Williams or Ruth?

Ok, on a message board I check frequently there has been a debate going on recently about who was the greatest hitter of all-time in Major League baseball: Ted Williams or Babe Ruth?

I think it's Babe Ruth. As an accomplished bullshit artist, here's my attempt to make the numbers prove what I believe. If you don't like baseball, stop reading now, because you're about to get bored.

A quick comparison of their career numbers:

Babe Ruth played 2503 games as a hitter. His career average was .342. He hit 714 HRs, scored 2174 runs, batted in 2213 runs, and stole 123 bases.
Ted Williams played 2292 games as a hitter. His career average was .344. He hit 521 HRs, scored 1798 runs, batted in 1839 runs, and stole 14 bases.

The seasons when these guys played were 154 games long. What follows is a comparison of their 154-game averages.

Babe Ruth: .342, 134 runs, 44 HRs, 136 RBI, 8 SBs
Ted Williams: .344, 121 runs, 35 HRs, 124 RBI, 1 SB

Clearly, it appears that Ruth was a better hitter. Although Williams has a career batting average with a negligible 2-point advantage, Ruth far and away exceeds Williams in all other hitting categories.

HOWEVER...you knew there would be a "however," right? It should be noted that Williams lost most of five seasons due to his service in World War II and Korea. (As a matter of fact, he lost three full seasons from 43-45, almost all of 52, and about 3/4 of 53.)
Well, Ruth lost a lot of time as a hitter as well. From 1915 to 1919, he was a full-time pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. It wasn't until 1920, when he was sold to the New York Yankees, that he became a full-time hitter(His rookie season, 1914, doesn't really count because he barely played that season.) Now to be fair, he DID play a lot as a hitter in his last season with the Red Sox.

Here's what I'm using as a comparison: EACH of these guys, in seasons they were considered full-time hitters, averaged 132 games played. What follows is each player's average stats per 132 games played as a hitter.

Babe Ruth: .342, 115 runs, 38 HRs, 117 RBI, 6.5 SBs
Ted Williams: .344, 104 runs, 30 HRs, 106 RBI, 0.8 SBs

So here's what I'm proposing: To settle the debate of "the greatest hitter of all time," I'm going to give each guy his lost time back.
I'm going to give Williams back 132 games per season for 4.75 seasons, or 627 games.
To figure out how much time Ruth lost as a hitter, I looked at how many games Ruth played as a hitter during his pitching seasons of 1915-1919. Subtracting the number of games he played as a hitter during each of those seasons from the 132 games he averaged during each of his seasons as a full-time hitter gives us 274 potential games Ruth missed as a hitter. So, Ruth gets his 274 games back.

THE MISSING LINKS:
Williams, in 627 games: .344, 494 runs, 143 HRs, 504 RBI, 4 SBs
Ruth, in 274 games: .342, 239 runs, 79 HRs, 243 RBI, 13 SBs

So, if we add the missing stats to each player's current career numbers:

Ted Williams played 2919 games as a hitter. His career average was .344. He scored 2292 runs, hit 664 HRs, batted in 2343 runs, and stole 20 bases.
Babe Ruth played 2777 games as a hitter. His career average was .342. He scored 2413 runs, hit 793 HRs, batted in 2456 runs, and stole 136 bases.

Now, if you think it's unfair that I only gave Williams 132 games per season back in the prime of his career, remember that I did the same for Ruth.
And if you're going to argue that Williams' lost seasons were during his prime, let's take a quick look at 1920, Ruth's first season as a full-time hitter: .376, 158 runs, 54 HRs, 137 RBI, 14 SBs. I think it's safe to assume that some of Ruth's lost seasons (1915-1919) were also during his prime.

Babe Ruth...the greatest hitter of all time.

Now, what would Willie Mays' career numbers look like if we gave him back his lost seasons of 1952-53?

Of course...

Why wouldn't we think that during the last months of the Shrub's presidency, steps would be taken to further legislate control of women's bodies out from under them?

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/08/01/todd.defining.abortion.cnn

This just in...

The following is a direct quote from a CNN story that I'm sure will have been corrected by the time you read this and click on the link:

Fitzsimmons estimates, "You end up paying less to go to Harvard or the same as it would cost you to go to a flagship pubic university."

If you didn't see what I'm talking about, read it again. Slowly.

Either CNN.com needs better writers/editors, or Harvard needs a smarter Dean of Admissions (currently Bill Fitzsimmons.) Personally, I'm leaning towards the former.

My apologies...

I keep thinking that I'll be able to post more frequently on this blog, and then something comes up that makes me just drop it by the wayside for a while.

This time, the "something" was the end of the semester. It's so much harder now that I'm teaching four classes instead of one.

Today, I finished. I gave my last final exam of the semester, graded my last paper of the semester, and posted my last grade of the semester. Knock on wood.

I also got one of my Ph.D applications finished. I am now an official applicant to the Ph.D program in English at Michigan State University, and I only had to give them $50 to take me seriously. I have approximately two weeks to finish applications for Texas, Oregon, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Florida, and I will only have to give each of them between $50-100 to take me seriously. Add to that the $130 I've paid (twice) to the ETS to take the GRE General test and Subject test, and the $100 I paid to St. Andrews (my dear old alma mater) for a bunch of transcripts, and this process is beginning to get expensive. Don't expect really nice Xmas presents from us this year, if you were expecting one at all.

My first choice is UMass, because it's where my Master's thesis advisor went for her Ph.D and I know it's a good school. She's told me a lot about it, and I really think Lindsey and I would like living there. At this point, however, I'd be really happy just to get in anywhere. I just want this process to be over with so I can get on with it and go back to school.

Procrastination...

If nothing else, I have mastered procrastination. It seems I put off EVERYTHING until the absolute last minute, sacrificing even sleep sometimes to make sure I get something done.

Part of being a procrastinator means that you spend lots of time doing things that aren't really that important. For instance, I spent much of yesterday afternoon hooking up and learning how to use the scanner that my parents gave me almost a year ago.


Here's a picture from about 15 years ago, when I was a senior in college. I was part of a student group from St. Andrews College that traveled to Italy for a semester. We lived in the guesthouse of a castle called Schloss Brunnenburg, which was the final residence of the poet Ezra Pound. His family still lived there. We took a course on Pound taught by his daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz. We also took three other courses about literature, history, and agro-archaeology. It was a great trip, but what I remember the most is the people I went with: Andi, Amy, Kathryn, Jay, Sheri, Chris, Abbey, Heidi, Pepe, Eric, and Gina. Oh, and the St. Andrews professor who went with us, Skip Clark, who I think is at West Georgia College now. In the picture, I'm the one kneeling in front.


Then there's this one, where we climbed a mountain. We had to hike for a while before we got to this mountain, then we hiked up (it was somewhere between 11,000-12,000 feet at the summit) and then down the other side. A guy named Philip, who had graduated from St. Andrews a few years earlier and now worked at Schloss Brunnenburg, went with us on this hike, and I assume he took this picture. Only the four people pictured here (Chris, me, Eric, Andi) went on this hike because everyone else wussed out. In fairness, Philip told them it would be a difficult hike, and they didn't wuss out until AFTER he told them that. Before, they were all psyched about it. Anyway, we encountered some pretty incredible views on this hike. Too bad I can't find many of the pictures any more. I wish we'd had digital cameras back then.

So many things, so little time...

I don't know if I have too many students, or if I'm trying to do too many other things besides my job, but it feels like I'm always working against a clock these days.

I know the National Council for Teachers of English recommends that no writing teacher be responsible for more than 60 students in any given semester. I know that I currently have 4 classes of 20 students each, and that the administration at my school is trying to get us to raise the cap number on our classes to 22. I know that I currently require three papers (and three drafts of each paper) from every student. So...nine drafts times 80 students comes out to 720 papers that I read each semester. I also know some people in my department do 4 papers...I can't imagine.

I know that I'm trying to finish applications to 8 Ph.D programs, the deadlines for all of which occur between December 15 and January 15.

I know my wife works full-time, is taking the last class towards her Master's degree, and somehow still manages to cook dinner for me a few times a week.

I know that I'm trying to escape to the relative solace I find on my bicycle at least once a week.

I know that I started almost every sentence in this blog with the words "I know" just so I'd feel better about all the stuff I don't know right now.

Shocking statistics...

First read this:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/30/vampire.electronics.ap/index.html

Now, let me just say that although I knew these things used power even when they are turned off, I find the sheer numbers staggering. In the United States, electric components that are turned off use as much power each year as the total electric energy usage of Italy.

The first thing I'm doing when I go home today is unplugging everything we aren't currently using. I don't need all those clocks...I've got a cell phone and a (solar) watch.

Reception pictures...

We had a party about a month after our wedding. Basically, it was in lieu of the traditional wedding reception. A bunch of our family and friends came to Asheville for the weekend, and here are some pictures. We had our party at a place called The Farm in Candler, NC. If you ever need to have a large gathering near Asheville, we highly recommend it. The picture above is of the "Party Barn", the building where our party took place.





Of course, we had food. What kind of hosts would we be, asking all these people to travel to Asheville (not that Asheville doesn't have all sorts of charms) and not feeding them? We had a place called Sunny Point Cafe (one of our favorite places to eat in all the world) cater the party. The people who work at Sunny Point are really cool, and they made a mean spread for our party. The picture to the left shows only a small portion of the food we had at our party. You can see how excited our friend Tim looks at getting a chance to put a dent in this mountain of food by the look on his face and the exorbitant helpings he has on his plate.





Sunny Point did our cake as well. It was so good...very moist, very rich. They wrapped up some of it for us to take, but sad to say that even though we had around 100 people at our party, most of this cake didn't get touched. I think it turned out to be much larger than we had anticipated. I know we never even made it to the bottom layer of the cake.

Which is kind of surprising, really, given the fact that our friend Tad was at this party.
Tad can put away some food. We kind of figured we wouldn't have a problem finishing all the food at the party when we got Tad's RSVP, but sometimes Tad gets sidetracked by beer and forgets that people are relying upon him to attend to other things. Sure enough, when I got the print copies of our reception pictures, I was looking at them in my office and Tad stopped by. I'll recount our conversation here.

Tad: Hey man, what's up?
Me: Just looking at pictures.
Tad: Hmmm...it seems like I'm just hanging around the bar in all of these.
Me: Yeah.

So, you know, that's how it goes. Don't hate Tad because he's bald. He's really a guy you want on your side if some weirdo ever accosts you in a dark alley somewhere.


Anyway, I'll just post a few more pics here. To the left are the flowers Lindsey and her mom picked out and put on fenceposts all down the driveway of The Farm leading up to the barn. And then to the right is the fireplace inside the barn that we decorated with a bunch of flowers and candles.













Finally, the coup de grace is the picture below. This was above the fireplace, and was definitely the focal point of the entire evening. Well, not really. But it was original.
If you came to the party, hope you had a good time. If not, hope you enjoyed the pictures.