I?m not sure why Barry Bonds? pursuit of the all-time home run record has created openseason on Babe Ruth?s accomplishments. Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock raised my hackles last week when he wrote on ESPN.com that the “home run standard had virtually no integrity when the Sultan of Segregation held it, and lost its significance when Hank Aaron surpassed it.”
Now there?s a statement that attempts to render every baseball accomplishment pre-1947 as meaningless and lacking “integrity.” Please.
My sporting passion is baseball. Likely, you?ve already figured that out. I like the other sports, but, in terms of actual “passion,” baseball is it. It?s the carrot that?s kept me in this vocation after I stumbled into it 33 years ago. No professional team sport requires more skill or offers a richer history than baseball. It?s my column, and that?s my opinion.
But the thought that Babe Ruth?s accomplishments wouldn?t have been as notable if baseball had never been segregated is just nonsense. I base that opinion not on his numbers but on the Negro League legends I spoke with about it.
In the early 1980s I had the good fortune to spend considerable time with Buck Leonard and James “Cool Papa” Bell, both Hall of Famers and deservedly so. I served on a panel with Leonard at George Washington University in 1980 and spent hours with him at the Smithsonian?s 1981 July 4th Celebration on the mall. The theme that year was baseball ? somewhat ironic given that summer?s player strike ? and I?d been hired as a consultant to the Division of Performing Arts, which put the event on. I spent time with Bell in his hotel room in Cooperstown ? along with broadcaster Ted Patterson ? in 1983 when Brooks Robinson was inducted.
At the time, I bought into the whole theory that the Negro Leagues were chock full of great players, that every team was loaded with all-stars. Leonard set me straight. “We had a lot of guys who wouldn?t have made Class D ballclubs,” he said. “We had to fill out rosters the best way we could.”
What if the Babe had played in the Negro Leagues? “He would have done just as well, maybe better,” he said. “Josh [Gibson] could hit the ball as far, but he faced worse pitching, and had as many bad habits as Babe Ruth.” Gibson died of a stroke at the age of 36 in 1947, just months before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Dodgers.
I?m not the only guy who ever heard Buck Leonard?s remarks on Ruth, which were echoed by Bell. And neither man was trying to make nice. Cool Papa, in fact, referring to Ruth?s hometown, said playing in Baltimore “was like playing in the Deep South. They?d pull us off the street and beat us up.” Ouch.
Trying to belittle the Babe, who was surpassed by Bonds (who hit No. 716 Monday) less than two weeks ago, more than a half-century after he passed away seems like the cheapest of shots. Ruth wasn?t responsible for baseball?s color line. Attempting to punish him for it now is wrong-headed and a waste of column inches.
Listen to Phil Wood every Saturday at 11 a.m. on ESPN Radio 1300.
