well to get batters out.
Also keep in mind that MLB during the Dead Ball Era used very few clean baseballs in a single 9 inning game. In the Glory of their Times, players recall using about 3 or 5 balls total for the entire game (nowadays a single AB will use more than that total). If a ball was hit foul into the stands, the groundskeepers would often attempt to get the ball away from the fans so the players could continue to use the same ball. After a few innings of being scuffed, spit on by tobacco juices, knicked and cut up, that same ball could be very, very dark indeed to see coming out of the pitcher's hand. Add to that that the games sometimes started by 4 and the late afternoon shadows depending on where the ballpark was located--pitchers basically had it their own way during the Dead Ball Era, which is why Cobb Speaker, Jackson Wagner Lajoie etc who consistently hit well over .300 were greatly admired, because there were other things going vs them as the P's had most of the advantages.
Baseball is one helluva industry. From baseball to grass-cutting to line chalk to bats. And the cold beer and bobbleheads.
I almost forgot and it's in the Glory of their Times. Wood's fastball did NOT fade because of overthrowing. He suffered a major injury, that wasn't related to pitching at all.
Per wiki:
The following year, (1913) Wood slipped on wet grass while fielding a bunt in a game against the Detroit Tigers. He fell and broke his thumb, and pitched in pain for the following three seasons. Although he maintained a winning record and a low ERA, his appearances were limited, as he could no longer recover quickly from pitching a game. Wood sat out the 1916 season and most of the 1917 season, and for all intents and purposes ended his pitching career.
Had Wood not slipped and fell on wet grass, perhaps he'd be in the HOF following an illustrious pitching career.
"Can I throw faster than Smoky Joe Wood? Listen my friend, there's no one alive that can throw faster than Smoky Joe Wood"--Walter Johnson
But Walter may have been his usual self-effacing self. Still it shows a certain class in the man.
I dont understand your last point, "except when it came to racial issues". Not as much on google about it and it could be interpreted either way. BOS was the last MLB team to integrate, with Pumpsie Green joining BOS in 1959, which was Williams' next to last season.
Also of note as to how well beloved Williams was in BOS...
"Ted Williams' final career home run, hit on September 28, 1960, was not before a packed stadium. The game, which was his last at Fenway Park, had an attendance of just over 10,000 fans, described as a "nearly empty house"
Very, very telling, especially since it was well known that he was playing in his final season and he had been a mainstay in BOS since '39. You'd think that Fenway would've packed to view his final home stretch in BOS especially. And yet it wasn't.
Compare Williams final game in BOS to NY's Derek Jeter's.
Derek Jeter's final games in Boston were packed. Specifically, his very last game at Fenway Park on September 28, 2014, had an attendance of 36,879, which was a sellout.
Fans and media noted the large crowds and special atmosphere surrounding Jeter's final appearances, especially in Boston. The Red Sox even held a pregame ceremony to honor him, featuring Boston sports legends.
While it was the end of the season for both teams, the presence of Jeter for his final games created a buzz at the ballpark, with high demand for tickets and higher-than-usual prices. It's worth noting that the final six innings of the game, after Jeter left, were less impactful in terms of attendance as many fans who primarily came to see him left the ballpark.
BOS HONORED, HONORED a member of the HATED YANKEES! That's more than they did in 1960 for Williams final game. They WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO HONOR A YANKEE, and Fenway was PACKED a SELLOUT CROWD to see hiim play for the final time.
Again, very very telling.
Roger Maris hit number 61 in 1961 before 20,000 fans. He went to Catholic Mass afterwards with his wife and ate a supper out. America is so much wealthier now than it was in 1960. Paying for professional sports was a luxury in 1960 but not so much today.
Respectfully, I have to disagree in part. Yes it was a luxury back then. But for most of the 20th century MLBers were paid paltry peanuts compared to what they could've been making. And since free agency began in the late '70's, the pendulum has swung to the other side. If the players are overpaid in 2025, what about the owners? They're not going to the poorhouse any time soon either, and many of the owners are billionaires, so they're doing just fine.
The Pittsburgh Pirates need a billionaire owner.
After his bad 1925 season, Babe Ruth hired a personal trainer and worked out a lot each winter after that, extending his career far longer than was expected.
Ruth was one of the few players who didn't have an off-season job, so he could train during the off-season like a modern player.
Yes, that's true. But the main point remains. After their dreadful 1925 seventh place finish, with a healthy Ruth back in the lineup, the 1926 Yankees won the AL Pennant. I'm actually coming around to the Sabermetrics WAR stat, and this example would tend to prove it. WITH Ruth healthy, NY won often. WiTHOUT Ruth healthy (and we have a full season to demonstrate this), NY didn't win. Certainly WAR would apply in this situation, as Ruth perhaps gave the Yankees an additional 10 or 15 wins for the '26 season.
For the Yankees in 1927, considered one of the greatest single season teams, Ruth had one of his best statistical seasons as well.
"If anything, this should demonstrate that of the 22 W's NY gained with Ruth back in the lineup*, that he was directly responsible for at least 15, if not say 16-18 of those additional wins."
Interestingly, Baseball Reference gives Ruth 11.4 WAR for 1926, Gehrig 7 WAR and Lazzeri 2.9 accounting for almost precisely 22 wins.
2.9 WAR = one of the reasons why it took Lazzeri until 1991 to be inducted into the HOF. He was very good, but not great. '26 was Gehrig's first full season. It was okay, but nothing special.
11.4 has to be set within the full context of Ruth's career up to that point. Remember, he had been out for most of 25 and NY finished 7th. He comes back healthy in 26 and they win the AL Pennant. And yes, the bulk of the credit goes to Ruth, since it was essentially the same lineup/starting pitchers from 25. Only thing that changed was that they got their superstar back.
Before there was the whole straw that stirred the drink, Babe Ruth was the drink, the straw, the ice cubes, etc. If Ruth didn't come back healthy in 26, NY doesn't win the Pennant. Perhaps 1927 isn't so magical a season for them without him in the lineup.
Fascinating. A question. Unless a Latino is very good, is he worth having on your team if there is an American with similar ability? Is a mediocre Latino worth all the language and cultural problems? I know that the Nationals have an interpreter for their Latinos. Juan Soto is so good he is worth dealing with the language barrier. Kelbert Ruiz is not.
How do Americans and Latinos converse on the playing diamond?
WAR for pitchers is kind of a funky calculation, looking at runs allowed and innings pitched. With the more recent trend of openers and finishers (as well as saving multi-million dollar contracts from throwing out their arms), WAR will need adjustment.
Given that the "average" pitcher has a win-loss record of .500 (by definition) you might think that WAR would be the pitchers wins over breakeven. Record of 20-10 = WAR of 10. But then you don't get the first and second decimal place that sabermetric gurus covet. Also need a separate calculation for relievers (which should probably be primarily saves).
It’s interesting that baseball had a color line, having originated and developed in the heart of abolitionism.
Contrary to what the history books might have you believe, Northerners of the early 1900s were also pretty racist.
Also true of the early 21st century.
"White flight" was originally a Yankee disposition.
The most "diverse" place I ever lived was in southeast Atlanta, near the infamous Mariel Cuban Riot federal pen and also a quick stroll to the then-Braves Stadium. 30% white, mostly old-timers (no white flight there), a few gay gentrifiers. 30% black. 30% Mexican, almost all illegal. 10% Czech, Bosnian and others: illegal immigrants (Czech, Polish, and Ukranian), and refugees (Bosnian). When Katrina gangsters were relocated by the feds to public and refugee housing in the area, the Bosnians quickly drove them out. We didn't interact with the Bosnians.
Lots of crack whores, neighborhood goat roasts, tiny European smokehouses, chihuahuas, and BBQ. And a Vietnamese temple with what we call swastikas on the gates, which do-gooders repeatedly went after, despite being told that it is an ancient Asian symbol. Plus the retired legendary Swat Team Captain who personally caught Wayne Williams.
Poorer people of all races lived for a long time in far, far closer proximity in the South. It's not like that anymore. Thank meddling university graduates. I liked my neighbors, but I didn't like having illegals take jobs; I didn't like having to support so many of them, and I hated paying for the Atlanta K-12 schools that literally taught them to hate me.
In reading this book...
https://www.amazon.com/Glory-Their-Times-Baseball-Played/dp/0688112730
...I learned that in its earliest days baseball was mostly a working class game. Amazing that back then many little towns across America with enough guys to field a decent team would be playing another little town's team during the weekends. Don't that sound like fun? "The Glory Of Their Times" is a great book about baseball.
Modern sports emerged out of the transportation revolution of the 19th Century in the Anglosphere. Towns had been playing ball sports forever, but each town usually had its own rules since playing a town 20 miles away was too far to bother with. Then the train came along and playing towns hundreds of miles away became reasonable. But if New York and Boston were going to play baseball, they needed to agree on whether the field would be a diamond or a square, etc.
The America of 1925 must have had four times as many minor league teams as today.
Makes me think of the (probably held here before) discussion of Kenyan and Ethiopian marathon runners. I remember the early debates about what made them so good: training conditions, especially at elevations; escaping poverty; inherited physical differences. The ones I had the pleasure to watch while racing (briefly, as they outpaced us) had miniscule torsos, slightly longer limbs, and no body fat. This was before modern sports medicine, measurement, and training, so hypotheses leaned heavily on the romantic/sociological "escaping poverty" theme. But it seemed to me that many successful far-northern European-origin female runners shared those traits, including having narrow hips.
But some females with wider hips and legs now do well at ultramarathoning.
I wonder if genetic testing would reveal advantages from origin countries of players lumped together as "American." Look at Dwight Gooden (an obsession of mine, but only because I met him a few times, am a generational Mets fan, and he is pretty odd-looking). Tiny torso, long arms and legs, larger than African runners likely due to nurture and genetic mixing, but by my sights, he used his body the way those first-generation African marathoners ran, with discipline but also an utter focus on limb release.
Only my non-scientific observation. But I lived for running and made good spare money in grad school taking part in several experiments related to the then-new computerized sports training sciences and some vitamin/suppliment ones, being at the school muddled in with the CDC. A genetic and national breakdown of baseball players would be interesting.
I would guess that modern women Marathoners have better times than males in 1900.
You'd be right. In fact, the current women's world record (2:09) is better than the 1965 men's world record.
(One caveat: the current women's record was helped by male pacesetters running the whole way, so it's not a perfect comparison. The women's-only world record, with only female pacers, is 2:15, which would've been better than the men's record in the 1950s.)
I could see a woman running a 4 minute mile with male pacesetters and another breakthrough in shoe technology like the one about 7 years ago. I think the women's mile record is now about 4:07, which is really fast.
Well, Thursday is the day. Faith Kipyegon (the WR holder) will be going for sub-4 in Paris. I personally think she has no chance unless there's something really crazy going on with the shoes. The male pacers will probably only get her an extra two seconds. When Nike first tried to have Eliud Kipchoge run a sub-2 marathon, they came up short (he ran 2:00:25). I'm expecting something similar here. I think she runs about 4:03.
Kipyegon is a phenomenon. After giving birth by C-section, I expected her to stop breaking records, but she kept improving. There's something stuntish, though, about these efforts to break time using specially designed shoes and clothes, and truck or human pacers.
My dad ran marathons in the early 80s. Your body becomes a machine when you train for running all that distance.
There are a couple of main Wins Above Replacement methodologies. The Baseball Reference one has Dwight Gooden's 1985 season when he went 24-4 1.53 ERA as the best single season since Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson, when you count not just his pitching but also his batting and base-running. I saw Gooden play that year at Wrigley Field and he knocked a double over the outfielder's head. He was so fast that he looked like he could have a triple easily but the third base coach held him up at second. The Cubs fans went nuts in appreciation of this amazing 20 year old talent.
He was quite a player. His cocaine usage messed him up.
Yeah, a shame. When I saw him in Tampa in 2012, he looked good and was clean, but I don't think things stayed that way. You forget how young he was in '85, '86.
Which region of America produces the best or most players, I guess by place of birth?
I would guess California, Florida and Texas are the top three American states.
Kepler now plays for the Philadelphia Phillies.
An interesting background for a ballplayer. Compared to Max Kepler being the child of ballet dancers in Berlin, Pete Crow-Armstrong is practically an Alou.
In Canada, baseball is played and watched but hockey is bigger. Outdoor rinks were common when I was a child (except for the Pacific coast where it’s not cold enough).
Hall of Famer Larry Walker was a hockey goalie in Canada until he washed out at 19, then concentrated on baseball.
"in recent decades as the NFL and NBA have won the hearts of African-Americans, the few American black ballplayers tend to get funneled toward centerfield or shortstop (for fast blacks) or first base (for slow, strong blacks)"
I recently saw an interview with Junior Griffey who gave a sort of time preference answer to why Black college athletes prefer Football and Basketball. He claimed that the difference was time spent in the minor leagues which is de rigueur in MLB but non-existent in NBA/NFL
I knew a major league pitcher. He hated the minors after going to Stanford. Lots of long bus trips and the coaching and medical care wasn't good.
Indeed so but if you are confident of making the big show, mlb players have guaranteed contracts, better pay, longer careers, less chance of injury,(incidence of concussion/cte is far, far lower than nfl). For that cohort it's basically a time preference issue.
One of my high school friends went to Virginia Tech on scholarship but he was in the engineering program. He played four years and was drafted by the Twins. He played in the Appalachian League with Kirby Puckett. My friend hit .300 and Puckett hit .350. My friend decided to quit baseball after one year and get his engineering degree. Puckett made the Hall of Fame.