He’ll Hold Their Spot in Lineup

It is not ordinarily the custom in this space to challenge the published works of others. For one thing, I have enough trouble of my own. Better to live and let live in this dodge, I always say.

Having said it, I now rise to challenge an essay that found its way into our paper the other day. Written by an author named Guy Molyneux, with whose work I am unfamiliar, it undertakes to chastise those of us he accuses of clinging to a shortsighted admiration of the past.

He postulates that the players of yesteryear were not the larger-than-life icons we make them out to be, light years in ability ahead of the present crop of athletes. To the contrary, he says, they would have trouble making the team today. Who? Ty Cobb. Lou Gehrig. Shoeless Joe Jackson. That’s who.

“The old-timers,” Molyneux writes, “would find themselves playing guys who run faster, throw harder and probably hit better. The cold truth is: Today’s best would be a match for the old greats, and might be substantially better.”

Wait a minute, Guy! Who are we talking about here? Willie Mays? OK. Henry Aaron? OK. But Jose Canseco? Eddie Murray? Gidouddahere! You can have the 1993 Yankees. I’ll take the 1927 Yankees.

“America holds onto the mythology of past-player greatness with extraordinary passion,” Molyneux writes. “The most famous victim of this was Roger Maris, who had the misfortune, in 1961, of having one of baseball’s greatest seasons, beating Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. He was excoriated by fans and writers for his temerity.”

Hold on there, Guy! Excoriated by whom? I remember writing article after article ridiculing Commissioner Ford Frick for putting that damn asterisk over Maris’ record because it was set in a 162-game season vs. Ruth’s 154-game season. I don’t remember my fellow columnists taking a markedly different tack.

Let me tell you something: Journalists like to see records broken. Go to any press box. Any track meet. We thrive on that.

What you’re confusing, probably, is a position taken by some writers that Maris was not entirely deserving of being the one who broke the record. Mickey Mantle, maybe. Mays, certainly. Aaron, of course.

Aaron finished his career with 755 home runs. Mays ended up with 660, Mantle with 536. Roger Maris hit 275. Journeymen third basemen get more than that. One incandescent year does not make you a Babe Ruth. He hit 714 home runs after spending six years as a pitcher--a great one, by the way.

“The two most esteemed records remaining--esteemed because they support the mythology--are Gehrig’s consecutive-games-played streak of 2,130 and Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak,” continues Molyneux.

“Baltimore shortstop Cal Ripken is closing in on Gehrig. Yet, every time Ripken goes into a slump, commentators blame it on the streak and suggest he take a day off. Their ostensible concern is for the Orioles’ welfare, or Ripken’s. The truth is, they hate to see another icon fall. God help the player who makes a serious run at DiMaggio’s mark.”

There you go again! How do you know what the truth is? You read our thoughts, do you? We are a bunch of liars, hypocrites?

Look, I personally hope Cal Ripken Jr. breaks the record. That’ll be worth a dozen columns to me--and anyone else who writes baseball for a living. But the fact that he is batting .232, about 50 points below his lifetime average and nearly 100 below what he batted two years ago, might look to some chronicler as if the pressure of the record chase were beginning to tell on him.

Let’s put it this way: It’s a legitimate subject for debate--and to bring it up does not mean the writer has some hidden Lou Gehrig generational agenda. He may just need a Tuesday column.

Molyneux talks about baseball as “a metaphor for our society,” whatever the hell that means, but, in his zeal to bring us up to date on how good the players are today he notes of Babe Ruth: “There’s almost no chance he would be the best player in the game today.”

Wow! Who’s he going to take a back seat to? Bobby Bonilla? John Olerud? Look! Do you know how far ahead of his contemporaries Ruth was? Well, in 1920, he hit 54 home runs. The entire Pittsburgh Pirate team had 16 that season. The Boston Red Sox had 22. Detroit had 30. So, Ruth had two more home runs than two teams in his league.

In 1921, he hit 59 home runs. The Red Sox had 17. The Cincinnati Reds had 20.

In 1924, he hit 46 home runs, more than any of five teams in the league. The Washington Senators had 22. And they won the pennant.

By 1927, the game had caught on a little bit, but when Ruth hit 60 home runs, they were six more than the team he and the Yankees played in the World Series, the Pirates.

He hit 12% of all the home runs in the league in 1921. Do you realize how many home runs a guy would have to hit today for 12% of his league’s total? Well, there were 1,776 home runs hit in the American League last year. And 12% of that? What are we looking at here--213 home runs? There’s almost no chance Ruth would be the best player in the game today? Gimme a break!

Look, the state of almost any art advances. There is no doubt players are faster today. They catch balls that would have fallen in safely in the old days. But not home runs. The gloves are obscenely big today and scientifically engineered to be able to hold and trap balls securely. The skin-tight mittens of Honus Wagner’s day would not.

But hitting a curveball has not substantially changed. To be sure, guys in any sport get more proficient. But to say that Carl Lewis is better than Jesse Owens is not necessarily conceded here.

The surfaces he runs on are better. The medications may be better, and so may the timing devices. But take away those things and I’ll take Owens if you’ll lay me a price. Michael Jordan is great, but I’d like to see him dunk over Bill Russell before I start the statue.

I would concede that in most sports, the athlete of today is superior. Good Lord, basketball was played by runts when I went to school. Football coaches drew plays in the dirt. But I wouldn’t put baseball down all that glibly. I have a real feeling Babe Ruth would make the team.