Ruth is a Cheater too
Some may look at this title and say, “What the hell is this fat bastard talking about.” While Ruth did not knowingly cheat, his numbers are certainly as tainted if not more tainted than those of Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi or any other steroid monger. Why is it when discussing the different era’s in baseball we only want to turn a negative eye to modern statistics and say the ball is juiced, the mound is low, the parks are small, the players are ‘roided up, etc. Well guess what, from the 1890’s through 1947 one tenth of the population was specifically excluded from competing in Major League Baseball.
Yes I am talking about the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that all owners agreed upon in order to keep the game all white. For years it was whites only, and this is supposedly when some of the games greatest players flaunted their skills. Well I think there should be an asterisk next to any of their numbers and/or records. How do we know what these players would have done had they played against blacks? It is the same as guessing what the Steroid freaks would do if they had been clean, right? No you say, well you are wrong.
Again, with my lack of a life I took the time to look the numbers up. In the history of baseball there have been 100 players elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers of America. I do not include Veteran’s Committee electee’s, because it is hard to determine which ones should actually be Hall of Famers. Most of the time the Veterans Committee elected their buddies to the Hall, so they had people to hang out with on induction weekend. Of the 100 men elected to the Hall 37 of them played almost exclusively against white ball players (anyone whose career ended before 1950). That means 73 men have made the Hall of Fame while playing in an integrated game. Of those 73, 22 or 30% of the players are Black and/or Hispanic. That is an unbelievable number when you consider the fact that it took 10 years for every team in MLB to desegregate.
These numbers show me that the minority population has proved to be a viable part of the baseball world. Yet we seem to ordain players in the pre 1947 as the greatest of all time. Personally I find the segregation of a people way more offensive than some dope that shoots himself in the ass with steroids. If we are going to start devaluing statistics and qualifying which ones we want to determine as “real,” we need to go all the way. Make sure we examine all factors before we just indict baseball players of the modern era.
Things are different, the game changes, the most we can do is evaluate what we have in front of us. Do I believe that a player on steroids is any better than a player who is clean? Yes I most certainly do, but can I prove it? Absolutely not, there is no way to qualify it. Maybe Bonds would have hit 65 Homeruns that year not 73, but hey 65 is still damned impressive. Would Ty Cobb have batted .367 lifetime if he had to face Bob Gibson, Satchel Paige or Hilton Smith? I am not sure. Can you prove that he would have? Absolutely not, so how can we say he is the greatest hitter ever? We love to pick and choose which arguments we want to use when comparing the players from different era’s in baseball. I think there are advantages and disadvantages to every era so how can we qualify which eras we choose to hold in higher esteem? We can’t really, but we seem to forget about the exclusion of a race of people for 60 years in our national past time.
And I do know that many will say back to me, well Giambi and Bonds know what they are doing is wrong. They knew it may give them a competitive advantage, yet according to the rules of the game they did nothing wrong. I would say Cobb, Ruth, and Walter Johnson knew that the gentlemen’s agreement was wrong, and they had the power to do something about it. The certainly could have forced owners to hire minority ball players if they really wanted to. Heck, Babe Ruth may be the most influential man in the history of the game, if he wanted Satchel in the Majors, Satchel would have been in the Majors. To be an accomplice to something that is wrong is very close to being the one who commits the act, I believe my legal council will back me up on that (I watch Law & Order and American Justice so do not lie and tell me otherwise, Josh). So please let’s be realistic when we talk about how we should evaluate these stats, evaluate them for what they are, tremendous feats that loser like us could never achieve even with all the BALCO chemicals in the world.
Yes I am talking about the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that all owners agreed upon in order to keep the game all white. For years it was whites only, and this is supposedly when some of the games greatest players flaunted their skills. Well I think there should be an asterisk next to any of their numbers and/or records. How do we know what these players would have done had they played against blacks? It is the same as guessing what the Steroid freaks would do if they had been clean, right? No you say, well you are wrong.
Again, with my lack of a life I took the time to look the numbers up. In the history of baseball there have been 100 players elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers of America. I do not include Veteran’s Committee electee’s, because it is hard to determine which ones should actually be Hall of Famers. Most of the time the Veterans Committee elected their buddies to the Hall, so they had people to hang out with on induction weekend. Of the 100 men elected to the Hall 37 of them played almost exclusively against white ball players (anyone whose career ended before 1950). That means 73 men have made the Hall of Fame while playing in an integrated game. Of those 73, 22 or 30% of the players are Black and/or Hispanic. That is an unbelievable number when you consider the fact that it took 10 years for every team in MLB to desegregate.
These numbers show me that the minority population has proved to be a viable part of the baseball world. Yet we seem to ordain players in the pre 1947 as the greatest of all time. Personally I find the segregation of a people way more offensive than some dope that shoots himself in the ass with steroids. If we are going to start devaluing statistics and qualifying which ones we want to determine as “real,” we need to go all the way. Make sure we examine all factors before we just indict baseball players of the modern era.
Things are different, the game changes, the most we can do is evaluate what we have in front of us. Do I believe that a player on steroids is any better than a player who is clean? Yes I most certainly do, but can I prove it? Absolutely not, there is no way to qualify it. Maybe Bonds would have hit 65 Homeruns that year not 73, but hey 65 is still damned impressive. Would Ty Cobb have batted .367 lifetime if he had to face Bob Gibson, Satchel Paige or Hilton Smith? I am not sure. Can you prove that he would have? Absolutely not, so how can we say he is the greatest hitter ever? We love to pick and choose which arguments we want to use when comparing the players from different era’s in baseball. I think there are advantages and disadvantages to every era so how can we qualify which eras we choose to hold in higher esteem? We can’t really, but we seem to forget about the exclusion of a race of people for 60 years in our national past time.
And I do know that many will say back to me, well Giambi and Bonds know what they are doing is wrong. They knew it may give them a competitive advantage, yet according to the rules of the game they did nothing wrong. I would say Cobb, Ruth, and Walter Johnson knew that the gentlemen’s agreement was wrong, and they had the power to do something about it. The certainly could have forced owners to hire minority ball players if they really wanted to. Heck, Babe Ruth may be the most influential man in the history of the game, if he wanted Satchel in the Majors, Satchel would have been in the Majors. To be an accomplice to something that is wrong is very close to being the one who commits the act, I believe my legal council will back me up on that (I watch Law & Order and American Justice so do not lie and tell me otherwise, Josh). So please let’s be realistic when we talk about how we should evaluate these stats, evaluate them for what they are, tremendous feats that loser like us could never achieve even with all the BALCO chemicals in the world.
1 Comments:
Just a brief tag on, all those white guys played against the Negro League All-Stars in the off-season when everyone formed teams and barnstormed around the country, showing the broke farmer in Illinois and Oklahoma the baseball they heard about from the rich neighbor down the street that owned a radio so they could listen to the game.
let them drag up the record books on those games and let's really see who the best was from that era?
And for all the greatness of Babe Ruth, if he were alive today with the same talents and skills, he might have been one of the greatest players ever, but there's no way that Ruth would have made it to the league with his youth criminal career.
But if, like most great athletes in this era, the law turned a blind eye to him and he did make it to a minor league camp, then powered his way on a major league roster, he wouldn't have lasted five years.
Think about the boozing (when it was illegal), womanizing and cigar smoking the Sultan of Swat did back then. They would call him the Sultan of Twat and he would keel over from a cocaine overdose before his 27th birthday.
Ty Cobb would be vilified by the media for being Jesse Jackson compared to John Rocker and the nation still wouldn't have heard of Stan Musial because Stan's the man.
Muse OUT
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