With an absurd 13 Yankees currently on the DL (yes, the DL, I am not calling it the IL,) people are scratching their heads wondering why. The New York Daily News got in on this, posting an article on the matter earlier today. While this is an interesting piece, the headline is the most intriguing to me: “Did Babe Ruth ever hurt his oblique?” This headline is meant to be eye catching, but it got me thinking: Is Babe Ruth the greatest natural athlete we have ever seen?
Babe’s Career
Everyone knows the stories about Babe Ruth. Standing at 6’2″, 215 pounds, Babe could do it all. He could pitch, hit, and play in the outfield. He also crushed beers and as for his diet, let’s just say he wasn’t eating like Tom Brady. Ruth hit the ball out of the Polo Grounds, which measured 483 feet to center field. This is 63 feet farther than the longest today, a tie at 420 feet between Comerica Park in Detroit and Fenway. His first serious injury came in the 1918 season, when he broke his hand in a fight. Ruth fought through it, and pitched anyway. Two years later, in his first season in New York, Ruth had injured himself swinging a bat, but still went on to hit 54 home runs and 135 RBIs. He did all of this with natural, God given talent, and none of the modern exercise techniques we have today. Either Babe Ruth is an incredible, physical specimen, or we should all start drinking pitchers of beer and eating steak every meal.
The Modern Athlete
The Yankees are currently riddled with injuries. Aaron Judge is the most recent member of the DL, and is expected to miss two weeks with an oblique injury. During the 2017 and 2018 seasons (Judge’s 25 and 26 year old seasons,) Judge hit 52 and 27 homers respectively, with 114 and 67 RBIs in the same seasons. Across the same ages, Babe Ruth hit 54 and 59 homers with 135 and 168 RBIs. With these ridiculous, it raises the question: are modern training techniques ineffective, or was Babe Ruth the most gifted athlete ever? To get a better understanding about how great of an athlete Babe Ruth was, let’s look at another gifted athlete.
Rob Gronkowski
Rob Gronkowski is one of the most gifted athletes of our generation. Gronk also only played nine seasons. When healthy, Gronk dominated, but he wasn’t healthy enough. In two of those nine seasons, Gronk played in only half the games or less. From 1918 to 1934, Babe Ruth played less than 100 games twice, and those two seasons he played in 95 and 98 games. Before 1918, he was still a young player and was not a regular starter. In 1935 (his last season,) Babe Ruth was 40 and played in 28 games for the Boston Braves, mostly as a publicity stunt.
Yes, yes he is
Based on these statistics, Babe Ruth was an extremely gifted athlete. He played 22 seasons, and over that time became one of the best hitters baseball has ever seen. Over his career, Ruth was a twelve time AL home run leader, six time RBI leader, and even the AL ERA leader once. Oh, and he won seven World Series titles. Babe Ruth is, by far, the greatest athlete to ever step on a field of any kind.
