the Mitchell report and the great temple
There’s a great deal of hyperventilating about the Mitchell report on steroid use in baseball. One example (among multitudes) of how bent out of intellectual shape people can get: Tom Scocca in Slate writes that steroids explain “the startling longevity of Andy Pettite.” Startling longevity? Dude, Pettite is 35; he’s been in the league thirteen years. That ain’t exactly unprecedented. It’s not like he’s Nolan Ryan, or, um, Roger Clemens.
When the hyperventilation stops, there will, I think, be one lasting and probably permanent effect of this report — or rather, of the whole controversy of which it is the chief and culminating product: the utter collapse of a historic building that has been crumbling for the past decade. Let’s call it the Great Temple of Baseball Statistics. As soon as stories about steroid use began to circulate around Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, as soon as sportswriters began to say that their records deserve to be accompanied by an asterisk — a word I’d love never to hear again, at least in the context of sports records: Ford Frick, what hath thou wrought? — other people popped up to say that we should be equally suspicious of Babe Ruth’s gaudy numbers, since he never had to face the great black pitchers of his day, or to be measured against black sluggers like Josh Gibson. And you know what? They were right.
The steroid conversations of the late ‘90’s began after more than a decade of increasing sophisticated sabermetric studies revealing just how many and complex are the environmental conditions that affect baseball performance. If some outfielder in 1931 hit twenty home runs playing half his games in the Polo Grounds, how impressive is that in comparison to the same number of homers by a guy whose home park was Dodger Stadium in 1968? How about Fenway Park in 2003? If that kind of question is statistically difficult to answer, imagine what happens when you try to factor in sociological considerations (the presence or absence of black and Hispanic players), variables involving health and medicine (better diets in more recent years, year-round training, sophisticated exercise programs) and the rising availability of performance-enhancing drugs.
What happens, to put it briefly and bluntly, is that statistics simply cease to have any historical validity whatsoever. Baseball statistics can still be very, very useful in making sense of the relative value of players whose careers share the same time-frame. Sabermetricians can tell you a hell of a lot about whether Phil Rizzuto was a better shortstop than Pee Wee Reese, or whether McGwire had a better year than Sosa in 1998. But if you want to know whether Barry Bonds was (at any point in his career) really and truly a more dangerous hitter than Babe Ruth, or whether Roger Clemens was a better pitcher than Walter Johnson, or of you want to meditate on any of the thousand other puzzles of which the Great Temple of Baseball Statistics has been built — fuggidaboudit. Too many factors, too many variables, too much noise. From now on, thanks not to the Mitchell report itself but to the era of which it is the fitting and butt-ugly capstone, all any of us can do when faced with such historical comparisons is shrug.
This is a real blow to many baseball fans, among whom a significant proportion are stat-heads — a far greater proportion than we find among the fans of any other sport. They’re just going to have to find some other way to love the game, some other place of worship. The Great Temple has fallen and it won’t be rebuilt.
Someone with baseball knowledge should reply to this post. I go to baseball games to people watch and eat hot dogs. Eventually they play “Hell’s Bells” over the loudspeaker, the crowd roars, and Trevor Hoffman comes out to save the day, which produces a momentary thrill. Then my husband tells me it’s time to go home.
— Joules · Dec 17, 03:49 AM · #
In 1942, there were no black players in the American League. That year, the batting title went to Ted Williams, who hit .356. Fast forward fifteen years. There are now plenty of hard-throwing black pitchers, plenty of speedy outfielders to run down Ted’s fly balls. So, naturally, his average plummeted- all the way down to .388!
Similarly, Stan Musial batted .357 in 1943, when there were no black player AND when the best white players were in the armed services. Fast forward 14 years, and what do we find? Musial’s average plunged all the way down to .351!
If Ted and Stan were able to adjust to integration without any noticeable problems, it’s hard to see why Babe Ruth couldn’t or wouldn’t have.
— astorian · Dec 17, 06:38 AM · #
The excellent Baseball Prospectus book “Baseball Between the Numbers” deals with this issue in some detail. I recommend it, and I don’t think that comparing Babe Ruth to Hank Aaron is nearly ‘impossible’. Baseball, thankfully, produces a lot of data for us to look at.
— Wilson · Dec 17, 08:13 PM · #
astorian: good points, of course, but I think the other side would say two things. (a) The full integration of black and Caribbean (not to mention Japanese) players into MLB happened only well after the retirements of Musial and Williams — in the late ’50’s only about 7% of MLB players were black; by 1975 it was 27%. (b) The fact remains that black papers who could have challenged Ruth’s dominance of the game, most notably Josh Gibson, were barred from the game.
Wilson: note that I didn’t say anything about comparing Ruth and Aaron, in fact didn’t mention Aaron’s name. It’s comparing Ruth and Bonds that I think the steroid era has made effectively impossible. But I do think that no one really knows how to control for the differences between Ruth’s era and Aaron’s. Ruth never had to compete against black or Caribbean players; on the other hand, there were far fewer teams during his era than in Aaron’s, which leads some people to say that for the later period the “talent pool was diluted”; but, on the third hand, others have pointed out that the ration of MLB players to U. S. population has remained pretty constant over the decades; on the fourth hand, Ruth got to face a lot of tired starters in a period before the widespread use of relievers. There is simply no way to sort out all these variations in ways that will earn widespread agreement. Alas.
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 18, 12:31 AM · #
There’s another side to the integration debate. Why do we assume all the good black players would have been playing AGAINST Babe Ruth? Mightn’t he have had some great black teammates? MAYBE the Babe would’ve had far fewer runs batted in if he’d had to bat against great black pitchers like Bob Gibson… but then, if he’d had a great black leadoff man like Rickey Henderson batting ahead of him, he might have had a lot MORE ribbies!
In the same way, MAYBE Walter Johnson’s E.R.A. would’ve soared if he’d had to pitch to guys like Willie Mays. Then again, if he’d had an Ozzie Smith behind him at shortstop, his E.R.A. might’ve been even lower!
Or maybe Cy Young would have won MORE games if he’d had a Henry Aaron in his lineup.
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That said, I fully agree that it’s mighty hard (perhaps even pointless) to compare eras. When we do, we forget that baseball is constantly EVOLVING. The game Ted Williams and Stan Musial were playing in 1960 had changed in many ways from the game they were playing in 1945, but they managed to keep pace. The game Nolan Ryan was playing in 1989 wasn’t exactly the game he played with the Mets in 1969, but he learned to keep up, over time.
And that’s what we miss when we ask if the 1927 Yankees could’ve competed with the 2007 Red Sox. OBVIOUSLY, if the 2007 Sox just stepped into a time machine and went back to 1927, they’d be a MUCH stronger team than the Yanks in every way. Ruth could never get around on Schilling or BEckett with that heavy bat, and would look silly.
But then, if the 2007 Sox had to STAY in the Twenties and perform their for a period of a few years, well, their edge would fade quickly. They wouldn’t get paid much, and might have to get jobs in the off-season. They couldn’t spend all their spare time in the gym. They’d be making long, exhausting trips by train and playing in hot weather in itchy wool uniforms. How long would Schilling and Beckett remain unhittable under those circumstances?
— astorian · Dec 18, 06:24 AM · #