Old-Timer Strikes Back at Computer

In 1930, something like 57 National League batters batted over .300. One of them batted .401.

Last year, only four National League batters hit over .300. The league champion hit .313.

In 1930, every member of the champion St. Louis Cardinals starting lineup batted over .300. Last year, most teams didn’t have any batters over .300.

The late Fresco Thompson used to recall ruefully the year he hit .324 for the Philadelphia Phillies--and batted eighth.

In 1930, the year Bill Terry batted .401, the second-place hitter, Babe Herman, batted .393. The third-place hitter, Chuck Klein, batted .386, fourth was Lefty O’Doul at .383 and fifth was Fred Lindstrom at .379. Terry got 254 hits, Klein, 250 and Herman, 241.

The most hits in the National League last year was Andre Galarraga’s 184.

Hack Wilson drove in 190 runs for the Chicago Cubs in 1930. The league leader last year was Will Clark of San Francisco with 109.

What happened? Were there giants in those days, runts in this?

Baseball scholars have been uneasy with these figures, this discrepancy, for years. It is not possible for them to conclude that the batters of a half-century ago were that much better than those of today. There must be an illogical explanation.

Their “explanation” makes Bill Starr see red.

Bill Starr is not a nostalgia buff. Bill Starr is not one of those Ty-Cobb-was-better-than-Pete-Rose guys. Bill Starr was an owner of the San Diego Padres in the ‘40s and ‘50s before the major leagues came to California. He was a player in the ‘30s, briefly a catcher for the old Washington Senators (now the Minnesota Twins).

Starr’s outrage is not directed at those who would say that today’s players are as good as yesterday’s. He concedes that. What brings him off the wall is the notion promoted by those who would hold that yesterday’s players were no good--and that they can prove it with computers.

In other words, the pitchers couldn’t get them out. But the computers blow them away. Starr has written a book titled “Clearing The Bases--Baseball Then And Now,” and he points to the following paragraph taken from another book (“The Hidden Game Of Baseball”) as an example of rewriting history by floppy disk. “If Ty Cobb’s career had taken place . . . in 1976,” those authors have written, “his lifetime B.A. (which was actually .367) would have been only .289. Rogers Hornsby (lifetime .358) and Joe DiMaggio (lifetime .325) would have achieved identical .280 marks. Bill Terry, Lou Gehrig and Tris Speaker would be average to mediocre hitters at .271, .269 and .265, respectively. The Babe’s (Ruth’s) .262 (Babe actually hit .342) would be a disappointment, though better than Al Simmons’ .260 (Al hit .334 with the bat but not the bytes) or Honus Wagner’s .251 (Honus had better luck in person, too, .329).”

While conceding that 1930 was a bumper year for base hits (the National League batted .303 for that year while last year’s average was .248), Starr blames the decline in hitting on a number of observable (not computerized) phenomenas, most notably the strikeout. It’s become endemic in the big leagues. Big leaguers struck out 25,098 times in 1987, compared to a two-league average of only 7,517 in the ‘20s and ‘30s.

“The modern ballplayer seems to have no knowledge of the strike zone,” Starr laments. “Babe Ruth had a big reputation as a striker-outer, but he struck out only 79 times a year on the average. DiMaggio struck out only 27, Ted Williams only 46. Gehrig struck out only 49, even homer sluggers such as Mel Ott struck out only 48 a year.

Reggie Jackson averaged 129 a year and put the strikeout record 600 above everyone else. He struck out 171 times one year. Wilver Stargell struck out 122 times a year. Mickey Mantle struck out an average of 105 times a year, and Mike Schmidt strikes out 117. Babe Ruth isn’t even in the top 25 in lifetime strikeouts anymore.

Starr disputes the notion a strikeout is “a nice clean out.” It doesn’t result in a double play or worse, it’s not as humiliating as a popup. But, says Starr, “It kills a rally. It raises the morale of the pitcher. Nothing is more counter-productive to the winning of a game.”

Starr points out that “in 1987, there were 41 players who struck out more than 100 times. By comparison, in the entire 20 years from 1920 through 1939, 100 or more strikeouts occurred only 10 times.” He points out that Cobb only struck out 24 times the year he hit .401 and that George Sisler struck out only 14 times the year he hit .420.

Babe Ruth never struck out 100 times. Reggie Jackson had 100 or more strikeouts 18 times in his career. “That’s why he only batted .263,” Starr explains. Mantle fanned more than 100 times eight seasons and more than 90 in four others.

Starr takes issue with the notion a lively ball produced the orgy of base hits in 1930. Starr argues that the goal of baseball was never to “juice up” a baseball, only to make it more uniform. He says, on the contrary, that after 1930, the National League changed the cork center of the ball and raised the seams, which resulted in a dramatic drop in that league’s offense (Hack Wilson went from 56 homers to 13 and from 190 RBIs to 61 but bathtub gin may have had as much to do with it as baseballs). And it turned the National League into a curveball league that really wasn’t competitive with the power-hitting American League for decades.

Starr thinks, in addition to not knowing the strike zone, players are not seasoned in the minor leagues the way they used to be--and should be.

Ultimately, Bill Starr takes on the computer rewriters of history on a You-had-to-be-there basis. He points out, for example, that Pythagorean principles don’t apply to psychological factors.

“Jackie Robinson was a comparable example. His batting statistics were not overwhelming, and he hardly rated among the most outstanding defensive players in baseball history. But he, like Cobb, was an intimidator on the basepaths. He put pressure on the opposition, he compelled defensive changes in their play. Infielders were made to move closer to their bags, thus producing larger holes in the infield. To prevent Robinson from stealing, pitchers were compelled to alter their natural deliveries and selection of pitches. All of this favored the hitters on his club.” Computers cannot pick this up, he argues.

Bill proves his point convincingly. But, you don’t really need a book when someone comes up to you with a whole bunch of printouts to tell you Babe Ruth would only hit .262 and Honus Wagner, .251. All you really have to do is say, “Gid oudda here!”