Posted By:
BryanMy problem with Ruth is the pedestal he is put upon. Half of his fame is due to dumb luck. He was a strong man with a powerful swing to take advantage of the new baseball in the largest city in the greatest country which also happened to be the center of the media world and baseball world from the 1920s to the late 1950s.
Nevermind the FACT that he was a womanizing drunk. The media covered that up for him and called him a "large personality." If Ruth wasn't such a friendly guy to everyone I think a very different picture would have been painted of Ruth. Besides covering up his off field behavior they sometimes elavated his play to levels it probobly didn't deserve. Take the called shot incident. Everyone involved said the only thing he called was the fact that he had only two strikes. Ty Cobb was a villian in the media. Not saying what Cobb did was justified. I know there is a double standard and the the Ruth lovers are ignorant to that. If Cobb had Ruth's personality and Ruth had Cobb's personality there probobly wouldn't even be much discussion on Ruth.
As far as his pitching goes, he did have a good, short run at it. But it is kind of hard to be a bad pitcher on a great team. He pitched on the Red Sox's greatest team. Let's see him on the Washington Senators. Ruth was no Walter Johnson. Like I said Ruth has a similar pitching career to Smokey Joe Wood. He was a fireballer who had an incredible short career until an injury forced him to the outfield.
As far as his batting average is concerned it is absolutely impossible to compare Ruth's average to Speaker, Wagner, Anson, Lajoie, or Ted Williams. Ruth played in the most hitter friendly era ever. The NL average was .301 in the early 1930s. It isn't like he was playing in 1968. That argument holds no water what so ever. A better way would be to compare batting titles. Ruth has one in 1924. And yes I am hung up on his HRs since that is what he is famous for. Not like I am comparing the number of triple he hit.
I give Ruth his credit as being one of the baseball greats but he needs to take his place behind Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner in the list of baseball players. They were all around players. Ruth was a one trick pony.