I disagree. Reasons are below.
No. Maybe it's like a player getting all of his team's unassisted goals or something. But home runs are not the only way to score.
(Regardless how the rest of this post comes across, I would still like to say that Ruth was one of the best hitters, the most productive power hitter of his era, and he still makes many other HOFers look merely average.)
Baseball's dead ball era ends when Ruth started hitting home runs. There are numerous factors beyond just ballparks:
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You know how hockey coaches told their players not to use slap shots around the 1940-ish NHL? Same with baseball and fly balls. Because baseball teams were socialized to believe that there was a correct way to play baseball and that flyballs were outs, no one else really tried for them before Ruth.
Accordingly, most players in the league were contact hitters since there were no power hitters immediately before Ruth. That's how players were trained and how the teams were scouted and built.
Ruth won the league home run race 54-19 in 1920. By 1922 guys like Hornsby caught on (Hornsby led HRs that year) and by the end of Ruth's career homers were much more common. Jimmie Foxx hit 58 while Ruth was still a Yankee (Ruth's record was 60), and Lou Gehrig posted four seasons with 45+.
- I should point out that decades earlier, players couldn't try for the fences since fly balls were easy outs in the days when
fielders could catch them on one bounce and still record the out. So that's why they were coached to avoid fly balls.
- Baseball parks weren't built with home runs in mind. Many were built when outs could be recorded on one bounce, and fields were very short at the edges of fair territory. While center field was very far (Rhiessan71 noted this) home runs of 280 feet had been possible in the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia since the 1800's. Old Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built, so it makes sense that 280 foot homers would be possible there, at least before the field was lengthened slightly to 301 feet in 1928 for the rest of his time in pinstripes.
- The pitches were easier to hit since pitcher tampering (spitballs et al.) was made illegal. Players started playing with fresh baseballs rather than the same ball all game (if it remained in play). An effort was made by the Commissioner's Office to make the baseballs more visible to batters around 1919-1920 after a batter died after being hit by a pitch.
- These highly visible baseballs now had corked centres, to make it possible to hit them farther.
Three guesses as to what the Live(ly) Ball era is named after? That was not for safety, and was purely to encourage scoring.
- Pitchers were often tired by the end of games, as they were expected to pitch 9 innings. They didn't always make it, but that was the expectation. Bullpen specialists and closers were decades away. Since goalies can last all game, I'll say this is like having defencemen play all game (which they did ~100 years ago,) while the forwards take turns and get to take short naps in the dugout. (Long nap = skates on fire, bubble gum on visor.) Pitcher fatigue was less of a problem when pitchers could tamper with the ball to make their lives easier late in the game.
- As already noted, there were no black players, like Josh Gibson who hit even more home runs in the Negro Leagues than Ruth hit in the Majors. I think this has been covered elsewhere.
- No, Babe was an awesome hitter. Babe Ruth was a good pitcher. A good pitcher who had one excellent season, and many good ones. I can't say he was awesome. If you point to his win totals, I will have to start an equivalent to Brodeur Is A Fraud since other pitchers on the Red Sox had similar W-L totals and ERA. And because it's baseball and not hockey, it's not just one backup with a small sample set.
- I should also point out that Ruth stopped pitching when the rules changed for pitcher tampering. Call him Babe Cechmanek.
Sure he went 4-0 as a Yankee, but with a 5.52 ERA in those games, Ruth got shelled. Those games were won because the Yankees scored enough runs to save Babe Fuhr's bacon.
- Another reason for success is that he played for the equivalents of the Canadiens. While Montreal had crafty Sam Pollock, the Yankees had the ability to buy the best players available. Imagine if Edmonton didn't need to lose Coffey, then Gretzky, and then everybody else, but got to keep their dynasty players AND comfortably buy Mario Lemieux when the small market Pens got in trouble.
How do you think the Yankees got Ruth in the first place?
Awesome post and i grow up a Habs fan
