The High Court

Deep Thinkers Only...

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics...and a Dead Horse

April 13, 2006

By Travis Turner

 

If you are looking for a supremely talented American writer under the age of 40, look no further than Chuck Klosterman.  At only 33, Klosterman is already a successful author, a senior writer for Spin magazine, a columnist for Esquire, and most recently, a contributor to the ESPN family.  He has written a compelling and insightful essay for ESPN the Magazine regarding Barry Bonds’ imminent passing of Babe Ruth on baseball’s all-time home run list (you can read it here on ESPN.com’s Page 2).  Klosterman provides an in-depth examination of what Bonds’ highly controversial march into history (and perhaps infamy) means to everyone from hard-core stat-heads to future historians.

 

Klosterman raises the idea that if we lived in a vacuum, Bonds might be the greatest hitter who ever lived.  He then notes that we live in the real world, leaving us to the implication that Bonds cannot be the greatest hitter who ever lived.  It is with that concept that I have a problem.

 

I will grant you that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs.  The issue of whether those drugs were ingested knowingly or not is one that can be left to the investigative reporting of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams (authors of Game of Shadows).  We do know, based on Bonds’ leaked grand jury testimony, that he used substances given to him by his trainer, Kevin Anderson, that were found to be BALCO’s ‘the cream’ and ‘the clear’.  I do, not, however, believe that Bonds’ steroid use contributed to his remarkable late-career numbers in any way other than the following: remarkable health and strength for a man of his age in the latter stages of a lengthy career.  If steroids or other performance-enhancers were magic elixirs, then .230 Class A infielders would have turned into big league all-stars.  And that isn’t the way things work.

 

Klosterman suggests that one of the ill-effects of the Bonds/Steroids Era is that statistics will be rendered meaningless, effectively crippling any ability to view a game that is thoroughly entrenched in its numbers.  Klosterman sees baseball as the one game where numbers are most relevant when examining the game’s history.  He states that “…it’s the only sport where a numeric comparison between players of different eras is even halfway reasonable.”  He follows his reasoning by illustrating the difference between basketball legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain, maintaining that while Abdul-Jabbar scored 7,000 more career points, nobody would ever suggest that Abdul-Jabbar was a superior, or even comparable force (actually people would suggest that Abdul-Jabbar was comparable, but I digress).  It is here that Klosterman shows his hand as someone only casually familiar with the game of baseball and its record book.

 

For starters, Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar, while not exactly peers, were contemporaries whose careers overlapped.  Ruth and Bonds missed each other by, oh, a half-century.  Klosterman should chew on these statistical eccentricities as well.  Ted Williams had 2,654 hits.  Robin Yount had 3,142 hits in his career.  Think you can find any one to suggest that Yount was a superior or even comparable offensive force?  Me neither.  Sandy Koufax won 165 games in his brilliant, yet brief career.  Don Sutton picked up 324 W’s in his steady, if unspectacular, tenure.  Any takers for Sutton over Koufax to pitch Game Seven?

 

Baseball, because of the length of its history, encompassing vastly different eras and styles of play, and the sheer vastness of its recorded numbers, is almost impossible to examine without seeing literally hundreds of similar examples.  It is accurate to say that baseball’s rich statistical history gives the game a remarkable linear connection from start to finish, but it is inaccurate to suggest that the game’s most special treasure is in the numbers.  One has to remember…lies, damn lies, and statistics.

 

Klosterman, much like the legion of Bonds critics, points to the fact that Bonds hit 24 more home runs at an advancing age (37) than he had ever hit in any one season in his career.  But what Klosterman and others fail to mention is the fact that Bonds’ previous career high for homers in a season was 49.  FORTY-NINE!  That’s a lot of homers, folks.  It isn’t like Bonds ballooned into some long-ball freak after topping out at 15 dingers a year.  Prior to the 2001 season, Bonds had already surpassed the forty-homer plateau four times (three of those seasons came before Bonds reportedly began is steroid regimen for the ’99 season), with most of those seasons coming at the chilly and wind-swept palace known as Candlestick.  Keep in mind that the pre-steroid single-season Home Run King, Roger Maris, never hit more than 39 home runs in any season outside ’61.  The hordes of fans and media-types that fainted at the thought of anyone less than a legend beating the Babe’s record didn’t have steroids to blame for Maris’ explosion.  But there was a confluence of factors that helped Maris’ record run materialize.  Maris had the good fortune of being able to feast on expansion-era pitching, he had lineup protection in the form of the one and only Mickey Mantle (hey, Sammy Sosa has more homers than the Mick…who ya got there, Chuck?), and he had a very friendly short porch in Yankee Stadium to take aim at.  And there was this…Roger Maris was a very good player who had a great year.  Sometimes there’s no conspiracy.  Sometimes people just perform better than they ever have before.

 

As long as we are playing the numbers game and exploring what players are supposed to do in their declining years, let’s delve further into the stats.  In 1985, a 38-year old named Darrell Evans hit 24 home runs more (40) than he had hit the previous season (16…for the mathematically challenged).  He picked up 104 more at-bats in ’85, but that was hardly enough to explain the dramatic rise in home runs.  He was playing in the same stadium (Tiger), in the same league, in a relatively similar lineup.  The culprit?  The juiced baseball, of course.  If there’s one thing you should know about baseball, it’s this:  Put up big numbers and everybody’s a skeptic…no matter how big your head is.

 

Bonds is a legend, like it or not, so let’s examine some other legends at similar stages in their careers.  Bonds hit 91 home runs during the full seasons he was 37 and 38 (he turned 37 during the 73 homer season of 2001).  At the same stage, the Babe hit 75 homers.  Henry Aaron hit 81 homers.  At age 38, Ted Williams belted 38 round-trippers and hit .388, the second-best full season average of his career (next to the famous .406).  When he was 39, Aaron hit 40 home runs, or one every 9.8 at-bats.  That was the best HR/AB ratio of his career.  In his final season at age 41, Williams hit 29 long balls in 310 at-bats (including his last one).  That total was good for a homer every 10.7 at-bats, and that number was the best ratio of his career.  The second-best such season for the Splendid Splinter?  The homer every 11.1 at-bats he authored at age 38.

 

So where did this theory about players always declining in their late 30’s come from anyway?  It’s clear that great players are always great, as long as they are healthy. Bonds’ godfather, the great Willie Mays, is maybe the best example of a legend seeing a drop-off during his advancing years, but even a declining Mays hit .291 with 28 homers at age 39.  It is, of course, Bonds’ improvement at such an age that raised the red flags of performance enhancement.  And it is here, with Barry’s ability to maintain his strength and stamina at an age when it would have normally deteriorated, that I believe that the steroids and other substances had their most profound effect on Bonds’ results as a hitter.

 

What so many fans and sportswriters fail to realize when considering Bonds is his mechanical brilliance as a hitter.  Mike Schmidt has talked recently about the fact that Bonds became “the most mechanically perfect hitter in history”.  And it is true.  No hitter that I have ever seen tape of has been able to center the baseball on the bat barrel’s sweet spot with such amazing regularity as Bonds.  Barry also was able to separate the upper and lower parts of his body at the plate, allowing him to explode his hips through the baseball while always keeping his front shoulder on the ball.  He mastered striking the ball cleanly with a quick and powerful stroke that created a tremendous backspin rate, carrying the baseball into the deepest recesses of big league ballparks.  These technical aspects of hitting escape the media and the casual fan, which simply choose to discredit Bonds’ feats as just coming from pharmaceutically-manufactured strength.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Bonds’ ability to go into the batter’s box with the strength of a 28-year old and the wisdom of a 38-year old allowed him to do things that no player other than the legendary Ruth had ever done.  Always a selective hitter with a short stroke, Bonds became ultra-selective and rarely offered at a pitch he couldn’t drive.  That is the wisdom.  So many players, even some of the very best in the game, swing at pitches they can hit, but not drive.  People marveled at how Bonds could see maybe one or two decent pitches a night and find a way to hit at least one of them out of the ballpark.  The secret is this...if you only swing at pitches you can hit hard; you will hit most of those pitches hard.  In 2001, almost all of those swings led to a home run.  It’s really that simple.  I am not saying that steroid use wasn’t a contributing factor.  It almost certainly was.  But it was more about a great hitter becoming one of the greatest hitters (if not the greatest) of all time.  As I illustrated above, with the at-bat to homer ratios of Aaron and Williams, when talented hitters become wise hitters, they are able to improve the efficiency of their slugging, even as their physical skills decline.  Bonds’ was able to utilize the one without losing the other, and it allowed him to become the very best hitter he could be.  His recent performances are not a phenomenon that can simply be waved off because of what he did or did not intentionally put in his body.  And that’s why, vacuum or no, Barry Bonds will always occupy a place in my mind next to Babe Ruth and Ted Williams as one of the greatest hitters in history.

 

Klosterman acknowledges the fact that we were all dupes as we watched Bonds’ exploits, as well as the Great Home Run Race of ’98.  He talks about the fact that as we deal with what happened, and the seeming illegitimacy of it all, we will tend to reinvent how watching all of those home runs felt.  He notes that such a process is how historical revisionism generally occurs.  This particular historical revisionism has been underway since the day the BALCO scandal broke, and it shifted to overdrive with the embarrassing Congressional hearings of 2005.  Mark McGwire became pathetic, Rafael Palmeiro became a fool, and BALCO Barry became the world’s biggest punching bag.

 

Klosterman refers to Bonds’ pursuit of Ruth as an empty one.  I don’t completely agree with that sentiment, but I realize that most baseball fans would.  I have seen Bonds hit home runs as a steroid-free Pirate and as an enhanced Giant.  I was not more or less impressed by the home runs Barry hit as a Giant, but I was more impressed by Bonds the hitter as a Giant.  I suppose as a former player and hitting instructor I am seduced by how well Bonds does things at the plate, and I am willing to forget (if not forgive) the fact that he has likely used performance-enhancers.  But even if I weren’t willing to look past that fact, the home runs still happened.  The race between McGwire and Sosa for 62 in ’98 still happened.  Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated wrote a very fine piece last spring chronicling his disillusionment with the whole thing, remembering how we as a baseball nation were so captivated by the joyous pursuit of baseball’s most hallowed single-season record.  I would suggest to Klosterman, Smith, and anyone else feeling empty about the joy of that summer or the awe-inspiring 2001 season compiled by Bonds to remember this…these things still happened.

 

Does it sting a little to know that these achievements may have been attained under somewhat false pretenses?  Sure it does.  Just like it stung to for a generation to find out that Mickey Mantle was a womanizer who struggled with alcohol.  Or like it did to find out that Pete Rose bet on baseball.  But Mickey Mantle was still great.  So was Rose.  That which troubles us, troubles us.  It does not erase history.  To skip ahead to one of Klosterman’s last points, Babe Ruth has become more of a concept than a real person.  It is romantic for some to think about the Babe coming to the park drunk after a night of good-natured carousing and hitting two homers.  It is only uncomfortable to think of Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds injecting their rear ends with a syringe full of long ball juice.  Ruth’s behavior was not necessarily more appropriate; it just wasn’t unethical as a baseball player.  Ruth, however, may have been a much worse person off the field than McGwire (or even Bonds).  Ruth was an absentee father and husband, a fact that carries little weight with us when it comes to determining the validity of the baseball record book.

 

I talk about the notion of revisionist history and the concept of the Babe, and it makes me think of fishing.  Ask me today how big the fish I caught was and I’ll tell you…it was this big.  Ask me in a year and I’ll tell you it was THIS big.  Ask me in fifty years and it will be THIS big.  That’s revisionist history, and that’s how Babe Ruth became THE BABE.  Consider this if you will.  If Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire had performed the same amazing feats they authored in the last decade in the 1920’s, how would we see them?  With no investigative reporters to dig in their trash and reveal their sins to us, who would they be?  Would they be the legendary sluggers who called shots and smote baseballs miles at a time?  Would their names adorn candy bars and eventually just become synonymous with the game of baseball?  I wonder.  And what of George Herman Ruth?  What if the gargantuan slugger played today?  Would he be subject to his own Shadows?  What would be uncovered about Ruth?  Would his carousing and womanizing be clearly detailed in print and all over the World Wide Web?  Would he be acknowledged as a fraud who never actually called a home run and who treated kids poorly when cameras and microphones were nowhere to be found?  Would various ex-wives and mistresses condemn him in tell-all books?  I wonder.

 

Klosterman believes that someday historians will look to this time in our history and use Bonds as an example of what was wrong with America in the early 21st century.  And so they may.  But Klosterman seems to believe that there is something inherently depressing about the quality of life in America right now, and I simply do not.  Do we have problems?  Of course we do.  But no more so now than at any other time in American history.  This isn’t the first time major American sports have had problems, either.  If historians choose to view history through negative prisms, sure they can pick Bonds and the steroid problem in baseball.  Just like they can focus on the Black Sox, segregation in baseball, Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry (the Cocaine Era), and the time the White Sox wore those damn shorts.  Steroids may be a thread running through the past fifteen years, but it isn’t the whole story.  Ours are complex and intelligent minds.  We can wrap our heads around what happened, and each of us can make our own decisions on how many of the statistics compiled over that time were valid or invalid.  Or we can be really smart…and just move on.

 

Yes, I know that Klosterman and many others believe in baseball’s numbers as sacred cows.  But it’s a bunch of hooey.  Cy Young won 511 games.  Big deal.  Given the era Young played in (which began pre-20th century); his numbers have no relevance on today’s game (or even yesterday’s game, for that matter).  Cy might as well have won 811 games.  Young’s overall record was 511-316, for a winning percentage of .618.  It took Young 906 appearances (815 starts) over 22 years to put together his record.  Greg Maddux just won his 320th game, giving him a career mark of 320-189, a winning percentage of .629.  Maddux is in his 21st season, so you might think there was some statistical relevance between his numbers and Young’s if you didn’t know better.  But you do of course.  Young pitched in the three-man (or sometimes two-man) rotation; Maddux has spent his entire career in the five-man rotation.  Maddux, a modern-day innings machine, has a career-high of 263 innings in a single season.  Young’s best?  453 innings.  Comparable?  I think not.

 

I also raised the issue of segregation in baseball earlier.  There are many who believe that Josh Gibson might have surpassed Ruth’s home run total decades ago had he been allowed to play Major League Baseball.  The idea seems to have merit, as the man who smashed Ruth’s record, Hank Aaron, was only able to do so after the color barrier fell.  That Gibson never had his opportunity is quite unfair.  So how fair…and how true…are any of these records anyway?

 

Ultimately, the furor concerning Barry Bonds and his approach to Ruth (and perhaps, ultimately, Aaron) centers around this: A ridiculous obsession with a record that is not even that impressive to begin with.  I have written in the past about my admiration for Hank Aaron.  The man was a remarkably well-rounded player who won batting titles, compiled 3,771 hits (the third highest total in MLB history), and holds the all-time RBI record with 2,297.  The fact that he is recognized only as the Home Run King is criminal.  That is what the obsession with a record that is built only on one facet of the game does to people’s perception of a player.  Babe Ruth hit .342 and had a .678 winning percentage as a pitcher, but people only want to talk about the home runs.  Someday Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, or some other bright young star will hit 800 home runs and none of this nonsense revolving around Bonds will even matter.  Ruth and Aaron will still be legends, and it won’t matter if they are second or fourth or seventh on the home run list.

 

You can hate Barry Bonds if you want.  That is your choice.  But he won’t care.  And neither will I.  But what I do care about is the game of baseball and the fans that love the game.  Don’t let the foolish actions of the few ruin the accomplishments of the many.  Don’t let a bump in the road make you cynical and jaded about the greatest game I have ever known.  Baseball has had rough moments before, and it will probably have rough moments in the future.  But baseball has always endured because more than any sport it does have that great linear history which unfolds as a beautiful tapestry telling the story of our nation’s pastime.  It has been passed through the years, from generation to generation, from father to son.

 

And that is baseball’s greatest treasure.

 

 

Statistics courtesy of baseball-reference.com.

 

Contact The Chief Justice at chiefjustice@thehighcourtofsports.com.

The perfect hitter.

The imperfect human.

His problem?

Or just ours?