Some Unsung Babe Ruth Facts

The idea for this post developed while I was searching if Babe Ruth ever hit a home run, stole a base and pitched in the same game. I had heard some facts on Pablo Sandoval and his exploits of that trifecta being the first time anyone had performed such a feat since 1905. And no, Babe Ruth never hit a home run and stole a base in the same game that he pitched. But checking it out and looking at Babe Ruth's baseball-reference.com page did show me some things that blew my mind. So I thought I would share them with you.

There are two ways you can tell analytics did not exist back in Babe Ruth's time and one of those also showed how much animosity the press had with Ruth back in his playing time:

1. During his post-pitching career--basically from 1919 on, Babe Ruth sacrifice bunted 99 times in his career. What!? The most fearsome hitter of his era (or perhaps any era) gave himself up 99 times. Either his managers were dopes or Ruth did those things on his own to try to be a team player. In 1930, Babe hit 49 homers and batted .359 with a 1.225 OPS. Incredible numbers, but even so, he had 21 sacrifice bunts that season after having 13 the season before. At the peak of his powers, he either was asked to bunt or bunted on his own 66 times in a five year period. He even had 14 Sacrifices in 1927 when he hit 60 homers. Bob Shawkey was his manager in 1930. The team finished third that season. Joe McCarthy took over the following season and Babe Ruth never had another sacrifice bunt.
2. Babe Ruth only won one MVP Award. That was in 1923. The award was re-instituted in 1922 after a hiatus since 1914. Ridiculously, Babe Ruth did not get another MVP vote (not a single vote in between) until 1931 when he finished fifth. The following year, Ruth finished sixth. In contrast, Lou Gehrig won two MVP's and finished in the top five six other times. Babe Ruth played fifteen seasons for the Yankees and hit 659 homers during that time with a compiled 135.5 Wins Above Replacement during those seasons and only received MVP votes in three of those seasons. What a crock.

Most people think of Babe Ruth as the Yankees' right fielder. And for the latter third of his career, he mostly was. But Babe Ruth started almost as many games in his career as a left fielder as he did in right. Ruth started 1120 games in right field during his career and 1040 in left. He also started 64 games in center field and another 23 at first base. Ruth was lousy at first but he had a higher than league average fielding percentage in all three outfield positions. I don't know how b-ref figured range figures for back then, but according to them, Ruth also had better range than league average at all three outfield positions. He was not just a fat guy who slugged homers.

Babe Ruth won all three of his World Series pitching starts (all with the Red Sox). In those games, he pitched 31 innings and gave up three runs on 19 hits. His one start in 1916 lasted fourteen innings and he pitched them all to get the win.

Ruth's World Series OPS at 1.214 in 41 games was higher than his career average of 1.164. He was the original Mr. October. Between his pitching and batting careers, he won eight World Series titles.

Babe Ruth was the best pitcher in baseball in 1916. He led the league in starts with 40, ERA at 1.75, Shut outs (9), and hits per nine innings. He did not give up a home run that entire season. He was nearly as good in 1917 but gave up two homers that season. Add that up and he pitched 650 innings, gave up only 474 hits and only gave up two homers. He was a better pitcher than people realize.

Sometimes, we get images of the great Babe Ruth striking out and it makes us think he struck out a lot. But in all of his seasons, he struck out more than 89 times only twice (93, 90). Lest you think he was only a three outcome kind of guy, he batted higher than .350 eight times in his career.

Babe Ruth led the lead in extra base hits (doubles + triples + homers) six times in his career. In 1921, he had 119 of them (out of 204 hits). That has been a MLB record ever since. It was only threatened once by Lou Gehrig who had 117 in 1927. Barry Bonds had 107 in 2001 and that has been the closest anyone has been since. As you can imagine, Ruth's 457 total bases that season was only threatened once, by Rogers Hornsby with 450. That single season total has also been a record since 1921.

Babe Ruth led the league in Runs Scored eight times and seven times scored more than 150 runs in a season.

I could probably go on a lot longer, but I'm getting hungry. Sometimes I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and watch Babe Ruth play. Yes, I know it was a segregated game back when Babe Ruth played. Even so, no one has ever dominated the sport like he did.

Grabbing the Tail of Curiosity

If you are any fan of this site and have been reading all along, you know two things. First, the Fan recently read Leigh Montville's, "The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth." Secondly, you know that the Fan has an over active curiosity gland. So when Montville talks about the fog he uses as a metaphor for Ruth's early life and the fog that surrounds Ruth's parents, the Fan couldn't resist. The problem is that this post comes after just a few hours of research on-line and not intensive on-the-ground research that you need. But oh well. You may or may not be interested in what little the Fan did find out about Ruth's family on his father's side.

Montville begins the process with Ruth's father taking the young George Herman Ruth to St Mary's. Montville uses the fog and a metaphorical trolly ride to the boy's reform school very effectively to teach us how little about Ruth's early life we know. But it was the following text amidst that story that piqued this writer's curiosity:

George Ruth Sr.'s parents were both born in Maryland. There is dispute about
where his grandparents were born, either in Germany or Buck's County,
Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Dutch country. Pick one. If Buck's County is the
choice, the great-great-great grandparents were from Germany. (pg 11)

After spending a night on www.ancestry.com, the Fan can understand the confusion. There is no confusion about Babe Ruth's parents. He was the son of George Herman and Katie (Schaumberger) Ruth. George Herman Ruth Sr. was the son of John S. and Mary Ruth and was born in Baltimore. Katie was the daughter of German immigrants, Pius and Anna Schaumberger. There is even no confusion on John S. Ruth who was born in Baltimore in 1844. You can follow his life in from the 1850 census records of Baltimore on up to the 1900 census. It is John's wife and his parents that are confusing.

Let's start with John's wife. Though Maryland marriage records are available on line, John's marriage to Mary is not recorded so nothing is known about her. She appears with John in the 1880 census and in the 1880 census it seems that the census takers tried to be more accurate concerning the origins of the residents. John is listed as having been born in Maryland but Mary is listed as being born in "Hanover." There is no Hanover in Maryland. There is one in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio, but not in Maryland. And, John lists his parents as being born in Prussia. But that is not what earlier records state. We'll get to that in a bit. So who was this Mary, Babe's paternal grandmother?

She was born (according to the 1880 census) in 1845, so searching the 1850 census for "Mary" in any Hanover born in 1845 gives us 77 possibilities. One clue could be the "Herman." There were no Hermans on John Ruth's side. He had no brothers or uncles by that name. So maybe that was a maternal touch. Well, none of those 77 Marys had a father or brother named Herman, so that's a dead end.

The other mystery concerning Babe Ruth's paternal grandparents is if they were divorced. In 1900, John S. Ruth was listed in the Baltimore census records as living with his brother, Frank, and his mother Mary. He is listed as "single" and not "divorced" or "widowed." John S. Ruth Jr. is listed as a lightning rod manufacturer (he had earlier been a railroad clerk). He was not a poor man. So why then, is George Herman Ruth Sr. living on the poor side of town? In 1880, George was working for John in the lightning rod business as a clerk. Was there a falling out? Were they estranged? George Herman Ruth Sr. was later to purchase a bar. That money had to come from somewhere.

John S. Ruth Sr. was born around 1815. Census records from 1850 list him as being born in Maryland. He married Mary Moffitt in 1842 in Baltimore. She was either the daughter of either Thomas or Neal Moffitt, the only gentlemen of that name in the 1820 census in Maryland. But that hardly seems like a Prussian name.

The Fan can pretty much discount the Buck's County, Pennsylvania angle. The confusion there is easy to see as there was a John S. Ruth born in Buck's County in 1817 who did marry a Mary there. But he lived and died in Buck's County. And though his life parallels Babe's ancestor, they are not the same men. Babe's great grandfather, John S. Ruth Sr. was a bricklayer who died in middle age.

So that's as far as the Fan has gotten in one night of fiddling around. There is no idea if this is of any interest to you. It is to the Fan, but then he loves genealogy.

Catching Up on the Babe

One of the great things about the times spent on our Florida sabbaticals is the chance to read. With the business to run and the blogs to write and life in general in the way, little time is left for the pure joy that is reading. Mom lives in a small condo, the type that was built by the hundreds forty years ago to accommodate the middle class refuges from the Northeast that retired down here. It's not a fancy place, but it has a pool that no one uses. The Fan spends every day down by that pool under and umbrella reading good books.

Mom had a book about Babe Ruth sitting on the shelf. There have been dozens of books about Ruth over the years. This one was written by Leigh Montville in 2006. Montville does a really good job and describing just how much Ruth revolutionized the game as it went from a small ball world with strategy to a game of strength. Imagine a player coming up to play now that could do things nobody in the game had ever been able to do. Imagine a player so different with results so breathtakingly new that there was no correlation to go by. Imagine that the 58 homers he hit in 1921 were more than all but two other teams hit as entire teams.

We have no understanding of how he changed the game. We have no understanding of how good Ruth was in comparison to his peers in the early part of his career. Montville also does a great job in not only painting the warts on Ruth, but giving him more credit for his intelligence and innate handling in the art of negotiation that Ruth displayed.

It's a really good book and if you ever want to know more about the myth that is Babe Ruth, search for Montville and Ruth on Google and go find a copy. It's worth the read.