Ruth Is Still the Gauge, By Any Measure

The home run is not the most exciting play in baseball. There’s no one sliding under the tag at home with the winning run, there’s no fielder chasing down a hit while the runners are circling the bases, there’s no waiting with bated breath for the ump to signal out or safe.

It’s the anticipation of the home run that causes the heart to beat and the lips to pray. Watching Mark McGwire step in with the bases loaded and his team three runs behind in the bottom of the ninth is cardiac-arrest stuff.

The home run wasn’t even a factor in the grand old game the first 50 years of its existence. A “home run” was usually a ball lost in the center-field weeds.

Before Babe Ruth, the most home runs hit in the American League in a season were 16 by one Socks Seybold in 1902.

But, the story of ’97 is, will the Babe Ruth-Roger Maris single-season records for homers be broken by one or two men?

As this is written, everyone is out of the loop but Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. McGwire needs eight homers and Griffey nine in the handful of remaining games (11 and 10, respectively) to tie Maris and one-up Ruth.

A tall order. Whom to bet on?

Well, McGwire, as was Ruth, is a very strong man. He can overpower any pitch. As could Ruth, he can get a home run off a handle hit.

Griffey, on the other hand, relies on pure timing. He has the most gorgeous swing this side of the young Sam Snead’s. But when he is in a groove, he is capable of surges of multiple home runs. The homers fly off the bat like popping corn out of a shallow dish. He gets them in bunches when his rhythm is right.

Nine home runs in a dozen or so games is not impossible, merely difficult. Ruth hit a then-record 17 home runs in September the year he hit 60 (1927). He hit seven in the last 12 games.

We will be clouded with asterisks again if McGwire breaks or ties Maris’ record. The figure filberts will be handed a headache. McGwire will be the first to set a record in two leagues. He hit 34 home runs with Oakland and the rest will be with St. Louis. They pray the games will come out even. St. Louis has played 150 to date, Oakland 151. He is the major league champion but is he either league’s champion?

Actually, either McGwire or Griffey can create a milestone just by hitting 59. Only Ruth and Maris have hit that many.

But if McGwire hits 59, does he then receipt for the National League record? (Hack Wilson hit 56 in 1930.) Or does he get credit for only 25 off National League pitching?

No matter what McGwire and Griffey do, will they outshine Ruth? Probably not. Henry Aaron outhomered the Babe in his career, but no one says of a public figure “He’s the Henry Aaron of (leave-blank occupation).” Aaron never even hit 50 homers in one season. But Roger Maris outhomered the Babe in a single season and isn’t even in the Hall of Fame.

Ruth’s feats are secure, his hold on the art of the home run inviolate.

In 1920 when he hit 54 home runs, that was more than any team had hit in the American League and a seventh of all the homers hit in the league that year. (Boston had only 22!) In 1927 when he hit 60, no team other than the Yankees had more than 56.

When Maris hit 61, there were 1,534 home runs hit in the league. He hit, something like one-twenty-fifth of them.

Of course, there were 10 teams in the league by 1961, not eight. Still, the art of the home run was brought in on the wings of the Babe’s 55-ounce bat.

He had that short porch of Yankee Stadium’s 298-foot right-field fence. Ruth hit only 28 of his record 60 homers there in 1927, 32 on the road.

It’s not that Ruth is unassailable. Variables are all over the place, ranging from the infusion of African American and Latin American players to the profusion of relief pitching. But baseball was No. 1 in those days. Basketball, football, golf, soccer did not siphon off gifted athletes. Pitching, particularly, was of a high order. Baseball is no longer the sport of preference with the young athlete of today.

And, finally, when Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, he batted .356. When he hit 59 home runs in 1921, he hit .378. He batted .393 in 1923.

When Maris hit 61 in 1961, he batted .269. The last time I looked, Mark McGwire was batting .248. Junior Griffey was at .305.

Nor did the pitchers give in to Ruth. They took the bat out of his hands every chance they could. He walked 170 times one season, more than anyone ever has, and he leads the world in career walks with 2,056. They even walked him when he was a pitcher.

There were 2,742 home runs hit in the American League last year. What’s one-seventh of that--390 or so? The home run has come into its own when nearly 10% of all hits are homers.

If McGwire or Griffey can break the record, give him a ticker-tape parade. Name a candy bar after him. But he shouldn’t get mad when somebody says, “Why, you’re a regular Babe Ruth!”

It’s a compliment. Even for them.