This morning's Coffee and Football happened to mention Shohei Ohtani's incredible season this year followed by a brief discussion about greatest players. I am old enough to see guys like Hank Aaron and Willie Mays play, and have some recollection of Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax. I always remember some incredible statistics about Babe Ruth's career and that he was an incredible pitcher and then paved the way for homerun hitters. I did a quick search and found something that Tim Kirkjian wrote about his career and am providing some of that (edited) below. The fact that he was hitting more homeruns than most teams is amazing.
"The game was reeling in 1920, but Ruth brought it back with tape-measure homers and overwhelming charisma. He became the first player to glamorize the home run, hitting 54 that season, more than the next three home run hitters in the American League combined. Also, the most startling statistic is that Ruth’s 54 homers in 1920 was more than the team totals for every other team in the American League. Ruth’s old team, the Boston Red Sox, hit only 20 homers. In fact, the only MLB team to hit more homers than Ruth was the Philadelphia Phillies with 64.
Ruth was the first to hit 30, 40, 50 and 60 homers in a season. In 1921, he hit his 137th home run, passing Roger Connor as the all-time home run king: the next 577 only added to his record. When he retired with 714 home runs, no one in the game had half that many. In certain seasons, he hit more home runs than complete teams, from 1926 to 1932, he out-homered the Washington Senators, 343-327. Ruth finished with a career slugging percentage of .690. No active player has ever had a single-season slugging percentage of .690.
But Ruth was more than a slugger even though movies made about him depict him as a non-athletic clown; they turned the greatest player of all time into a cartoon character. Ruth was a great athlete. He was a great basketball player, quick and agile for a big man, He could run; he had 136 triples, more than any active player, and 130 more than Mark McGwire. Plus, Ruth was the best left-handed pitcher in the AL when he decided to become only a hitter. Ruth's record for scoreless innings (29⅔) in World Series play lasted nearly 42 years. Ruth still has as many career shutouts as Pedro Martinez (17).
The final homer of his career that day in Pittsburgh was the first one ever to clear the right-field roof in the 26-year-old history of Forbes Field, a fitting finale to an amazing career. In 1982, I asked Burt Hawkins, a baseball writer who covered the game starting in the 1920s, to name the best player ever."