When serious baseball analysts debate the greatest hitter in history, it always comes down to Ruth, Williams and Bonds-with-an-asterisk. Gehrig is relegated to the near misses.
I think there is a good case to make that Lou Gehrig was a greater hitter than Ted Williams, or at least just as good, because Williams’ numbers were wildly inflated by Fenway Park.
Here are their lifetime records on the road.
Gehrig .351 .455 .645 1.100
Williams .328 .466 .615 1.081
There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.
If you take both Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park out of the calculation, Gehrig batted .351 in all other parks, while Williams batted .330, but their OPS’s are nearly identical.
Williams hit slightly better in three of their four common road parks. (They did not play at the same time, so some parks changed.) But Gehrig made up for that at Comiskey, where he terrorized the White Sox with a .380 average and an 1.164 OPS, while Williams struggled there with a .296 mark and a .954 OPS.
About 20 years ago, I did a stat survey on the greatest hitter ever thing, starting with a dozen names, and it came out Ruth by a small margin over Williams by a smaller margin over Gehrig well ahead of Hornsby. I was surprised Gehrig was that high. RBI’s get downplayed nowadays, but it’s still amazing how many he got batting behind Ruth, seeing that Ruth had a pronounced tendency to clear out bases himself.
K’s & homers go up in tandem. Occasionally Babe left runners on.
for pure consistency it would be hard to beat Hornsby lifetime Home .359, Away .358
Purer. Musial 1815 home, 1815 away.
An easy number for a history buff to remember since 1815 saw the dustup in Belgium where “Little General Napoleon of France
Tried to conquer the world
But lost his pants” (the other Stonewall Jackson). I always break out a good bottle in honor of the Peer on June 18th.
Bro, fuck ALS! Took this legend, and many other people away from us at far too young an age.
Amen, Brother
Whatever the cause, the age, the result, whatever it is (death?), it’s always, always too soon. It is what is. We’ll never know what Gehrig might’ve done. He didn’t do it. What shall we do? Compare what Gehrig didn’t accomplish to what all the poor schmucks who were never born might have?
You last line makes a good point, MyKey. I wonder if there is any kind of organization that seeks to help people who have had the misfortune of never being born? Of course, some people would blame them for their failure to achieve existence, but I find that lacking in empathy.
I wonder how Josh Gibson would have compared if he’d made it to MLB? We’ll never know because of those racist, inbred, sloped-foreheaded, mouth-breathing mongoloids.
I don’t know the answer, but Gibson’s known stats are incredible.
.372 .458 .718 1.176
Ruth:
.342 .474 .690 1.164
Williams
.344 .482 .634 1.116
Hornsby is a tougher comparison because he spent several years in the dead-ball era. If you look at his stats from 1920 on, they look like this:
.374 .453 .621 1.074
Babe Ruth’s stats from 1920 on:
.347 .483 .708 1.191
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By the way, Gibson led his league in HR every year he played!
Gibson belongs in the discussion as the greatest hitter in history, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is the catcher on the all-time team.
Well said, sir!
I can only imagine the horror should a professional baseball team conduct Spring Training out in the middle of a random field somewhere these days. The athletes would bitch without their hyper amenity filled climate controlled clubhouse and the owners would bitch that every solitary cent isn’t milked for everything possible out of TV, streaming, radio, attendance, concessions, and FanDuel or Google Cloud sponsorships and advertising.
Don’t worry, in about three months there will be yet another lockout where the super rich argue with the infinite rich trying to garner sympathy from the general public.
I love the old greats of baseball. A leftover from my childhood worship. Not to be taken for granted. As a younger man, I loved the sky, fireworks, sunsets, landscapes, architecture. Now I love history, physics, economics. I still enjoy ice cream. But those former things… BTDT.
Maybe Michael Jordan was the GOAT. How about Stephen Curry? I’m not sure. Not sure I even care. In physics, there’s no meaning to energy or entropy in the absolute. It’s only deltas that turn into power, & changes.
What’s the return in comparisons of greatness? If there’s anything there, stats are the right way to start. Then adjustments like dead balls. But, in the end we will come to, what? Josh Hoozeewhatziz was better than “the greatest famous guy?” I’m not a betting person, so IDGAF about it. The stats are numbers, the comparisons bullshit. I don’t get the game, I don’t love the rules, & I don’t derive the enjoyment of all that that I did as a kid.
I’m old. I’m a couple years shy of the next round number. It does change my stats. What do I really know about my future, therefore? How shall I think about that? Why should I think about that? Is it to converse about it? Why is that more interesting than literally anything else?
P.S. I love baseball. I love that a sac fly in the 10th can end a game, love a bunt RBI, a stolen base, a triple. It’s not that I don’t need the game itself in some way. It’s that I don’t need to turn my opinions into another game.
I like that “batting 300” = “struggling.”
What would happen to Ruth/Gehrig stats if you reversed them in the batting order? Think about it.
Nowadays they’d bat 1-2.
That’s why 1-2 spots are called “cleanup.”
As a Braves fan, I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Aaron
There is an argument to make Henry the RF on the all-time team, by moving Ruth to DH. An all-time outfield of Williams-Mays-Aaron, with Ruth at DH, leaves one wondering what to do with Barry Bonds and Oscar Charleston. I’m OK with that selection because Barry … well, you know … and Oscar Charleston’s numbers are so hard to evaluate.
But alternates are also plausible.The outfield of Bonds-Mays-Ruth, with Teddy Ballgame at DH is about equally strong. For those who can’t stomach Bonds’ name among the immortals, the Charleston-Mays -Ruth combo, with Williams at DH, simply leaves the debate “Aaron or Charleston?” That issue hinges on what you think of Negro League data. Frankly, I don’t know, I think it’s a coin flip, but I prefer Aaron because his data are more reliable.
Another question for Braves’ fans … How good would Eddie Mathews have been if he loved baseball more than drinking and punching? His 1953 season is perhaps the best in history for a 21-year-old player, despite the fact that he played in the ever-dead County Stadium. (17 homers in Milwaukee, 30 on the road.)