The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball's Greatest Slugger - Softcover

Jenkinson, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786719060 ISBN 13: 9780786719068

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2007

Synopsis

In an unprecedented look at Babe Ruth's amazing batting power, sure to inspire debate among baseball fans of every stripe, one of the country's most respected and trusted baseball historians reveals the amazing conclusions of more than twenty years of research. Jenkinson takes readers through Ruth's 1921 season, in which his pattern of battled balls would have accounted for more than 100 home runs in today's ballparks and under today's rules. Yet, 1921 is just tip of the iceberg, for Jenkinson's research reveals that during an era of mammoth field dimensions Ruth hit more 450-plus-feet shots than anybody in history, and the conclusions one can draw are mind boggling.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Jenkinson has served as consultant for The Baseball Hall of Fame, Major League Baseball, The Society for American Baseball Research, The Babe Ruth Museum, and ESPN. He has been quoted in nearly every major American newspaper as well as Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated, and has written several pieces for Sports Weekly. He has also written articles for various Major League teams. He is the acknowledged expert on the history of long distance home runs and one of the country's top Ruth scholoars. Each year, he assists descendents of men who claimed to have played against the Babe in unofficial games. They seek confirmation for their loved ones' cherished memory of sharing a ball field with Babe Ruth. Jenkinson lives in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

In this exhaustively researched examination of Babe Ruth's storied career, Jenkinson argues that the Bambino was the greatest slugger of all time, not Barry Bonds, not Sammy Sosa, not Hank Aaron, and not Roger Maris. To make his point, he approaches Ruth from three perspectives. First, he discusses and analyzes Ruth's historic batting power, relying on original newspaper accounts. Second, he examines Ruth's "hidden" career of about 800 exhibition games. Third, he does a degree-of-difficulty analysis between the various conditions (equipment, medical sophistication, and press scrutiny, among other factors) Ruth experienced and those of sluggers in other eras. For example, Ruth injured a knee early in his career, and it was a recurring problem. It would have been easily repaired with modern medicine. Current conventional sports wisdom holds modern athletes are bigger, faster, stronger, and therefore better. Here we have the carefully researched, imaginatively argued contrary position. Great reading for any baseball fan, but especially those whose passions are ignited by comparisons of players from different eras. Wes Lukowsky
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Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786719060
• ISBN 13: 9780786719068
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432