Posts Tagged ‘babe ruth’

Quick Thoughts Rights and Wrong, Elon #freestacy, Undercover Honeypots, Vets die and the WW 2 and the revisionists strike, Pathetic White Sox, Caitlyn Clark as Babe Ruth, How Great was Ruth, Indians have hope, Mahomes, Brady and everyone else

Posted: September 7, 2024 by datechguy in baseball, Dynasty, dynasty baseball, fun, gaming, internet/free speech, News/opinion, nfl, Sports, tech, twitter
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I was just thinking…

Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, to wit: While you might have the right to buy your son an AR-15 as a gift even after he has been investigated by the FBI as a potential school shooter but as a father I submit it’s the wrong thing to do.

I simply don’t understand why Elon Musk’s twitter/X/whatever stubbornly refuses to re-instate Robert Stacy McCain. He was one of the first conservatives banned by twitter for the monstrous crime of quoting Radical feminists in their very own words and while there have been many others whose have been re-platformed on twitter Stacy is not one of them.

The number of lonely liberal men in the world must be high because between James O’Keefe OMG, Project Veritas and now Stephen Crowder there seems to be a limitless supply of such men willing to spill their guts to a honey pot who shows interest in them. Hey somebody has to be paying the money to those only fans models.

I think it’s no coincidence that the rise in antisemitism and the attempts to re-write the history of World War 2 (particularly the holocaust) are taking place when the youngest world war 2 vets alive are 97 years old. You don’t have a Dick Winters to come on TV to call them out anymore.

The best move that Dwight D Eisenhower ever did was making every US soldier who was able to see the camps so they couldn’t be denied. I distinctly remember Andy Rooney talking about seeing the camps one day but I (unexpectedly) can’t find the video anywhere.

The Red Sox broke their losing streak by beating the worst team in baseball history The 2024 Chicago White Sox whose current winning Percentage (.225) is a full .025 points behind the legendary 1962 Mets (.250). With 20 games to go The White Sox will have to go 9-11 to avoid the new “Worst Team EVAH!” title (.450). I just don’t see that happening.

Speaking of the NY Mets winning percentage from 2017 – 2023 the Indiana Heat of the WNBA have a combined winning percentage equal to those 62 Mets (58-74) with no playoff appearances, no winning records. In 2022 their winning percentage was .139 (5-31). This season they have clinched one of the 8 playoff spots currently holding 6th but mathematically could still finish as high as 4th or as low as 7th. That’s how much of an impact has Caitlyn Clark has on her Indiana Fever team. That’s a Babe Ruth class impact.

To put that last phrase in context in the 12 season years before Babe Ruth joined the NY Yankees (Highlanders till 1913) they had managed only two winning seasons. Not only would they would not have a losing record with Ruth on the roster (1918-1934) but the Babe would not live to see them have a losing season. He would die in 1948 and they would not have a losing season until 1965

In my 1972 online baseball league by all rights the Cleveland Indians season should be finished. They sit at 68 – 80 with 14 to play 7 1/2 games behind the Minnesota Twins who currently hold the final wild card spot in the AL. However not only have the Twins been collapsing spectacularly (2-8 in last 10) but they get three head to head games vs them next with a chance to get themselves back in it and have a fairly easy schedule the rest of the way. Alas for them the only team with an easier schedule, are those same Twins.

Finally the NFL season has started and will have their first full set of games this Sunday. They opened with the Kansas City Chiefs beating the Baltimore Ravens setting Patrick Mahomes on the path to another playoff season. How Dominant is Mahomes he has only lost 3 playoff games in his career and only one to a quarterback not named Tom Brady. How dominant are the pair of them? More than half of the Superbowls played in the 21st Century have had at least one of them playing in it (Brady 10, Mahomes 4) and the soonest that can no longer be true is 2027.

Tom Brady is the 3rd Best Player in an American Team Sport Behind Russell 2nd and Ruth 1st

Posted: January 30, 2021 by datechguy in baseball, nba, nfl, nhl, Sports
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We have now been hearing a discussion where people are asking: Is Tom Brady the greatest player in an American Team Sport ever? Brady being in his 10th Superbowl has earned him a place in that conversation with 10 trips to the finals in 21 chances. Or to put it another way,

  • Tom Brady’s avg of going to superbowls is higher than Ty Cobb’s avg of getting hits.
  • Tom Brady’s avg of going to superbowls is higher than the 3 point percentage of any NBA player in history
  • The only NFL team that has been to more Superbowls than Tom Brady is the New England Patriots with eleven trips over 61 years to Tom’s ten in 21 years. Nine of those trips were in years they were led by Tom Brady.
  • Tom Brady’s as of today has one less playoff win then Maurice Richard has Stanley Cup goals.

That being the case Brady deserves to be in consideration for the best player in a major American Team sport (Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey) of all time. There are two people in that conversation with him. Babe Ruth and Bill Russell.

Babe Ruth in 22 years went to 10 World Series winning Seven and if you look at the Baseball Reference pages over his career led the league in over 200 different categories over his career as both a Pitcher and as a Right fielder.

Bill Russell in 13 seasons in the NBA went to the playoffs every season making it to the finals 12 times and winning 11 titles, two of them as player coach.

Brady has four things in common with Ruth and Russell.

  • A Long Career
  • Success early and late in a career
  • Regular trips to the Finals
  • Long tenures in Boston

Brady has one thing in Common with Ruth favoring him over Russell

  • Success on multiple teams under multiple coaches/managers

Brady has two things in common with Russell over Ruth

  • A high level of play every uninjured season of his career (to this point) (Ruth’s final season stunk)
  • Never having cost his team a title with a boneheaded play to lose a series (Ruth inexplicably getting caught stealing in 1926 to lose the World Series)

And Brady has one advantage over Both Russell & Ruth

  • No Margin for error.

In a championship season Babe Ruth and his teams had the liberty of having as many as three bad games or three games where the opposing team outplayed them while still being capable of winning a championship. Bill Russell’s margin of error was larger, with a 6 to 9 game margin or error as their series were all best of seven. Or to put it simply if your better team had a bad day you still had the rest of a series games to show the other guy whose actually better.

However Tom Brady , as a football player, had no such margin of error. A single bad game or a single bad move and you are out. Russell’s Celtics & Ruth’s Yanks and Sox could blow a game or two in a series and still win. Brady never had that luxury.

Why then does Brady rank behind Russell? Very simple. While this season it’s been implied that Brady has functioned as a “coach” to the Offense, Bill Russell for two seasons won titles while actually being the head coach as well as the center. He not only had to play at a high level but had to while on the floor manage the team, call the plays and be aware enough to coach the team to the playoffs and to the title. He not only managed to do so, but managed to do so TWICE.

For that reason I give Russell an edge over Brady, at least so far. If Brady goes to an 11th Superbowl (which is entirely in the realm of possibility I may revisit that advantage.

However Babe Ruth has an advantage over Brady that is even more pronounced. He not only won six titles as the most feared slugger in the major leagues but won three titles as one of the top pitchers in the Majors. It would be as if Brady won his first three titles as the top linebacker or Defensive End before switching to Quarterback. Furthermore Ruth fundamentally changed the game of baseball in a way neither Russell nor Brady did in their sports. It’s true that after Ruth started hitting homers other soon followed, but Ruth did it first and the only chemical enhancements he had were hot dogs and beer.

For this reason I consider Babe Ruth the greatest team sport player in the history of sports, over Russell and over Brady. If Brady wins the superbowl this year and perhaps one other then I may revisit these rankings, if not then.

FYI Michael Jordon doesn’t make this list because while he won six titles in six trips all those titles came in the 2nd half of his career all with the same team and system and failed to make the playoffs with the wizards when he came back. LeBron James doesn’t make this list because of only four titles wins but given that he won three titles in three different cities under three different systems and has been to the finals 10 times one more trip will force him to be considered in this company. Kareem fails to make the top 3 because despite the six titles with two teams and titles early and late in his career, he had a very long period without making those finals or more properly if included on this list he is currently 5th with LeBron right behind him. Yogi Berra with 10 titles in 14 years and 3 MVP titles in a league that had Mantle & Williams is the person that Brady edges out for 3rd. Berra might have had better stats but his development was curtailed by a more pressing engagement off Normandy on June 6th 1944 & two months later in the invasion on the southern coast of France. In fact you might even be able to make a case for Berra going all the way to the top.

My top five list as of this moment would run Ruth, Russell, Brady, Berra, & Jabbar in that order with King James knocking on the door and very likely to take Kareem’s spot on this list perhaps as soon as this year.

Oh and one more thing about Babe Ruth…

Posted: December 31, 2009 by datechguy in baseball
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…to give you an idea of how good he was look at these pitching stats.

First lets start with the World Series, in 31 innings of World Series play he gave up 3 earned runs. That is an ERA of 0.87 against the National League Champion!

In the regular season he started 148 games and completed 107. That in itself is not so odd given his era, but consider this out of those 107 completed games 17 were shutouts.

Run that through your head, One out of every 8 starts he made was a shutout. That’s a slightly worse rate than Koufax, about the same rate as Bob Gibson but much worse than Walter Johnson, but if you can be mentioned in the same breath as these guys without looking bad, then you are really something.

No offense to Aaron, Bonds, Killebrew, Mays, Dimaggio, Mantle, Williams, Snyder, Ripken, Greenberg, Stan the Man, Yaz, Berra, Manny, Griffy, McGwire, Henderson, Pujols, Banks, Robinson, Josh Gibson and Ichrio et/al. When any of those guys put up pitching numbers half as good as Ruth to go along with their great offensive numbers then we’ll talk about who was greater than the babe and not before.