Official Barry Bonds Countdown Thread

[RedBean]

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I'll just conclude by restating my original opinion: Give Bonds the home run record, but not the Hall of Fame.

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Considering the HOF is decided by the sports media, it's definately a possibility that you'll get your wish.

[RedBean]

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lots of pretty damn good black pitchers that existed prior to integration. Satchel Paige, for starters.

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Good point...but it'd be hard for me to say that it would reduce his overall total. Somebody else can figure that out.

But, I'd probably estimate the color barrier precluded Ruth from the possibility of facing at least 5-10 Hall of Fame caliber pitchers that were black.

[vhawk01]

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Why do you say "likely to his detriment?"


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Because I think it possible a few brothers could have hit more than 714 homeruns during the 1900-1947 era if they had been allowed to play, and pre-emptively relegated Ruth to second potato throughout his career, possibly even setting the bar out of reach before Ruth had ever picked up a bat.

Not saying likely, but possible. We'll never know, because it wasn't allowed.

But, just imagine if Ruth had went through his career always behind the arbitrarily random and imaginary 837 homeruns from Blacky McBlackman who began play a few years prior to Ruth, then you'd have to agree things would have been just a wee bit different.

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Blacks are allowed to play today, and they are not dominating a list of the best pitchers in baseball.


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Good thing we're not talking about pitchers then. We're discussing HR hitters.

Let's take a list of the all-time HR lists since 1947, seperated by race:

White guys:
1. McGwire 583
2. Killebrew 573
3. Schmidt 548
4. Mantle 536
5. Matthews 512
6. Thome 490
7. Yaz 452
8. Bagwell 449
9. Kingman 442
10. Ripken 431

Black guys:
1. Bonds 757
2. Aaron 755
3. Mays 660
4. Griffey 589
5. Robinson 586
6. Jackson 563
7. McCovey 521
8. Banks 512
9. Thomas 505
10. Murray 504

If not for integration in 1947, Harmon Killebrew would have been #2 overall, and the HR king of the post-war era, until Big Mac would have passed him earlier this decade.

573 would've been a household number, known to everyone as second only to 714.

"The Killer" would be a widely recognized moniker for the past 25 years, rather than "The Hammer" or "Say Hey Kid".

But, since they let those black guys start picking up bats in 1947, it didn't quite turn out that way.

As a result, I'd postulate that it was somewhat to Harmon's detriment, despite his final total not being reduced at all.

Now do you see how it has absolutely nothing to do with the color of the guy on the mound?

And, don't get me wrong like you usually do...I'm not discounting Ruth's career by any stretch of the imagination... because we just don't know what what have happened had blacks been allowed to play....and I'm not even going to make an obvious argument that the past 60 years of integration has trended towards a dominance of blacks in career HR leaders....but don't tell me that blacks not being allowed to play prior to 1947 "doesn't matter" and would have had little or no detrimental effect to Ruth and specifically the career HR list, because the last 60 years of integration has shown otherwise.

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Who are these imagined black pitchers who would have dominated Ruth had they been allowed to play?


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They weren't allowed to play, so we don't know what would have been.

I've barely finished work on my time machine, and here you are already asking me to begin work on an "alternate universe machine" instead?

One breakthorugh at a time, young padawan.

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Is there any real evidence that black players would have reduced Ruth's career numbers at all,


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Not reduced, but instead outdistanced in advance of Ruth's even starting to play, or surpassed in a shorter time after him establishing his marks.

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..other than some notion that black athletes just dominate every facet of every sport they are allowed to play?

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I never asserted that, it's a patently ridiculous strawman. Why must you consistently resort to this tactic? That's like the fourth time in this thread you just pull patently ridiculous arguments out of thin air, atttribute them to me, and then proceed to argue with yourself over them.

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I think this entire argument is barking up the wrong tree, RedBean. And thats for one main reason. In the 60 or so years since black players have been allowed in baseball, none of them have been as good as Ruth (with the POSSIBLE but very contentious exception of Bonds) so there is absolutely not reason whatsoever to expect that any would have been better than him in the 60 or so years before integration.

There is a much better argument to be made that adding elite black pitchers would have slightly or more than slightly depressed Ruth's career numbers. And if your ultimate goal is showing that Bonds>Ruth, you don't need to depress those numbers very far, because its already really close.

[secretprankster]

Someone create a thread on Clark's comment. I think it would be an interesting (but tilt-inducing) discussion.

[vhawk01]

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Someone create a thread on Clark's comment. I think it would be an interesting (but tilt-inducing) discussion.

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I agree with him, but my general bias is that ALL sports are constantly getting better and it doesn't even take that long for demonstrable improvement. This is why whenever people talk about competitions between current great teams and historic great teams I have to mentally imagine some sort of adjustment factor or "in relation to league" factor because otherwise I feel the modern team will wipe the floor with the historic team no matter who they are.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of intelligent discussion such a thread would lead to, though. I'm aware of a few stats that try to reconcile this but they aren't very impressive and nostalgia>>>all.

[RedBean]

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In the 60 or so years since black players have been allowed in baseball, none of them have been as good as Ruth (with the POSSIBLE but very contentious exception of Bonds) so there is absolutely not reason whatsoever to expect that any would have been better than him in the 60 or so years before integration.

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I agree with that...wasn't talking about overall "goodness"...just explicitly the number of home runs hit.

For example, nobody in their right mind would ever argue Aaron was better than Ruth, or even close. But he did hit more homeruns.

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There is a much better argument to be made that adding elite black pitchers would have slightly or more than slightly depressed Ruth's career numbers.


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You think so? I don't know if I buy that, and I certainly couldn't sell it. I think Ruth could easily hit 35-45 HR's a year in today's game, and I wouldn't be all that surprised if he put up similar numbers as he did back then.

But do you really think integration would suppress his numbers all that much, if at all? What effect do you think throwing 5 or 10 more Hall of Fame black pitchers into the mix during his time would really have?

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And if your ultimate goal is showing that Bonds>Ruth, you don't need to depress those numbers very far, because its already really close.

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Um..not my goal. All I know for sure is that if you locked Ruth and Bonds up in a small room, you'd be holding the two greatest baseball players of all-time captive.

I don't even remember how it all got started, but we got to talking about it and I pointed out that no one was considering all the "could've been" black folks that weren't allowed to play that could've possibly have hit as many or more home runs before/after Ruth.

[vhawk01]

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In the 60 or so years since black players have been allowed in baseball, none of them have been as good as Ruth (with the POSSIBLE but very contentious exception of Bonds) so there is absolutely not reason whatsoever to expect that any would have been better than him in the 60 or so years before integration.

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I agree with that...wasn't talking about overall "goodness"...just explicitly the number of home runs hit.

For example, nobody in their right mind would ever argue Aaron was better than Ruth, or even close. But he did hit more homeruns.

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There is a much better argument to be made that adding elite black pitchers would have slightly or more than slightly depressed Ruth's career numbers.


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You think so? I don't know if I buy that, and I certainly couldn't sell it. I think Ruth could easily hit 35-45 HR's a year in today's game, and I wouldn't be all that surprised if he put up similar numbers as he did back then.

But do you really think integration would suppress his numbers all that much, if at all? What effect do you think throwing 5 or 10 more Hall of Fame black pitchers into the mix during his time would really have?

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And if your ultimate goal is showing that Bonds>Ruth, you don't need to depress those numbers very far, because its already really close.

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Um..not my goal. All I know for sure is that if you locked Ruth and Bonds up in a small room, you'd be holding the two greatest baseball players of all-time captive.

I don't even remember how it all got started, but we got to talking about it and I pointed out that no one was considering all the "could've been" black folks that weren't allowed to play that could've possibly have hit as many or more home runs before/after Ruth.

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Consider the fact that he played 15% of his games versus the Red Sox, and teams were using 4 man rotations, and pitchers threw a lot of complete games, and the impact of a single pitcher in, say, 1921 is several times greater than the impact of a single pitcher today. Infusing 3-4 HoF quality pitchers and maybe 6-10 sometimes-All Star quality pitchers would have certainly made SOME impact on his numbers. What if it cost him 5 HRs a year? Is that a stretch? And maybe 50 pts of OPS? I'm making these numbers up, but are they THAT unreasonable? 5 HR a year = 110 less home runs. 50 pts in OPS puts him at 1.114, which is still a bit over Bonds. I don't think its hard to imagine that these pitchers could have had an even greater impact on Ruth's numbers, but I am by no means saying its a certainty. Obviously, we can never know for sure. I just think its very reasonable that, since Ruth and Bonds are so close, adding in 5 or 6 great black pitchers could have tipped the scale. Ruth would still be amazing, but Bonds is ridiculously good.

[THAY3R]

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Why are you flipping out over this?

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Don't mistake my tone, I'm not flipping out. I'm enjoying the discussion.

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There would be a significant difference if Ruth played in a 30 team all white league than the 16 team league he actually played in.

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Do you think this negates the fact that Ruth never had to compete against blacks, and if he had, it could have been alot different, likely to his detriment?

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I don't think anyone was ever saying that it was fair that their were no blacks, or that Ruth would still be as dominant.

I think they are just pointing out that when people say "but he only played white players!" can be a bit misleading because we imagine the current MLB with only whites and it seems to be very diluted but in a 16 team league the talent from top to bottom would still be very good.

[NozeCandy]

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lots of pretty damn good black pitchers that existed prior to integration. Satchel Paige, for starters.

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Good point...but it'd be hard for me to say that it would reduce his overall total. Somebody else can figure that out.

But, I'd probably estimate the color barrier precluded Ruth from the possibility of facing at least 5-10 Hall of Fame caliber pitchers that were black.

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Lack of expansion also precluded him from facing many pitches who were decidedly less than Hall of Fame quality. I just hear people say that Ruth never played against black players etc., etc., and was just wondering if any of these people take into account the fact that the league was much, much smaller.

I do understand your point about black players potentially outperforming him while not reducing his numbers, though.

[vhawk01]

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Why are you flipping out over this?

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Don't mistake my tone, I'm not flipping out. I'm enjoying the discussion.

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There would be a significant difference if Ruth played in a 30 team all white league than the 16 team league he actually played in.

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Do you think this negates the fact that Ruth never had to compete against blacks, and if he had, it could have been alot different, likely to his detriment?

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I don't think anyone was ever saying that it was fair that their were no blacks, or that Ruth would still be as dominant.

I think they are just pointing out that when people say "but he only played white players!" can be a bit misleading because we imagine the current MLB with only whites and it seems to be very diluted but in a 16 team league the talent from top to bottom would still be very good.

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Right, imagine making an All-Star team this year from only white players, and see how they'd stack up against an average, "integrated" team like, say, the Twins. They'd crush the Twins. Even though they are all white. Now, extrapolate this to two or three or four All-Star White teams and eventually you get to a point where the Twins would win. Its at a number lower than 16, but it makes the point that those teams are still tougher than is implied in "but Ruth played in a weaker all-white league."