Yeah, this is gonna be very sporadic, but will give me a chance to rant less to my friends directly (basically, if you are reading this, there is a good chance I'd bring this up in conversation with you, and there-by giving you a chance to tell me to shut the hell up early in the conversation).

I want to talk about Barry Bonds today. Over Easter Break I enjoyed ESPN, and didn't enjoy their constant cut-aways to Bonds' at-bats, because they made me feel like I should actually like the guy. But I did actually get to see him hit 660 & 661. Two comments:
A) He is an ass-hole. Seriously Barry, run after you hit the ball. Yes we all know it went really far, we don't need to see you stand around and swagger like you've down a 12-pack and want to prove you're still not loaded in the batters-box.
B) He can hit that ball a ton. As much as I dislike him, damn, he can crush it.

Ok, so after those quick points, I got to thinking about a point Gammons (or someone else) made on Baseball Tonight (which should have hired me or anyone who is not John Kruk) which boils down to:
When Bonds starts getting closer to 700 we will have to evaluate if he could be the greatest ever. But, we will also have to reevaluate exactly how amazing Ruth was, since he hit more HRs himself than every other team in the league (I believe he did this twice, but I haven't checked this recently, and you'll have to take my word for it).

So I decided to look at the top 10 in HRs and HRs vs League Average, both in pure totals, and in Percentages (*Active, I don't know why, but everyone else seems to do this).
Total:
1) Hank Aaron 755 - 100%
2) Babe Ruth 714 - 94.6%
3) *Barry Bonds 661 - 87.5%
4) Willie Mays 660 - 87.4%
5) Frank Robinson 586 - 77.6%
6) Mark McGwire 583 - 77.2%
7) Harmon Killebrew 573 - 75.9%
8) Reggie Jackson 563 - 74.6%
9) Mike Schmidt 548 - 72.6%
10) *Sammy Sosa 540 - 71.5%

vs League Average (not counting '04)
1) Ruth 622 - 100%
2) Aaron 457 - 73.5%
3) *Bonds 426 - 68.5%
4) McGwire 405 - 65.1%
5) Jimmie Foxx 403 - 64.8%
6) Mays 389 - 62.5%
7) Lou Gehrig 377 - 60.6%
8) Ted Williams 376 - 60.5%
9) Mel Ott 373 - 60.0%
10) Schmidt 367 - 59.0%
...
16) *Sosa 317 - 51.0%

What does this data say? I have no friggen clue, but I'd guess it means that the gap between 1 and 8 in total HRs is less than the gap between 1 and 2 in HR v LA might make Ruth's HRs seem more impressive. And the 1-10 gap is more than the 1-3 gap, again, makes Ruth's seem much more impressive, when taken in context with the era in which they played.

Well, it's late, and I have HW to do, so, if you have comments, let me know. . .
- posted by LT @ 4/14/2004 01:17:00 AM