stevenberlinjohnson.com: The Numbers Game

I meant to point to John Heilemann's excellent piece on the steroids controversy, "Let Juice Loose," when it ran two weeks ago, and not just because it had a nice shout-out to my elective surgery piece from Wired last year. John makes some great points about the records mythology of baseball:

Elective surgery will also pose knotty problems for another of the arguments deployed in defense of bans on doping: that in a sport such as baseball, where history matters—where, indeed, records are revered as sacred—letting players juice would make it impossible to compare performances over time. This is why Bonds, as he approaches Hank Aaron’s home-run record, has ginned up so much consternation. But is it really possible that if a player known to have had laser eye surgery were to surpass, say, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, that baseball would contemplate placing an asterisk next to his name in the record books (as some are suggesting should be Bonds’s fate if he surpasses Aaron)? If not, why not? The truth is that all the talk in baseball about the sacredness of its records is little more than another tactic in the long-running campaign waged by its overseers to mystify the game.

I'd add one other point to the debate, which has no doubt been said a million times in discussing this issue: the primary reason why records shouldn't be considered so sacred is that they don't factor in the obvious increase in overall competitiveness in the sport. Barry Bonds might have used steroids to help him hit 13 more home runs than Babe Ruth ever managed in a single season, but Ruth had a huge advantage over Bonds in that the pool of pitching talent he was facing was drawn entirely from white Americans. No doubt there was a Pedro Martinez or a Mariano Rivera throwing rocks at 95 MPH in the Dominican Republic or Panama back in the 1920s, but Ruth didn't have to face them because they had no way to make it into the major leagues back then. When Ruth played, there was a potential talent pool of about 10 million people; now, the number is in the hundreds of millions, and the system for discovering and nurturing new talent is vastly more efficient than it was then.

When you factor in the increased training regimes, non-elective surgical techniques, computerized analysis of batter/pitcher history, and the accumulated strategic wisdom of playing a sport for seventy-five years -- it should be clear that the bar of competitiveness has been raised significantly since Ruth hit his 714 homers. We don't see clear evidence of this trend because the batters have been improving alongside the pitchers, so it tends to even out. (Though we do see it in the decline of .400 hitting, as Stephen Jay Gould explained in Full House.) But if the problem with steroids is -- at least in part -- that it makes it unfair to compare one era's hitters with another era's, why isn't the increase in the overall quality of play equally problematic? Even without steroids, I wager Bonds would have hit 73 home runs -- if not more -- off the pitching of the 1920s. Maybe Ruth should have the asterisk.

The Basics

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of five books. In early 2007 I went and foolishly got myself a day job running the hyperlocal community site, outside.in that I co-founded the year before. We spend most of the year in Park Slope, Brooklyn, though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbj6668 at earthlink dot net. Media requests should go to Matthew.Venzon at us.penguingroup dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

Live SBJ

Recent Essays

The War On Error
Discover column on the web's bottom-up response to Katrina.
Air Purifiers For Data Smog
Discover column on software that helps you focus.
Why The Web Is Like A Rain Forest.
Discover column on Web 2.0.
Finding "Lost"
London Times piece on the mysterious hit show "Lost."
The Urban Long Tail
Discover column on the diversity of cities.

My Books

The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.
Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!

Comments

You ought to read the newly published essay 'Batting Practice: Is Barry Bonds Better Than Babe Ruth?" by Nate Silver in the book 'Baseball Between the Numbers', since it does a fairly good job adjusting their numbers for era--and addresses the issue of the pool of talent from which baseball draws. It turns out that Babe Ruth was a much more dominant power hitter than Bonds, whereas Bonds was superior in ability to get on base. Had Ruth played today (and had the same access to technology as Bonds), the writer figures he would have hit over 900 home runs.

Posted by: Joel Witmer | April 24, 2006 at 07:35 AM

It's impossible to say what Ruth would do in today's game or what Bonds would have done back in the '20s. All we can do is compare each man to his contemporaries, and in that context it's no contest. Bonds is the most prolific power hitter of this generation, but there are others (McGwire, Sosa) not so far behind. Ruth, on the other hand, stood alone. In 1920, when the Babe shattered his own year-old home run record (29) by hitting 54, his total was greater than that of all but one other major league TEAM. When Ruth hit 60 in 1927, he out-homered every other American League team. That's unsurpassed dominance.

Posted by: Jeff Wagenheim | April 24, 2006 at 08:23 AM

Yes, Ruth had way more power than any of his peers for most of the twenties, but it's just as likely that that gap was attributable to the novelty of home-run hitting as a strategy; Ruth was the first player who really swung for the fences a significant portion of the time. It took the rest of the league a while to catch up to that approach. So if you look at the numbers in 1921, it does look impressive. The top five home run hitters in the AL are:

Ruth 59
Meusel 24
Williams 24
Walker 23
Heilmann 19

Ruth has 2.5 as many homers as anyone else. But fast forward fourteen years later, and the spread looks like this:

Gehrig 49
Foxx 44
Trosky 35
Johnson 34
Averill 31

That's pretty much representative of the HR leaders, after 1930 or so. So what happened? Did the players suddenly get stronger? Did the pitching suddenly decline? Not likely, right? Much more likely is that a generation of new players came along who had re-oriented themselves around home run hitting as a basic offensive strategy, thanks to Ruth's success and visibility. But if Bonds had somehow time-traveled back to 1921, he would have had that strategy in place already, and I suspect would have been competitive with Ruth, if not even more powerful.

But I'll have to check out the Silver essay -- sounds like fun.

Posted by: Steven Johnson | April 24, 2006 at 09:27 AM

There is a key distinction that needs to be made when discussing players from different generations. When we talk about Bonds playing in 1928, say, are we talking about the modern Bonds, who has had access to modern, sophisticated medicine and technology, or are we talking about Bonds as if he grew up in the 1930s? Same thing for Ruth if he were to play today. Are we talking about tranposing statistics across generations or translating statistics across generations?

In the context of the discussion going on here, the prompt was that baseball's statistics ought to be viewed as ahistorical. The issue isn't whether Ruth's statistics relative to his peers makes him outstanding (though he is), but rather whether we can accruately compare Ruth's statistics to modern statistics, given all of the changes over the years. To this I suggest taking a look at the Silver essay.

Posted by: Joel Witmer | April 24, 2006 at 09:46 AM

A recent article by Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe also attempts to dismantle the romantic sanctity of past records. He brings up the really simple and obvious (but often overlooked) reasons for why baseball today is not exactly baseball of the past. Forget about technological advances, like Tommy John and Lasik. Back then, they had dead balls, smaller gloves and ground rule doubles that were ruled home runs:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2006/04/23/in_baseball_times_change_and_so_do_the_standards/

Posted by: fengypants | April 24, 2006 at 03:04 PM

Just a brief comment. Everyone keeps talking about what Bonds would've done if he had played in 1930. If he did, wouldn't he have been in the Negro Leagues and not in Major League Baseball?

Posted by: Paul | April 25, 2006 at 08:13 AM

Though I agree with Steven, I believe the real problem most people have with seroids is who they precieve to be using them. They see power hitters looking, well, powerful. Yet, steroids can also be used to ease pain and build elongated muscles. It all depends on how you work out. They often tell women to use more reps and less weight to build toned muscles that aren't bulging muscles. This also makes your muscles more stamina oriented. Basically, what pitchers need. They can't have lats like Bonds because it would screw up their throwing motion. Thus, they don't train the same way Bonds does. Why is it impossible to believe pitchers do use steroids and work out differently?

Posted by: Ryan | April 25, 2006 at 10:48 AM

It was explained to me that steriods aid the muscle building process by speeding recovery from the workout. No Pain -- No Gain can be repeated more often if the pain of the workout goes away quickly. Hence, More Gain. Relief pitchers have a work profile that stands to benefit from enhanced time to recover as pitching is a destructive activity and they may called upon to pitch several games in a row.

This list [wiki -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_suspended_for_steroids] of penalized major league players shows 4 relief pitchers and 2 starters out of 13. A 25 player roster will typically include 5 starters and 6-7 relief pitchers.

More telling, this list [Baseball America -- http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/050404steroids.html] of minor league steriod suspensions shows 8 catchers out of 38 total. I'm sure a catcher hurts all over, every day.

Posted by: black dog barking | April 30, 2006 at 07:42 AM

Steroids are bad for your health. It can cause serious damage to your brain, and of course damaged your sexual potention.

Posted by: Grace Smith | May 02, 2006 at 06:51 AM

I really think that this whole steroid story is blown out of proportion. Not only are they assuming too much regarding the effects that these enhancers have on players, but they also are completely ganging up on one particular player. That's not right. It's time to look at this more practically. Let's keep things in perspective. Bond's great career numbers show that steroids did not change His performances. Yes, He had a fluke season, but so did Ruth with His 60.

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Posted by: Betsy Markum | May 23, 2006 at 03:21 AM

Every once in a while I hear a knucklehead say that if Babe Ruth were around today, he'd use steroids. Well, after scratching my head and thinking about this inflammatory assertion, I had an epiphany: Babe Ruth wouldn't need steroids – if the 1927 American League season was played in today's parks, Ruth would once again hold the record for the most home runs in one summer.

But just to show you that I'm not guilty of the same armchair idiocy as these fomenters of tomfoolery, I’ll show you the research and analysis I did on this one:

1. My epiphany concerns dimensions. As everyone knows, ballparks were considerably bigger in Ruth's day than today. But how much bigger? Well, here are the dimensions of several American League parks then and now.

Yankee Stadium

1927 2006
281 feet LF 318 feet
460 feet LCF 399 feet
490 feet CF 408 feet
429 feet RCF 385 feet
295 RF 314 feet

Navin Field/Comerica Park (Detroit Tigers)

1927 2006
341 feet LF 345 feet
365 feet LCF 370 feet
467 feet CF 420 feet
370 feet RCF 365 feet
371 feet RF 330 feet

League Park/Jacobs Field (Cleveland Indians)

1927 2006
385 feet LF 325 feet
415 feet LCF 370 feet
420 feet CF 405 feet
317 feet RCF 375 feet
290 feet* RF 325 feet
* In an effort to fit it into Cleveland's street grid, League Park had a rather unusual configuration: since right field was so short, they erected a 60-foot fence – the Green Monster, by comparison, is 37 feet high.

Comiskey Park/US Cellular Field (Chicago White Sox)

1927 2006
365 feet LF 330 feet
375 feet LCF 377 feet
455 feet CF 400 feet
375 feet RCF 372 feet
365 feet RF 335 feet

Shibe Park (Connie Mack Stadium)/ McAfee Coliseum
(Philadelphia/Oakland A's)

1927 2006
312 feet LF 330 feet
405 feet LCF 375 feet
468 feet CF 400 feet
393 feet RCF 375 feet
307 feet RF 330 feet

As you can see, the old parks were shaped like parachutes, today's like flatirons.

2. Now think about all the deep fly-ball outs that Ruth made that summer. With more real estate at their backs, outfielders could play the Bambino deeper than would be possible today. Or consider how many of his 29 doubles and 8 triples in 1927 that caromed off the wall or rolled all the way to the fences: how many of those would have simply cleared the fences in today's parks?

3. I think I'm being conservative in estimating that if Ruth replicated his 1927 season in today's corresponding ballparks, he'd have collected an additional 10 home runs. A more realistic estimate would be 15 to 20. That would put the single-season home run record somewhere between 70 and 80.

4. But in 1927, the season was 154 games long! Let's give Ruth the eight additional games of the modern season. Well, playing in the cavernous parks of his era, Ruth's home run rate in 1927 was one homer every 2.6 games. But his adjusted rate based on the Little League sandlots of today would be a dinger every 2.2 to 1.8 games, depending on how conservative you want to be. We'll split the difference and say he hits a home run every other game: that's 4 additional home runs.

5. Now, Ruth's single-season home run record becomes – at a minimum – 74. A more realistic estimate gives him 79 to 84 home runs. (Sorry Barry*, you lose again.)

6. Conclusion: if George Herman Ruth was plucked out of time and deposited in the modern era, he could continue his nutritional regimen of beer and hot dogs: he'd have no need for steroids, testosterone, the "cream" or the "clear." He'd still hit more home runs than anyone in the game.

It would be a case of the Babe just being the Babe.

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