Posted By:
Marc S.<<Babe Ruth just hit a lot of home runs. Ty Cobb transformed the whole game when he played. >>
How can you say that, Jim? Babe had over 2,000 hits that were not home runs. As I said previously, from a hitting perpsective, their qualitative difference was that Cobb had one extra hit every forty-at-bats. To this day, Babe Ruth still has the tenth highest batting average of all-time. Just because he hit a lot of home runs does not take away what a brilliant hitter he was. And as I think others here have done more eloquently than I, Babe Ruth's power transformed the entire game of baseball -- helping teams focus on the something more important than simply getting on base. Yes, Babe Ruth made the home run the pinnacle of baseball -- but you can argue that slugging percentage, OPS, Runs Created, etc. are all statistics that exist today to assess relative offensive prowess....stastics that only serve to highlight, retrospectively, how phenomenally awesome Ruth was.