Willie Mays v. Babe Ruth
Willie Mays died on Tuesday at age 93, producing effusive praise for his spectacular baseball career and leading some to proclaim him the sports’ GOAT. Michael R. Burch argues on Quora, for example, that Willie Mays is the greatest baseball player of all-time. If Mays played in Babe Ruth’s era, he asserts, “Mays would have hit as many home runs as the Bambino, stolen as many bases as Ty Cobb, and been a better defensive center fielder than Tris Speaker.”
Comparing athletes from different eras to select a GOAT for various sports is especially difficult because rules, training regimes, equipment, and the level of competition have changed over time. Moreover, pundits and fans disagree about what being the “greatest” means. Does it depend on how many games or matches an individual wins, athletic ability, particular skills, setting records, earning the largest paycheck, receiving the most endorsements, or some combination of these factors? Is the GOAT the player who reached the utmost heights in his or her sport or the one who had the best career? Pundits and sports enthusiasts employ numerous criteria: statistics, numbers of championships won, reputations, amount of media coverage received, polling results, weeks ranked number one for some sports, longevity, brilliance, creativity, effect on a sport, impact on society, and various intangible factors. They consider the assessments of coaches, other players, and sportswriters. Clearly public perception and the opinions of competitors matter significantly.
Most polls of baseball writers rank Willie Mays second to Babe Ruth. Often considered MLB’s most well-rounded player, Mays pounded out 3,293 hits, had a .301 career average and a slugging percentage of .557, smashed 660 home runs, drove home 1,909 runs, and had a WAR of 156.1, the fifth highest in MLB history. Moreover, he is widely considered the greatest defensive center fielder of all-time.
As impressive as these accomplishments are, Babe Ruth’s exceeds them by a significant margin. Almost every major poll, pundit, or site ranks Ruth as MLB’s greatest player. When he retired in 1935, Ruth held fifty-six MLB records. “By any standard or metric,” biographer Jane Leavy asserts, “Ruth remains the best, most remarkable player in baseball history.”[i] He is third in home runs (714), second in RBIs (2,214) and on-base percentage (.474), and first in slugging percentage (.690), OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage—1.164), WAR (183.1), and most total bases in a season (457). His slugging percentage of .744 in 41 World Series games is even higher than his regular season number. Ruth’s fifteen World Series home runs were a record until 1964. In addition, his career batting average was .342, the tenth highest of all time and much higher than all but two other players who hit 500 or more home runs. He hit over .350 eight times, won the batting title in 1924 with a .378 average, and in 1923 hit .393.
Ruth’s home run total is especially remarkable given the era in which he played. Ruth was the first MLB player to hit 30, 40, 50, and 60 home runs in a season, and he led MLB in home runs eleven times, some years hitting more home runs than entire teams. Ruth smashed the longest home runs ever hit at numerous major-league and many minor-league ballparks during exhibition games. Moreover, Ruth was one of the greatest lefthanded pitchers in MLB history, compiling a career record of 94–46 and an ERA of .228 (seventeenth-best of all-time). His winning percentage of .671 is eleventh all-time. Ruth’s ERA in the World Series was astounding—.087—and his record 29 2/3 consecutive innings of shutout pitching in the fall classic lasted for more than forty years. From 1915 to 1918, Ruth won 78 games, the second highest amount among pitchers, and he had the second lowest ERA (2.06) in MLB during those four years. Had Ruth not spent his first five seasons predominately as a pitcher and instead played every game, he may have easily hit more than 800 home runs. Although a couple of Negro League players, most notably Bullet Joe Rogan of the Kansas City Monarchs, starred as both a hitter and pitcher, MLB would not have another player who excelled in both capacities until Shohei Ohtani joined the Los Angeles Angels in 2018.
[i] Jane Leavy, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), xxiv.