Posted by: The Hitting Guru (hitman3527@aol.com) on Mon Jun 5 23:20:57 2006

Jose H. It is good to have your opinions and factual references to this sight. You brought up an interesting comment with regard to how Babe Ruth changed the game. But more important was how many players continued to hit the old way, namely Ty Cobb. And though Ruth was the best player of his time and perhaps of all time, it is a shame that a good portion of the league refused to try rotational methods. Not to take away from Ruth as no one really could, but when people compare Ruth to others they fail to recognize that a good portion of players were not attempting to hit homeruns. Another interesting point is the fact that hitting had to be a lot easier than it is today as evidenced by how many players in the earlier years hit better than .370. This is just not very common in today's game do to specialization of relief pitchers, overall fear of pitching to good hitters, and shifts that are now being employed more and more especially against lefthanded rotational hitters (Bonds, Giambi, Ortiz etc). The lifetime .340(+) averages for Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, would not exist in today's game.