Baseball's Best Decade (7 page)

Who almost made the list?
Toronto Blue Jays at .264, Minnesota Twins at .263, Detroit Tigers and Texas Rangers at .262.

1990s –
The Colorado Rockies recorded the highest decade-long team batting average (.284) since the 1930s. In the first 7 years of the franchise’s history, Colorado, aided by the hitter-friendly confines of Coors Field, led the National League in team batting 5 of those 7 years. The Cleveland Indians, with one of the most balanced line-ups in modern times, led the American League in batting 3 times during the 1990s, and led all teams in hits (14,936) for the decade. Nine of the top 10 team batting averages for the 1990s belonged to American League teams.

Who almost made the list?
Minnesota Twins at .273, Chicago White Sox at .271, Seattle Mariners at .269.

2000s –
In terms of team batting averages, there was more hitting parity in the 2000s than in any decade since the 1950s. Eight of the 30 major league teams batted .270 or higher over the course of the decade. All but one team batted .250 or better for the decade, the lone exception being the New York Mets at .236. Fourteen of the top 17 batting averages for the decade belonged to American League clubs.

Who almost made the list?
Minnesota Twins at .272, Texas Rangers at .271, Seattle Mariners at .271.

Two of the most lethal National League bats in the 1950s belonged to Willie Mays and Stan Musial. Mays batted .317 for the decade and averaged 38 home runs and 103 RBIs for the 6 complete seasons he played from 1954-1959. At his peak (1950-1957), Musial batted .335 and averaged 29 home runs and 108 RBIs.

Pittsburgh Pirates hitters won 6 of the National League batting titles during the 1960s. The others were won by 2 players: the Dodgers’ Tommy Davis (1962-1963) and the Reds’ Pete Rose (1968-1969).

Babe Ruth

Comparing the Power Hitters,

A
s the ball got livelier, starting in the 1920s, batting average was traded for power. In the 1920s, a livelier ball meant more home runs and more batters swinging for the fences. In every decade since the end of the dead ball era, home runs at the major league level have increased, in many cases dramatically.

Babe Ruth opened the door. The former Red Sox pitcher turned Yankee outfielder completely revolutionized the game by taking it out of the ball park.

Prior to 1920, the major league record for home runs in a season was established in 1884 by Ned Williamson, who socked 27. The closest anyone came in the next 3+ decades was Buck Freeman with 25 in 1899. The American League single-season home run record prior to 1920 was 16 hit by Socks Seybold in 1902. As late as 1915, 7 home runs were enough to win the American League home run crown, as they did for an outfielder and sometimes third baseman named Braggo Roth (who blasted a total of 30 home runs in his 8-year major league career).

Ruth changed all that. The Bambino got his first taste of home run glory when he tied for the le
ague lead with Tilly Walker, hitting 11 home runs in 1918. Ruth broke Williamson’s major league record with 29 in 1918, while still a member of the Boston Red Sox.

In 1920, his first season as a New York Yankee, Ruth hit .376, good enough for
fourth in the American League behind George Sisler (.407), Tris Speaker (.388), and Shoeless Joe Jackson (.382 in his last season). But what shocked the baseball world were Ruth’s 54 home runs – double the pre-Ruth major league record that had stood for 35 years. And Ruth stood alone as a home run machine. That year, Sisler was second in the American League with 19. The National League home run leader for 1920 was Cy Williams, an outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies who hit 15.

Ruth’s performance was no fluke. In 1921, he raised his record to 59. He topped it again with 60 in 1927, the single-season record that stood until 1961. In the 14 years from 1918 to 1931, Ruth led or tied for the lead in home runs an incredible 12 times. His only “slips” were in 1922, when a suspension by newly appointed commissioner Keneshaw Landis limited Ruth to 110 games … and
only
35 home runs. (Ken Williams of the St. Louis Browns led the league with 39.) And illness (mostly self-inflicted) limited Ruth to 98 games and 25 home runs in 1925. Otherwise, for the decade of the 1920s, he dominated the power game the way no one has since … and opened the game to one much closer to the sport we have now, as compared to baseball as it was played before 1920.

Babe Ruth’s
arrival in New York

in 1920 – and his new role as

a full-time outfielder – transformed

baseball forever.

Ruth’s impact as a slugger extended beyond his own amazing performance. It was as if power hitting were a virus that started with Ruth and spread throughout the rest of baseball – slowly at first, but relentlessly. Take, for example, Cy Williams, who, as mentioned above, led the NL in home runs with 15 in 1920. By 1923, he led the senior circuit with 41 home runs. Williams played 19 seasons for the Chicago Cubs and the Phillies. From 1912 to 1919, he hit a total of 49 home runs. From 1920 until 1929, Williams hit 202. Ned Williamson’s National League record of 27 home runs lasted almost 40 years until Rogers Hornsby hit 42 in 1922. That record lasted only until 1930, when the Chicago Cubs Hack Wilson hit 56.

The home run floodgates were opened. The major leagues went from 3,987 home runs during the 1910 to 1919 period to 9,894 home runs in the 1920s, and then increased that total by another 36% to 13,439 during the 1930s. With the exception of the 1940s, when World War II depleted major league talent significantly, the rise in total major league home runs has been consistent every decade since the end of the dead ball era, helped in part by the expansion of the major leagues starting in 1961 (more teams, more games).

In embracing the home run, the trade-off for major league hitters has been a decline in both batting averages and triples. The fall-off in batting averages has been discussed in the previous chapter. But it is interesting how the major leagues have traded triples for home runs since the end of the dead ball era. In the 1920s, as the home run was becoming established as regular offensive weapon, the triple reached an all-time high with a major l
eague total of 11,973 – nearly one triple per game. By the 1990s, despite having almost double the number of teams that played during the 1920s, the total number of triples at the major league level had actually declined by over 3,000. You had to watch at least 3 games to have a good chance of seeing a triple.

During the 1920s, all but 2 teams had 600 or more triples for the decade, with the Pittsburgh Pirates leading the majors with a total of 1,042 3-baggers. By the 1990s, only a single major league team (again, the Pittsburgh Pirates) had more than 400 triples for the decade. During the 1990s, the Oakland Athletics as a team
averaged
a little more than 19 triples
per season
. Between 1900 and 1919, the individual major league leader in triples hit more than that in 17 of those seasons.

The low point for triples occurred during the 1950s, when the major leagues also recorded their highest average for home runs per 9 innings (to be discussed more fully in the last chapter). But after a gradual increase, the decline in triples (adjusted per game) seems to be happening again, as the average number of home runs per 9 innings has also been on the rise since the 1970s.

(Left to right) Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann and Bob Meusel averaged more than 100 RBIs per season during the 1920s.

The offensive category of runs batted in provides another measure of a batter’s power prowess, especially since the emergence of the home run in the 1920s. While players driving in 100 or more runs in a season goes back as far as 1884, the power explosion that began in the 1920s generally brought with it more 100-RBI batters per season.

Again, Babe Ruth was the pioneer in stringing together massive RBI seasons. The Babe first led the American League during his last season in Boston, with 114 RBIs in 1919. He raised his league-leading total to 137 in 1920,
and broke the major league record with 171 RBIs in 1921. (He also scored 177 runs that season.) Ruth averaged over 133 RBIs per season during the 1920s, but 3 other players – Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann and Bob Meusel – also drove in more than 1,000 runs during that decade. (Lou Gehrig averaged 138 RBIs during the 4 full seasons that he played in the 1920s.)

In the years since the 1920s, the only time that the league RBI leaders have failed to drive in 100 or more was during the strike-shortened season of 1981, when Mike Schmidt led the National League with 91 RBIs and Eddie Murray topped the American League with 78. Though
total run scoring in the major leagues has consistently increased with each decade except the 1940s, average runs per game reached its peak at 9.86 in the 1930s, when the single-season RBI records were set by Hack Wilson (NL) with 191 in 1930, and Lou Gehrig (AL) with 184 in 1931. They have not been bettered since.