Draft Ty Cobb On Your Fantasy Team Part I
By Stephen Turk
Here at the end of the regular season for baseball, we get to see all the season stats! I’m not much of a stat head. Indeed, the longer I follow sports, the more I learn and see, the less I can really be absolutely sure about. So when an interesting stat comes about, like how a recent AP article ( http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/09/29/leaders.season.ap/index.html) reports that home runs are down at a 15 year low, my mind goes in about a million different directions to try to explain it. The article quotes a couple of big leaguers blaming everything 
from steroids, bigger stadiums, and squishy baseballs.
First and foremost, it could be an aberration. There definitely needs to be a few more years of lower home runs to think of it as a trend, but as with anything in sports, it’s fun to speculate. Steroids of course are mentioned, but my favorite quote comes from Torii Hunter mentioning that the game is being played in the old style (he says as a result of the ballparks, but I’m not so sure about that).
As someone with an interest in sports history, I really like that idea, but looking at the stats, which anyone can do at www.baseballreference.com and likely understand more than me, this season has shown that hitting in general is down. Does this mean that pitching is better? That steroid testing is taking effect? That guys are trying to do different things at the plate? Are the minors different? Is coaching different?
The conclusion basically is: maybe its a trend, see what happens, which really isn’t a conclusion at all. I’d like to think that it’s a return to fundamental baseball, but things like stolen bases and batting average aren’t up, so the numbers don’t support it. But maybe, just maybe, we are currently on the precipice to a new era in baseball and the closing of a very big circle.
It makes me think of what it must have been like in the 1920’s when Babe Ruth came along and changed the way people thought about baseball. The 29 homers that Ruth hit for Boston in 1919 is a solid number even today (especially with a .322 average) but I can only imagine how impressive it must have been then. The very next year for New York he exploded for 54. It must have been surreal.
Ruth as we all know, continued to have a brilliant career and is considered by very many as the greatest baseball player ever, to the degree that he will never be superseded as long as the game of baseball is played. And indeed besides actual numbers, I can list any number of facts about Ruth without a lick of research just based off the zeitgeist of being an American citizen and baseball fan: he hit a lot of homers, he made a lot of money, and he had a larger than life celebrity lifestyle. Now for Ty Cobb, the man who’s game was changed around him by Ruth, I knew absolutely nothing about before taking a deeper look, besides the fact that he was in the hall of fame.
No comments yet.