Shut Up Tommy

I dont know about all of you, but I sure do like this weather we have on our hands today. It gets me thinking about the spring and summer which then just gets me into a good mood. Baseball is just around the corner and one of my favorite all time movies comes to mind. Sandlot. To me, possibly the closest experience to Heaven. Just the sound of Narrator's voice, scenes of Hamilton Porter talking trash to every batter and "Michael Squints Palledorous walking a little bit taller that day" after kissing one Wendy Peffercorn. Anywho, the movie gets me thinking and it gets me thinking about the greatest American sports legend...ever. No one compares to this guy. Ask anyone who he is and they know. Ask them why they know who this guy is, and they dont know. He's just that much of a legend. This guy, as I hope you have guessed by now is George Herman Ruth, or Babe Ruth, or the sultan of swat, or the titan of terror, or the colossus of clout, or the king of crash...The Great Bambino...The Babe. Thats a lot of nicknames, but was Babe Ruth really the best? I decided to do some research, and just so you know, I wont put in too many stats for comparison, but just trust me that I've spent over the past 2 hours curiously looking into statistics of all of the potentially best baseball players ever. Among these names I have researched are all offensive players and I did this because a pitcher will generally only play 1 every 5 games, but most of these guys played close to every game.

These are the players I researched.
of course Babe Ruth
Hank Aaron
Lou Gehrig
Wilie Mays
Ken Griffey Jr.
Albert Pujols
Alex Rodriguez
Frank Robinson
Mickey Mantle
Ted Williams

So all of these guys let me just say did certain things in common. They all played defense, hit for power, meaning among these guys are a whole lot of home runs, and had batting averages around .300.

Its not an easy thing to rank these guys, more would have to go into it then just my research, but what I found though shocked me. I knew the Babe was good, but I figured he really wasn't the best, but instead he was just a great legend. The truth is though, he really is the best in my opinion. I think this because of his gaudy power numbers, where he has over 12 seasons with more than 30 HR's, 100 RBI's and hitting above .300. This number would be 13, but in 1922, he finished with 99 RBI's. And he didnt just barely get these numbers, we are talking about seasons with 59, 54, 46, 47, 60, 54, 49 home runs, with RBI totals over 135 and averages like .378, .393. and .373. So obviously the guy could hit, but what separates Babe from everyone else is the fact that he pitched for the first five seasons...and he was really good...really. He had seasons where his ERA was 2.44, 1.75 (!!!), 2.22, and 2.01.

This guy was unreal. And the best part about it, where was he born and where did he grow up? BALTIMORE.