Big Mac and Slammin' Sammy: Do they top the Babe?
Contact: Ginger Pinholster, (302) 831-6408, [email protected]
SEPT. 9, 1998--On his successful march toward a new single-season home run record, Mighty Mark McGwire reached another milestone Sept. 8 as he smote his 62nd home run to break Roger Maris's record, set 37 summers ago.
Two players now have eclipsed Babe Ruth's 1927 high-water mark of 60 homers, and Sammy Sosa, with 58 roundtrippers, also seems a sure bet to top the Babe and Maris as well, notes University of Delaware Treasurer Stephen M. Grimble, author of Setting the Record Straight: Baseball's Greatest Batters (Cedar Tree Books Ltd., 1998).
The only unanswered questions now, Grimble says, are how many home runs will Big Mac and Slammin' Sammy hit this year and who will hold the new record at season's end? It would be "altogether fitting and proper for these two phenomenal sluggers to finish the year tied for the all-time single-season home run record," Grimble says. "But no matter how many homers they smash this year or in any future year, neither McGwire nor Sosa nor any other player is ever likely to threaten Ruth's indisputable ranking as baseball's greatest batter."
Ironically, despite a widespread consensus among knowledgeable baseball fans that the Babe is the sport's greatest batter, baseball's official statistics generally do not confirm Ruth's supremacy, according to Grimble. For instance, Ruth isn't the all-time leader in any of the following major statistical categories: batting average, hits, home runs, RBIs, or runs scored. If Ruth was the best hitter who ever lived, Grimble wonders, why don't baseball's official statistics prove it?
Despite its myriad statistics for measuring virtually every event that has occurred on the diamond as far back as 1876, none measures batting proficiency accurately, Grimble says. "A sport so steeped in its history and statistics must or at least deserves to have official statistics, derived from actual not hypothetical performance, that can be relied upon to determine who are the best batters each season and across time," he argues. "Such a statistic is run generation average or RGA, which is runs scored plus runs batted in divided by plate appearances (at-bats plus bases on balls)."
The unarguable object of baseball, Grimble notes, is to score more runs than the other team. The team with the most hits, or even the most home runs, may or may not win the game, but the team scoring the most runs always wins. A player's batting average (hits divided by at-bats), therefore, does not deserve its revered status as the statistic that determines the National and American League batting champions each season, Grimble says. "After all, earned run average generally is considered to be the single best statistic to evaluate pitchers," he says. "RGA serves the same purpose for batters and should replace batting average as baseball's primary official statistic for ascertaining the game's best batters each year."
Through the end of August, Sammy Sosa had a 1998 RGA of .406, which leads the National League. Mark McGwire's .395 RGA is the league's second best. Juan Gonzalez, however, is leading the majors this season with a .432 RGA. Although McGwire and Sosa have broken Hack Wilson's 68 year-old National League record of 56 home runs, neither will come close to Hack's NL record .487 RGA in 1930. The American League single-season RGA mark, also set in 1930, is held by Al Simmons who batted an incredible .535 that year. The only other player to break the .500 RGA barrier was Ruth who batted .509 in 1921.
How does all this make Babe Ruth the greatest batter in baseball history? Well, the Bambino merely compiled a stupendous career RGA of .419, the highest ever recorded, and won nine RGA championships, a record only Ty Cobb matched. Sosa and McGwire have yet to win an RGA title, although one of them is sure to do so in 1998. Slammin' Sammy's career RGA is .302, while Big Mac's is .332. "ust as a .300 batting average is considered outstanding, so too is a .300 run generation average," Grimble says. "Both Sosa and McGwire are fabulous hitters having magnificent seasons, but neither can measure up to Babe Ruth, no matter how many home runs he hits."
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