WHAT IF…the Red Sox never traded Babe Ruth?
Posted by Andy on October 9, 2010
How do you think baseball history would be different if the Red Sox had never traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees?
A few things to keep in mind:
- In his last year with the Red Sox in 1919, Ruth started 15 games as a pitcher, plus another 111 in the outfield and 5 at first base. The possibility exists that if he hadn't been traded, Ruth would have continued along as a pitcher (at least part-time) for the rest of his career.
- In his last 2 years with the Red Sox, Ruth led MLB in HR each year (with 11, yes 11, and 29.) Would the Red Sox have made the same decision to convert him to essentially a full-time outfielder so that he could play every game?
- The Yankees had a lot of great players in the 1920s but none greater than Ruth. Do they still win all the championships without him? And if not, what does it mean for the future of their franchise?
October 9th, 2010 at 8:16 am
Of course, it's all speculation, but I think his clam chowder intake would have been huge. With the "lively ball" era beginning in 1920, I wonder how effective he would have been as a lefthanded starting pitcher in Fenway Park, with the short left field dimension.
October 9th, 2010 at 9:09 am
Another factor is if the Red Sox didn't sell Ruth then they probably wouldn't have sold/traded the MANY other players from their championship years. The 20's Yankees look a lot different.
October 9th, 2010 at 9:42 am
The press would have you believe the Yankees won so much in the 20's because Babe Ruth was driving in game-winning runs so much. However, in reality, they won because of the money brought in by Ruth's presence. Ruth was a rock star among ball players, with a popularity that no player can even come close to today. He filled the park, no matter where he played. Ticket sales was the sole source of revenue for a ball club in the 20's, and the Yankees were shrewd and wise in the way the invested the money Ruth brought to them. They scouted areas of the country that were seldom scouted by other clubs (like the west coast), and they invested a lot more into scouting colleges. This was how they acquired their great players like Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazerri, to surround Ruth with. The Yankees were in the process of building a solid organization even before they acquired Ruth, and likely would have been contenders much of the time even without him, but they would not have had the resources to build the powerhouse teams of '27 and '28. If Ruth had remained on the Red Sox, then the Sox probably would have been contenders a few times in the 20's, but the Sox were not as smart with their money as the Yankees were.
Had Ruth remained on the Red Sox, they would probably have had a pennant or two in the 20's, but they would not have dominated. The Yankees might have won a pennant, and been tough to be beat much of the time, but without the Ruth money, they would not have been able to acquire the players needed to be dominant. We also probably would have seen more success from the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia A's.
October 9th, 2010 at 9:53 am
If they don't have Ruth, what does Yankee Stadium look like when they only have Gehrig and Lazzeri as their big hitters in the 1920s? Is it a park so favorable to left-handed hitters, or is it more balanced like Comiskey?
October 9th, 2010 at 10:16 am
I don't think Yankee Stadium is built without Ruth. In 1920, the Yankees became the first team to draw 1 million fans, doubling their attendance from 1919. They played at the Polo Grounds,owned by the Giants. John McGraw, angered by being overshadowed in his own park, told them to get the hell out.
So the Yankees built a stadium across the river, a fortress visible from the Polo Grounds.
The sale of Ruth to the Yankees not only changed the Red Sox's fortune but the Giants' as well. The Giants are kind of the era are kind of like the Dallas Cowboys of 60s and 70s, They don't win it all, but they go the big dance often and they are glamorous team. They are arguably a team with a large national following.
At the very least they are the most popular team in New York . . . before 1920.
October 9th, 2010 at 10:52 am
@4
Gehrig wasn't a regular until '25. Not that there would even be a Yankee Stadium, as said by Tom.
October 9th, 2010 at 10:58 am
They did not trade him. They sold him. (Well, they traded him for a sack of money -- but that is usually called a sale.)
It may be a nit-pick, but it's likely the most famous transaction in baseball history -- and a lot of people still get it wrong. Grrrr.....
(Interesting that Ruth won 3 WS titles with Boston and 4 with NY.)
October 9th, 2010 at 11:02 am
I do not believe Boston would have had Ruth continue pitching. In 1918, he said he was willing to do both -- play LF or 1B on days he was not pitching -- but he actually got annoyed with that arrangement fairly early on. That was one big reason why he jumped the club in early July. He wanted to do one or the other -- and since he hit so well in 1919, and seemed to like it more than pitching, I would say his days on the mound were over no matter who he played for.
October 9th, 2010 at 11:03 am
In 1918, the Boston Red Sox won the WWI shortened season and subsequent World Series with a great pitching staff. If you look at the Red Sox pitching staff from 1918 - 1920, it was tranferred nearly intact to the New York Yankees. In addition to Babe Ruth who was the Red Sox star pitcher, the Yankees won in the 1920s with former Sox Pitchers Herb Pennock, Bullet Joe Bush, Sad Sam Jones, Waite Hoyte, and Carl Mays. Although the Babe was the Yankees biggest star, the Yankees don't win without the BoSox pitching staff.
October 9th, 2010 at 11:22 am
I always wonder what would have happened had the original deal of sending Ruth to the White Sox for cash and Joe Jackson went through. Would the White Sox's fortunes have been better in the twenties and thirties? It's all speculation, sure, but it's fun.
October 9th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Ed Barrow still turns the Yanks into contenders, maybe even the top team of the early 20s, but Ruppert's money isn't used quite as freely once the shine begins to come off, and the building blocks for dynasty aren't there. Like most NY teams, if they spend and get the right players, they can win; if they don't, there may be long years of nothing special. The Giants make sure of that, too.
Sox still mismanage, and as they had already shown with dumping Speaker, but with Ruth and the lively ball era, go neck and neck with the Yanks in the early 20s, the Senators in the mid 20s and the A's in the late 20s.
Brad is basically right.
October 9th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
WHAT IF...
A-rod didn't swat at the ball
October 9th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
The Red Sox still enter a period of darkness for nearly 80 years, led by a series of poor moves by the front office, starting with a decision to end the nonsense of Ruth being both a pitcher and a hitter. The Sox decide he should be just a pitcher, ending his batting and OFing in fear he'll injury his pitching arm. He goes on to win 254 major league games and is elected to the HOF, but his years of being a top pitcher ends in 1927 when he tears his rotator cuff. He attempts several comebacks, but finally calls it quits in 1931.
Lou Gehrig, who we have recently discovered may not have died not from ALS, but a different motor neuron disease caused by repeated baseball beanings, becomes less of a target by pitchers in the still potent, but weaker Yankee line-up and suffers several less concussions over his career. He never develops the ALS-like symptoms that took his life, but instead plays MLB through 1946. He's never drafted for WWII since he was already 38 when Pearl Harbor is attacked, and his career is extended as he feasts on the weaker competition during the war years. He becomes the first player to ever hit 700 HRs.
The Iron Horse turns out to be that for real. In April 2010, at the age of 106, he is the oldest living MLB ballplayer, but is still healthy enough to attend Opening Day ceremonies at Yankee Stadium to celebrate the Yankees' 30th World Series championship. While his once all-time HR record has been surpassed, he is baseball's only member of the 3,000/3,000 Club, having played in more than 3,000 consecutive baseball games and driven in a MLB record 3,000 career RBIs, both regarded as unbreakable. Gehrig is easily the Yankees greatest hitter and is regarded as the greatest hitter ever. The second greatest Yankee hitter is Ted Williams, who signs with the Yanks as the Sox continued with their odd fascination with pitching, trying to recapture some of their early Babe Ruth success from the later teens and early 20s.
As a side note, Cal Ripken abandons any attempt to break Gehrig's record early in his career. The extra rest each season makes him a more productive baseball player. Derek Jeter, realizing he has no chance of establishing the all-time Yankee hit record, announces he'll retire from MLB after the 2011 season. Lou Gehrig announces his intentions "God willing, to attend Jeter's retirement ceremony."
--
Hey, it's all for fun!
October 9th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
I'll duck the question by asking another one: What if Babe Ruth came up today in the American League? What are the chances that a team would take a top-drawer left-handed starter out of the rotation no matter how well he hit?
October 9th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Really off topic, but I have a What if topic that I think people will find interesting. What if... Then- Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush became MLB Commissioner after Fay Vincent left instead of Bud Selig becoming commissioner?
Back to the topic. The live ball era still lives but the Red Sox are seen on more equal footing in terms of history compared to the Yankees. The Red Sox do win a few more championships in the early 20s as Babe Ruth emerges as a sort of American League counterpart to Walter Johnson.Yes, I am saying Babe Ruth stays a pitcher, but a dominant one. Jimmie Foxx, Hack Wilson, and Lou Gehrig will be more recognized as the sluggers who kick off the live ball era. The chase for 58 in 1961 to tie Hank Greenberg and Jimmy Foxx is still remembered just as well today, but the stigma of Maris having more games than those players is lessened. The Yankees of the early 20s don't quite get the money that Ruth eventually brought in, but they still build a championship team by the late 20s-early 1930s. Yankees Stadium is eventually built, but not as early on as it was.
October 9th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Harry Frazee doesn't get any money to finance his play and has to stay out of show business. "No, No, Nanette" never gets made from that play. The world must do without "Tea for Two".
October 9th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Good question. I believe the transformation of Ruth to pitcher indeed happens with Boston. His hitting
was to dominant to ingnore. The larger question, as others have alluded to, is does Boston continue to
trade all the other players also to NY. I can only say thank you Mr. Frazee.
An interesting side note, according to Roger Kahn in his masterful work about the 78 Yankees is this
fascinating nugget about Lou Gehrig...
In 1925 the Yankees intended to acquire a 1B From Boston named Phil Todt. The Yankees offered Lou Gehrig
and Boston said NO!
Maybe if Boston hadn't been burned so much the last five years, they make that trade. Maybe The Babe and
Lou still would have played together, but in Boston.
October 9th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Babe Ruth would not have been nearly the legendary character he became if he didn't play so many years in the nation's biggest city.
October 9th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
[...] WHAT IF…the Red Sox never traded Babe Ruth? » Baseball-Reference … [...]
October 9th, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Even if he put up the same numbers?
Lots of sports legends have come out of non-NY teams: Michael Jordan being the first to come to mind
October 9th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Meant to write @18
October 10th, 2010 at 12:00 am
There's a likely chance the the Cubs, Red Sox, Indians and/or Phillies are able to win a World Series sooner.
October 10th, 2010 at 2:50 am
Don't forget, even if he remained a dominant pitcher, Ruth's numbers wouldn't have looked the same in a lively era. More Ks, and I can't imagine with his personality that he wouldn't be aggressive, so he'd probably allow plenty of HR. But then, he was good at taking and issuing walks in his career, so maybe there would be some discipline.
Even as a part-time hitter, he'd put Ruffing and Uhle and other top-hitting pitchers to shame, and amass decent career totals. Not like a full-time player, maybe, but ridiculous figures for a pitcher. Even if you basically triple his Red Sox totals, you figure he'd get like 150 HR or 750 RBI. That's not counting the lively ball or a 22-year career.
MikeD, Gehrig would have had a shot at 700 HR had he played five more healthy years, but 3,000 RBI? Not likely. Of course, not impossible... I was going to say that without Ruth he wouldn't get as many homers, but then, he was the protection, not the other way around. Fewer RBI, maybe, but his totals barely dipped after Ruth left.
October 10th, 2010 at 6:50 am
Ruth never "builds" Yankee Stadium. The Yankees play in an abandoned lot and fold when visiting teams refuse to play there after too many players are hurt by the broken glass that litters the outfield.
October 10th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I never understood why the Yankees didn't use Ruth as a pitcher and outfielder.
October 10th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
[...] WHAT IF…the Red Sox never traded Babe Ruth? » Baseball-Reference … [...]
October 10th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Also, don't forget Ruth hit nearly as many road homers in 1920 as he did in 1919. He would probably have had several hundred fewer home runs had he not been traded. IMO, 1919 was his best year by far. He also didn't have the very high strikeout numbers which means he wasn't likely swinging for the fences as much. This doesn't lower effect his value, but does show how impressive his performance was.
October 10th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
The Yankees don't become a huge team, aren't able to buy their way to 27 World Championships, Steinbrenner never buys the team, Scott Boras dies penniless, and the world is a better place.
October 10th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
@23, TheGoof -- Agreed on Gehrig not making 3,000 RBIs. I started out to write a very serious "what I think" might have happened if Ruth never came to the Yankees, and I realized it was impossible. Too many ripple effects, so to illustrate the many variables, I took a very extreme example of something that might have changed, such as Lou Gehrig never getting something like A.L.S. if one wants to believe the recent medical study that it might have been caused by concussion syndrome. (I still think it was ALS).
Beyond that not-quite-serious suggestion, I do think Gehrig would have reached 700 HRs. Highly unlikely he'd have played in 3,000 straight games. The older he go the more injury prone he would have become, but he certainly might have put in another four years or so and 600-700 games. That might have created a number in the upper 2,000s that might have shorted out Ripken's attempt figuruing it was just too far off.
The RBIs was a good stretch, although I could see in the 2700+ range. He drove in a ton or RBIs every year, with Ruth and without. The year prior to his contracting ALS (or whatever it was) he showed a pretty substantial decline from his normal numbers. While most patients don't know they have neurological disorders such as ALS until it substantially starts to impact them, most experts believe it's likely that Gehrig would have started to suffer from reduced functionality in 1938, explaining his drop in statistics. It then reached unmanageble levels by the Spring of 1939.
If that's the case, then we have to up his '38 numbers to a normal level (for Gehrig) and then try and project out a normal age decline through 1946, recognizing we are not dealing with a normal man/hitter. He obviously was not a normal physical speciman prone to injuries and one of the elite hitters to ever play the game. His productivity, even in decline, should have been quite good. Add in that the competition during the War years was quite weak, so he could have been driving in 100-plus RBIs for another five or six years, even in decline.
Fun to think about, but we'll never know. I think it is pretty safe to believe no one would be approaching his career RBI record, even short of 3,000.
October 10th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
GarryHarris (#9),
"In addition to Babe Ruth who was the Red Sox star pitcher, the Yankees won in the 1920s with former Sox Pitchers Herb Pennock, Bullet Joe Bush, Sad Sam Jones, Waite Hoyte, and Carl Mays."
But there's much more to this than just those pitchers. The Yankee also got George Pipgras from Boston, in 1925. And:
1918 - Duffy Lewis
1920 - Harry Harper, Wally Schang, Mike McNally
1921 - Everett Scott
1922 - Joe Dugan, Elmer Smith
1923 - Harve Hendrick
1924 - Steve O'Neill
1925 - Bobby Veach
Some became key starters (Scott, Dugan), while the others were key roll players.
Of course, New York's return to glory in the '30's owes a great deal to their acquisition of Red Ruffing from the Red Sox, in exchange for Ced Durst.
And they called the New York-Kansas City transaction circus a big deal!
I think Boston would have gone on to be a dominant team in the A.L. well into the '20's.
October 10th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
The headline poses one question, the subhead quite another:
1. What if the Red Sox had never traded Ruth?
2. What if the Red Sox had never traded Ruth to the Yankees?
It's almost impossible for me to imagine the first scenario, the Red Sox simply holding onto Ruth. Whatever the reasons, the club did not draw well after Ruth's first full season (1915). In 1916, en route to their 3rd WS championship in 5 years, they drew less than 500,000, ranking 3rd in the AL. In '17, they finished a strong 2nd with 90 wins, but their attendance fell to about 388,000 (5,100 per game), 4th in the AL. They won the WS in '18, but in the war-shortened season they drew less than 250,000 (4,000 per game). In 1919, they had a losing season, and fell to 5th in attendance. And that was Ruth's first full year as a hitter, when he hit an unfathomable 29 HRs and was easily the best offensive player in the game. If that didn't put a lot of fannies in the seats, what would? So the attendance issue, combined with Frazee's outside interests, made it almost inevitable that Ruth would be sent away.
So, what if Ruth had been sent to ... the NY Giants?
-- Ruth posts even more astronomical hitting records. Instead of moving to Yankee Stadium in 1923, he stays in the Polo Grounds, where he had a career .842 slugging average, 1.346 OPS (163 points higher than his Yankee Stadium mark) and averaged 58 HRs per 154 games (47 at Yankee).
-- The Giants, already a strong team, win 12 pennants and 8 WS in 15 years, 1920-34.
October 10th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
ruth still converts to the outfield after his pitching numbers tank in 1921 with the advent of the live-ball era and masters the art of getting the ball around that right field pole. boston, having one of the best rotations in baseball, can afford to do so and acquires talent around ruth, replacing him in the rotation with a top level pitcher and several position players. ruth leads the red sox to four world series titles during his career, the last of them coming in 1932 against the cubs. during that world series he and jimmie foxx go back to back on two separate occasions. foxx taunts the cubs pitcher by pointing to the outfield bleachers after ruth hits a third home run. he flies out however. ruth finishes his career with 495 career home runs and just short of 2000 rbi, and is elected to the hall of fame in its fourth year of existence. at his retirement in 1936 he is voted the second most popular player behind lou gehrig. he dies less than a year after his HOF induction of a heart attack.
October 10th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
John, does Mel Ott develop any differently with Ruth on the team? Could the very young Ott have been so intimidated by Ruth that it hinders his development? Or does he learn some good tips which make him an even better player than he was?
October 10th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Babe Ruth remains a pitcher. After Willie Mays breaks Jimmie Foxx's career home record in 1966, he and Hank Aaron have a thrilling duel over the next several years for the all-time record. Fred McGriff comes out of nowhere and beats both of them.
October 11th, 2010 at 12:31 am
ah, heck, let's start another fight: If Willie Mays was allowed to pitch...
October 11th, 2010 at 2:26 am
Lou Gehrig's 1938 season may have been one of the most statistically impressive in baseball history if, in fact, his illness had begun to take hold.
October 11th, 2010 at 8:54 am
@33
J.T. -- Well, sure; Ruth shows Ott the importance of physical fitness and "early to bed, early to rise"....
But seriously (though I'm not sure that you were) -- if Ruth didn't have that sort of negative effect on the young Lou Gehrig, I don't see why things would have been different with Ott.
October 11th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Well, Ott was only 17 when he got to the bigs, from the deep south. Gehrig was a local college boy. Of course, Ott probably had John McGraw protecting him and trying to keep his nose clean. Which makes one wonder how Ruth and McGraw would have gotten along. No doubt they would have butted heads some.
October 12th, 2010 at 12:07 am
Good speculations, perhaps especially the fanciful ones (Mike D.) Thanks.
October 12th, 2010 at 11:52 am
The Red Sox might have folded if they kept the babe because they used the money from the sale to pay the mortgage on fenway.
October 13th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
To add to MikeD's story:
In 1949, Cehrig is named manager of the Yankees. He remains in that position for 20 years, leading the Bombers to 16 pennants and 10 World Series wins.
When the Yanks are put up for sale, Gehrig puts together a team of businessmen and buys the club; he evantually buys 100 percent interest in the club, though he has now turned over the day-to-day owner's duties to his children and grandchildren.
George Steinbrenner buys the Mets.
Enjoy!