Sporting Green
You can look at almost any major-league record and apply your own asterisk
Bruce Jenkins:
How will Barry Bonds’ home run record be viewed if the Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton hits more than 61 this season?
Hack Wilson, the legendary slugger of the Chicago Cubs, had a pretty fine day at the plate in 1999. He was deceased at the time. Seems he jumped out of the grave and singled a man home from second.
It turned out that Wilson’s record-setting number for RBIs, 190 in 1930, wasn’t quite accurate. After all those years, a detailed box score analysis revealed that teammate Charlie Grimm was mistakenly credited with an RBI that belonged to Wilson. So, check that — make it 191.
This has become common practice among baseball historians, correcting statistical misfires of the past, and as people weigh the merits of Giancarlo Stanton’s home-run-hitting season, it’s wise to remember a baseball truth: Its records are not sacred. Most of them are subject to interpretation, moralistic guidelines and retrospective judgment.
The issue really hits home in the Bay Area, where Barry Bonds authored his 73-homer season in 2001. Is that really the record, considering Bonds’ connection with performanceenhancing drugs? Should we comprehensively ignore Mark McGwire (70) and Sammy Sosa (66)? If Stanton hits 62 homers and surpasses Roger Maris’ 61 (in 1961, breaking Babe Ruth’s long-standing record of 60), is that the most
authentic record? For that matter, are we absolutely certain that Stanton is clean?
Baseball is by far the sport most associated with numbers, but never forget the clouds of skepticism or outright distrust. This isn’t basketball, where there’s no mystery to Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, the Warriors’ 73-win season or the Los Angeles Lakers’ 33game winning streak. Baseball records inevitably come under intense scrutiny, often to the point of being dismissed outright.
The great Warren Spahn won 363 games during a golden era of the game, populated by the likes of Stan Musial, Willie Mays and Ernie Banks, and the game was fully integrated during most of his 21-year career. In good conscience, how do we rank that below the 511 wins of Cy Young, who had many of his great seasons in the 19th century and performed decades prior to racial integration? And how can anyone even fathom Jack Chesbro’s 41 wins for the 1904 New York Highlanders?
Ask around for the greatest single season for triples, and the answer is likely to be Curtis Granderson’s 23 in 2007, or Dale Mitchell with that same total in 1949. Who the hell was Owen “Chief ” Wilson, who interrupted a nondescript career with 36 in 1912?
It’s always a nice thing these days when someone hits, say, .318 or .331. How about the 1930 season, known for its especially lively ball, when the
entire National League hit .303? Was the stolen base little more than a trifle in 1950, when Dom DiMaggio led the AL with 15? Talk about impressive home-run hitting: In the Year of the Pitcher season of 1968, when Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in hitting at .301, the Washington Senators’ Frank Howard belted 44 homers, eight more than anyone else in either league. And let’s say you’re an especially solid-hitting second baseman, along the lines of Joe Morgan, Jeff Kent or current star Daniel Murphy, and you examine the best post-1900 batting averages at that position: Napoleon Lajoie’s .4265 in 1901 and Rogers Hornsby’s .4235 in 1924. What?
People get all wound up about the so-called Steroids Era — which may still be in progress, for all we know — forgetting that shady behavior fairly defines the game’s history. Aside from such usual suspects as corked bats, doctored baseballs and amphetamines, the specter of gambling was a constant threat in the early 20th century, tainting the 1919 World Series and, some historians suggest, those in 1912 and 1918.
Try this for dubious: As the race for the 1910 batting title came down to the final day, Ty Cobb was hitting .383 to Lajoie’s .376. While Cobb sat out, figuring he had it made, Lajoie had eight hits — seven on bunts — in a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns to steal it at .384. Not long afterward, it was learned that Browns executives were betting heavily on Lajoie and his against-the-odds plight. Their third baseman consistently played deep as Lajoie dropped his bunt singles. They handed Lajoie the title.
It didn’t last. League President Ban Johnson learned of the scandal, threw a couple of Browns people out of baseball, and tried to figure out a way to hand Cobb the title. Somehow, it was determined that the official scorer had “forgotten” to enter the stats from a September game against Boston, when Cobb went 2-for-3. Presto: Cobb wins it at .385. And so it was for some 70 years, until it was determined that the “correction” was fraudulent. Hand it back to Lajoie.
And we’re supposed to trust anything that went down in those times?
Not that it’s anything to cherish, but cheating is undeniably a fact of life in baseball, from the early days to the present. During his days as a coach in 1961, Hornsby said, “I’ve been in baseball since 1914 and I’ve cheated, or watched someone on my team cheat, in practically every game. You’ve got to cheat. If I’d played strictly by the rules, I’d have been home feeding my bird dogs a long time ago.”
Thanks to the hard-working folks of the Society for American Baseball Research, much has changed since the original Baseball Encyclopedia was published after the 1968 season. Cobb’s lifetime average of .367 — a truly iconic number, memorized by fans everywhere — was revised to .366. Walter Johnson gained four wins and an astounding 42 fewer walks. Christy Mathewson was given six more wins and a couple of additional shutouts. Tris Speaker lost two triples but gained two homers.
No statistical analysis can alter Bonds’ 73-homer season, but a fan’s trust cannot be bought. It should be very interesting if Stanton approaches 60 homers and ethical questions come to the forefront.
And since we’re on the subject, my all-time home run leader is Mays. He finished with 660 despite missing nearly two seasons in his prime due to military service, and he had countless majestic drives hauled down in the spacious Polo Grounds (roughly 450 feet to the power alleys and 483 to dead center) or blown back by the winds of Candlestick. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. When it comes to baseball records, anything goes.