This year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game is held tonight, July 11, the day of the 109th anniversary of the debut of the game’s most monumental figure and greatest player: Babe Ruth. The 2023 season marks a milestone anniversary of Ruth’s impact on the game: 100 years since the opening of the original Yankee Stadium and the first New York Yankees World Championship. It was also quite arguably Ruth’s finest season.
In Ruth’s 1914 pitching debut, he claimed a 4-3 victory over the Cleveland Naps, saved by Dutch Leonard, who went 19-5 with a record 0.96 ERA in 224.2 innings that season. The Red Sox were working the 19-year-old Ruth in slowly, with two starts in July and then two in October. He got his first hit only on October 2, 1914, after the whole world had changed since early July, off veteran Yankees hurler Leonard “King” Cole. Cole was the rookie sensation of 1910, going 20-4 with an NL-best 1.80 ERA for the pennant-winning Tinker-Evers-Chance Cubs, but the fun-loving Cole (the role model for Ring Lardner’s “Alibi Ike”) was in bad shape by the end of 1914 and would die in early 1916 of a tumor at the age of 29.
Nine years later, Ruth had become such a phenomenon that the Yankees — playing as guests of the Giants in the upper-Manhattan Polo Grounds in 1920–22 — could afford to build their own ballpark, in the Bronx. Opening April 18, 1923, it became “the House that Ruth Built.” The Yankees, perennial American League doormats from 1907 to 1919 and with zero pennants to their name, were in first place as late as mid-September 1920, Ruth’s wild first season. One of their two competitors, the Indians, had their star starting shortstop, Ray Chapman, killed by a pitch by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays in August (fortunately for the Indians, they added rookie shortstop Joe Sewell, who went on to a Hall of Fame career), while the defending champion White Sox had the guts of their team suspended in late September for throwing the 1919 World Series. The Indians won the World Series (over the Brooklyn Dodgers); the Yankees won the next two pennants, but lost both World Series to their crosstown landlords, the Giants. Ruth, one of the all-time great World Series pitchers with the Red Sox in 1916 and 1918, batted a feeble .212/.366/.333 with just a single home run in 11 games across the 1921 and 1922 World Series. His 1922 season was forgettable overall after two masterful seasons in 1920–21, as Ruth was suspended for the first 33 games of the season for offseason barnstorming to make money.
In 1923, he was hungry and motivated. The team got into first place 17 games into the season, built a double-digit lead by July 2, and never looked back, going 98–54, and they were better on the road (52–24) than at the new stadium (46–30). Still, Ruth tore the place up, batting .411/.572/.805 at home. The competition for the title of Babe Ruth’s best season is crowded:
- In 1916, he was the best left-handed pitcher in baseball, going 23-12 with an American League–leading 1.75 ERA and won a 1-0 14-inning duel in the World Series, which the Red Sox won.
- In 1918, the one year that he was genuinely a regular hitter and pitcher at once, he led the Red Sox to their last World Championship for 86 years despite nearly dying in midseason of the Spanish flu; Ruth was the best hitter in the league, batting .300/.411/.555, went 13-7 with a 2.22 ERA as a pitcher, and went 2-0 with a 1.06 ERA in 17 innings in two World Series starts, setting a scoreless-innings streak record for World Series pitching that would stand for over four decades.
- In 1920, the year after hitting a record-setting 29 home runs, Ruth passed that mark in mid-July and batted .376/.532/.847. He set career highs in slugging average, OPS, and OPS+, scored 158 runs and drew 150 walks in 142 games, hit more home runs than all but one other major league team, and set records for slugging average, OPS, and OPS+ that stood for 81 years until Barry Bonds. (Yes, some Negro Leagues stars are listed with higher single-season averages, but in much shorter schedules and with the problems of Negro Leagues record-keeping).
- In 1921, Ruth batted at almost the same pace (.378/.512/.846) but missed only two games, so he scored an AL-record 177 runs, drove in a career-high 168, set a still-standing record with 457 total bases, and led the Yankees to their first pennant.
- In 1927, of course, Ruth hit his record 60 home runs, batted .356/.486/.772 with 165 RBI and 158 runs scored in 151 games, and led the Yankees to arguably the greatest of all seasons, with a 110-44 record and a World Series sweep.
For all of that, 1923 might have been Ruth’s crown jewel. At 28 years old, working as hard as he ever did to stay in shape, Ruth may have hit “only” 41 home runs (on that pre-Gehrig team, second baseman Aaron Ward was second on the team with 10), but he played in all but two games for a career-high 699 plate appearances, batted .393/.545/.764, set a still-standing record by reaching base safely 379 times, set a record that stood for 78 years with 170 walks, and set career highs as well in batting, on-base percentage, hits, doubles, and stolen bases, plus 13 triples. (On the negative side, he also set career highs with 93 strikeouts and 21 caught stealing). He won the AL MVP award — his only such award because it was revived only in 1922, and AL rules at the time barred repeat winners. Owing to Ruth’s good conditioning, he also had his best year with the glove, notching a career-high 20 outfield assists compared with 11 errors (low for Ruth). According to modern metrics, that meant Ruth was worth 19 Fielding Runs, helping him to 14.1 Wins Above Replacement, the highest-ever for a position player, outdistancing his own 1921 and 1927 seasons.
Ruth’s hot-weather streaks in those years in the 1920s were otherworldly (credit to baseball-reference.com), including a preposterous stretch of 90 games in 1923 when he batted .429 with a .578 on base percentage:
There was still one mountain to climb: John McGraw’s Giants in the World Series. The Yankees had good pitching by now, with the best team ERA and by far the best team defense (measured as a percentage of balls in play turned to outs) in the American League. But they needed a big series by the Bambino, and they got one. Ruth batted .368/.556/1.000 and scored 8 runs in six games. He had the first of his four career multi-homer World Series games in Game Two, and homered again in the decisive Game Six. With the 1921–22 monkey off his back, Ruth would become an October terror. From 1923 to 1932, in 25 World Series games, Ruth batted 400/.545/.965 with 14 home runs against the best the National League could offer. The Sultan of Swat would not be denied. Heywood Broun, watching Ruth’s Game Two performance, paraphrased Mark Twain: “The Ruth is mighty and shall prevail.”