302 for his career with 660 career home runs. There was nothing on a baseball diamond that Mays couldn't do. Willie Mays was the quintessential five-tool player. Those five tools are: hitting for power, hitting for average, having great speed and skill as a base runner, being a great defender, and having a strong arm in the field. It wasn't as specialized as it is today, but pitchers usually finished games they started in the 1920s and 1930s.Īll of these factors made the game much more difficult to play in Mays' era, but yet he excelled like no one before or since.įive-tool players have been sought after as long as the game has been around. Relief pitching wasn't a part of baseball in Ruth's era like it was for Mays either. Ruth never had to travel cross-country to play a game that same night or had to play day games after night games. The turf causes unneeded wear and tear on a player's body. Ruth also never had to play on artificial turf like Mays and all his contemporaries had to. There's no way of knowing exactly, but no one can convince me that Ruth would have the same numbers had he hit against the likes of Rube Foster, Hilton Smith, and Satchel Paige. Ruth played in an era when baseball, like everything else in America, was segregated. It is unfair to label Ruth as the greatest ever when he didn't play against the best competition. However, don't confuse dominance for being the greatest player ever. He was the most dominant player and far superior to anybody that played against him. He towered over the competition like no player before or since. I won't deny Ruth's greatness as a player.

He not only hit 714 career home runs, but he also won 94 games as a pitcher and very likely could have made the Hall of Fame as a pitcher. Proponents of Ruth will say Ruth is by far the best player. Ruth, along with a new set of rules, took the control of the game off of the pitcher's mound and moved it directly into the batter's box.Īs great as Ruth was, he simply wasn't as good as William Howard Mays, the greatest baseball player of all time. He revolutionized the game and saved it after the Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919. Babe Ruth has become an icon almost bigger that the sport itself.

Breaking The Rules by Ruth Wind