Slugger’s Statistics Becoming Ruthian

Mark David McGwire as Babe Ruth II? Well, you have to crunch the numbers a little bit but a case could be made.

Mark has sent 50 baseballs into orbit this year. Only 12 other players in the long history of the grand old game have done that. Babe Ruth did it four times, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, twice.

But the stat on Mark McGwire you have to pay attention to is the fact he got his 50 home runs this year in only 390 official times at bat. Mathematics was never my long suit, but I make that a home run every 7.8 times at bat. That stat is Ruthian.

In 1927, when he hit 60, Babe Ruth went to bat officially 540 times. Home run every nine times at bat, right? In 1962 when Roger Maris unaccountably hit 61, he struck a homer every 10 times at bat.

The stats take into account only official at-bats. A bit misleading. It discounts bases on balls. The notion is, since they are unofficial and don’t count on your batting average, they shouldn’t count on your homer average, either, since you had no chance to hit a home run off, say, Ball 4.

Well, not necessarily. The truth is, many a home run has been hit off Ball 4--or Ball 1, 2 or 3. Lots of home runs have been hit on balls outside the strike zone.

The presumption is, if Ruth had waited for strikes to hit, his home run totals would be halved. Or, anyway, lowered. When he hit 60, you have to believe, based on old umpires’ recollections, that he hit a considerable number of them off high-outside or low-inside pitches.

Ted Williams might have insisted on a strike to hit, but Ruth almost never got one. He led the world in walks--2,056 of them lifetime. He regularly led the game in bases on balls--11 times by actual count. He walked as many as 170 times a season.

With Ruth, a walk was a victory for the pitcher. You will note in the record books, Ruth was not among the all-time leaders in intentional walks. This is preposterous. It is unthinkable pitchers did not try to walk him almost every other time at bat. You have to assume he wouldn’t let them. You can only conclude that many a pitch the pitcher thought was outside the strike zone really was when Ruth got through with it. It was in the center-field seats.

You have to be careful comparing a hitter to Ruth for another reason: When Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920, that was more home runs than any other team in the league hit. There were 369 home runs hit in the American League that year. Washington hit only 22, for instance. Ruth hit 54, his Yankee teammates and the rest of the league 315.

That meant only one thing: The ball was not jacked up in those years. It was still a comparative beanbag. Knocking it out of the lot still requires the basic hand-eye coordination and strength, but in those days you got no help from the ball. It took massive strength to propel it out of the park.

In 1921, Ruth hit 59 home runs. The seven other teams in the league got 402.

Know how many home runs the American League had hit this Year of Our Lord as of Wednesday last? 2,578 is all.

So, it’s a tricky business, comparing a hitter today to Ruth’s day--although the practice of juicing up the baseball apparently originated with him and even Ruth had a missile to swing at in his later years.

But the Babe--even with his plethora of walks--had his 500-plus and 400-plus at-bat seasons. Mark McGwire went to bat only 84 times in 1993, only 135 times in 1994 and only 317 times last year. McGwire is troubled by bad feet. Ruth missed games but not parts of seasons and mostly from suspensions for high living, not physical ailments.

McGwire looks the part. Beneath all that curly red hair, those alert blue eyes is the body of the born hitter. The powerful arms, the sloping shoulders. Sloping shoulders seem made for hitting something hard. Joe Louis had sloping shoulders. So did the Babe. He had a sloping everything.

You have to be around 6 feet 5, 250 pounds to keep hitting a five-ounce baseball into orbit with a 40-inch, 35-ounce bat as October rolls around. McGwire qualifies--when his feet let him.

He misses at-bats for another Ruthian similarity too: He has walked 108 times this year, fourth-most often in the league. He led the league in walks in 1990.

I went down to the locker room at Anaheim the other night to see how the Ruth-chasing was coming along.

“Are you proudest of the 50 homers or the .322 batting average?” I ask him. Mark has never hit .300 over a full major league season.

“I’ll take the 50,” he says. “It’s a first for me. I had 49 and 42, never 50.”

Did he ever feel he had Babe Ruth in his sights as the season wore on? McGwire shakes his head.

“I can say I never thought about that. I just tried to get a hit. You never try to hit a home run. If you do, you won’t.”

What’s his secret? Eyesight? See the craters on the moon on a clear night, can he? Got 20/15 vision? McGwire smiles.

“My vision without contact lenses is about 20/500.”

Without contacts, he says, he not only couldn’t see the ball, he couldn’t even make out the pitcher. With contacts, he says, he does have 20/15.

Will he hit 60?

“Oh, someone could,” he begins. “Oh, you mean this year? Naw. Got what? 10 games left? But some year? It’s possible.”

In a sense, he’s fortunate. The man who goes into mid-September with 55 or more home runs would soon seem to be leading a parade. An army of photographers, TV cameramen, reporters, talk-show recruiters, sponsors, advertisers, fans and agents would be marching behind his every move. Roger Maris’ hair fell out under the onslaught.

Still, if a man can hit a home run every 7.8 trips to the plate, he can expect to be noticed. If he ever got to bat 600 times--Pete Rose had more than 600 at-bats 17 times, Maris had 590 his year and Willie Wilson had 705 one year--that would work out to 75 home runs for the year.

Even in a year when there were 2,500 others, that would get attention. That would work out to “Babe Ruth? Who was he?”