The Selling of the Babe by Glenn Stout Page A

having dropped three straight, were in a tailspin and Ruth started at first base for the third game in a row. So far he’d been good for histrionics, but not for wins.
    It would be so again. In the sixth inning, he drove one of Johnson’s fastballs over the wall in right field. Taking advantage of wartime hyperbole, the Boston Herald reported “it sailed on and on over the wall, messing up a war garden and scaring a mongrel pup half to death.” It did not, however, scare Johnson much, who collected three hits of his own and knocked in two runs while beating the Sox 7–2. Boston was now officially in a slump, losers for four in a row despite Ruth, their quick start to the season all but squandered.
    An interesting and somewhat inexplicable pattern was beginning to take shape, one particularly noticed in Boston: in terms of wins and losses, Ruth’s home runs did not often seem to matter. Indeed from 1915 through 1919, while playing on three pennant winners, a second-place club that won 90 games, and a 1919 team that finished five games below .500, Boston’s record in games during which Ruth hit a home run is only 26–21 and 20–18 in 1918 and 1919. In each case, the club’s record was slightly worse than in those games in which he did not hit a home run. While the statistical difference is virtually insignificant, in terms of perception it was not. Just as Ted Williams earned a reputation he did not fully deserve as a selfish hitter who did not come through in the clutch, over time Ruth would battle a similar opinion in Boston. Even some of his own teammates believed he was a poor clutch hitter.
    But there was another factor at work, too. Although Ruth added value as a hitter, at the same time, over the course of the 1918 and 1919 seasons, his value as a pitcher diminished. It was almost as if he were two players at once; a hitter coming into his own and making an ever-larger impact, and a once great pitcher slowly fading away. The overlap between the two was small. In terms of WAR, the contemporary statistic that measures a player’s value in wins versus an average replacement player (wins above replacement), Ruth’s value as a pitcher in 1916 and 1917 was 8.7 and 6.5 wins above average respectively, but only 2.3 and 0.8 in 1918 and 1919. As a hitter, the numbers are nearly reversed—in 1916 and 1917 he was worth 1.7 and 2.1 wins, but in 1918 and 1919 his value skyrocketed to 5.1 and 9.4 wins per year. Cumulatively, his most valuable year with the Red Sox was 1916 when he was primarily a pitcher with a combined WAR of 10.4—a mark he would better only six times in his 16 seasons as primarily a hitter.
    Consider this: Had Ruth been able to retain his prowess as a pitcher, he may well have proven to be more valuable on the mound while making only the occasional appearance in the field as a hitter. Had he been able to do both at once—pitch and play more or less regularly as a hitter, even for just a few years—his value would have been astronomical, likely approaching a WAR of 20 or more each season, his impact on the game incalculable (the single season record for WAR is Ruth’s 14.1 in 1923, the only time in baseball history a player has topped 13).
    As it was, in terms of WAR alone, Ruth essentially became as valuable to the Yankees as a hitter in the 1920s as Walter Johnson was as a pitcher to the Senators in the teens. Yet as remarkable as that was, had he been able to both hit and pitch at a high level simultaneously, even for just a few years, the results would have been extraordinary. Instead, one kind of greatness was simply substituted for another. Already in 1918, he wasn’t quite the dominant pitcher he’d been in the past, his record a scuffling 3–3, his strikeout total down significantly. Although Ruth had always said that he felt “at home” on the mound, his performance was starting to say something else. He was pitching in