Since everyone knows that Bonds owes his amazing batting records to illegal steroids, nobody outside the Bonds family is rejoicing. This milestone has produced a flood of censorious comment to the effect that Ruth was “really” a greater hitter, no matter what the stats say.
Well, of course he was. Ruth changed baseball. Some still think he changed it for the worse, but he certainly changed it. Before him, it was a low-scoring game of singles, bunts, stolen bases, and spitballs. The home run was a rarity, not a major factor in a team’s fortunes. A hitter might lead the league with a dozen homers in a season. The game’s greatest pre-Ruth player was the odious Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers, a competitor of murderous ferocity who was hated by his own teammates and who, even today, has no memorial even in Detroit.
Then came Ruth. He began as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, where he set several durable records and outdueled the great Walter Johnson. In those early years he was a surprisingly lean kid, unlike the burly figure of his prime. As a pitcher he wasn’t expected to hit; but this had the paradoxical effect of allowing him to swing away, without worrying about striking out, and soon he was blasting balls out of the park. He was moved to the outfield, where he could play every day, and he set a new record with 29 homers in a single season.
This was sensational, because the simplest fan, who might not relish the sacrifice bunt, could thrill to the mammoth home run. And Ruth hit the ball farther than anyone had ever hit it before. One spectator died of a heart attack while watching Ruth tag one. Baseball’s popularity soared.
When Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees in 1920, he went from mere sensation to god. He doubled his own home run record; he simply had no competition as a slugger, and he’d dwarfed all his predecessors. It was as if Bonds were to hit 150 homers in a season. No, even that hardly suggests Ruth’s achievement. Such dominance of the game is almost beyond measure. Something previously inconceivable was happening.
By 1920, his first season with the Yankees, Ruth had already set a new lifetime home run record: 103. Nobody else had reached triple figures before. He was just 25 years old.
Suddenly baseball was a slugger’s game; other musclemen were swinging for the fences too. Cobb growled that the home run was ruining the sport, destroying the need for finesse. Hitting homers was no great feat, he said, and to prove his point he announced to the press that he would hit the long ball himself. In his next two games he hit five homers. Having made his case, Cobb went back to swatting singles and stealing bases, the old-fashioned way.
But there was no turning back. Baseball had discovered its ultimate weapon, and neither the game’s strategy nor its economy would ever be the same. In 1930 a reporter asked Ruth if it was proper that he should be getting a higher salary than the president of the United States. “I had a better year than he did,” Ruth replied. He’d had 46 homers; Herbert Hoover had had the Depression.
Ruth was making $80,000 that year; today, thanks to inflation and television, Bonds is making $18 million. Here again, calculation doesn’t take us very far. In today’s money, Ruth was making about a million bucks, less than any infielder makes now. And Bonds, struggling with seven homers and a .254 batting average, is having a better year than our current president.
Ruth had more than power; he had flamboyance, magnetism, humor, joie de vivre, a delight in his own magnificence, a love for his adoring fans, an unguarded emotional directness that made his fiery temper not only forgivable but lovable. He was everything you’d want your hero to be. The press loved him too; he was great copy, a pal to reporters, and legends sprang up about him. He hit home runs for dying boys, he pointed to the bleachers before he hit one in the World Series – who knew how much of it was true? If these were myths, they were myths only he could inspire. The awesome statistics were only a by-product of this jovial god.
In fact, Ruth’s amazing numbers changed the way we think of baseball. The game’s obsession with statistics as a way of measuring performance began with his records. To be sure, baseball had been keeping individual records for generations, but with Ruth these became far more elaborate and, for fans and analysts alike, much more important as a focus of attention -- an end in themselves. Only in recent times, thanks to the brilliant Bill James’ study of “sabermetrics,” have students of the game begun to abandon the simplistic idea that stats speak for themselves; a high batting average, for example, is no longer accepted as a reliable measure of a player’s real offensive value. (And a high fielding average may be so misleading as to be nearly meaningless.)
And Bonds? Surly, sulky, suspicious, foul-mouthed and self-pitying. Everything you don’t want your hero to be. He craves admiration, but does nothing to reward it; he has none of Ruth’s easy ability to connect with the fans. Despite his enormous success, he exudes resentment. Does he take steroids? It’s a reasonable question, and the answer is all too obvious, but he resents it. His detractors, he says, are racists. He’ll go to his grave blaming everyone but himself for the ill will he provokes. It just goes to show that the richest man on earth can always persuade himself that he’s a victim. Bonds has, to a superlative degree, what is now called “attitude”; Babe Ruth never heard of it.
So never mind the statistical squabble about who was the greater slugger. One of these men will be remembered happily for as long as baseball survives; and if it doesn’t survive, the other will be remembered for his prominent role in its demise.