Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player of all time!

Babe Ruth was good but he was not the greatest. Yankee Stadium was called "the house that Ruth built", but it was more like the house built for Ruth. The right field line was only 295 ft away from home plate. Ruth, a lefty, was able to hit home runs over the short right field fence. Right field was nicknamed "Ruthville" due to amount of home runs hit there. Nowadays a fence that short would not be allowed. Babe Ruth played in an era where more runs were being scored per game than before and ever after. In 1919, when Babe Ruth played his first hundred game season, the home runs hits/allowed jumped from .09 to .21. It continued to rise through his career all the way to .54 when he retired in 1935. This was not due to Babe Ruth alone. The Dead Ball Era ended in 1919. OBP, BA (batting average), hits, and runs all increased throughout the league. The amount of home runs went from 96 in 1918 up to 240 in1919. Babe Ruth's batting average high during the Dead Ball Era was only .325. He hit 20 home runs in his 5 years of hitting in the Dead Ball Era. http://www.baseball-reference.com... . Another interesting thing was on Baseball-reference.com's elorater (which is voted by fans) of the 10 all time best batters, 4 not including Ruth played while Ruth played. I'm not sure why but it raises questions about Ruth and the era he was hitting in. Many pitches had been banned in 1919 crippling pitchers who relied on them including some all-time greats. Was Ruth just a product of an era that was increasingly becoming more hitter friendly? Pitching In the years when Ruth pitched for Boston the average ERA for the league was 1914-2.73 1915-2.93 1916-2.82 1917-2.66 1918-2.77 1919-3.22. Ruth's ERA during this time was 2.19. Yes it is better than league average but an ERA of 2 was not as good as it is today. Last year's average ERA was 4.08. When he was pitching, pitchers were pitching more games and throwing more pitches. The example of Clemens season doesn't work. If Clemens put up the same numbers back then it would not be seen as a amazing season. Fielding is often overlooked when judging a player. Babe Ruth committed 83 errors while playing in right field. That puts him at 19 on the all time errors for a right fielder. That means of all right fielders ever only 18 have committed more errors. http://www.baseball-reference.com... And when you look at the amount of putouts he ranks only 50 of all time RF with 2205 compared to the leader with 4807 in the same amount of years that Ruth played. http://www.baseball-reference.com... Babe is also ranked 26 in amount of assists. With 120 compared to the record of 256. http://www.baseball-reference.com... When it comes to hitting he was good but he wasn't the greatest. Let's compare Ruth to his team mate Lou Gehrig. I will use their 162 game averages to make it easier and simpler to compare. This makes it easier to compare players that played different amounts of seasons. http://www.baseball-reference.com... Runs- Ruth 141, Gehrig 141. Hits- Ruth 186, Gehrig 204 RBI's- Ruth 143, Gehrig 149 Batting Average-Ruth .342, Gehrig .340 Total bases-Ruth 375, Gehrig 379 SO%(SO/plate appearances)- Ruth 13%, Gehrig 8.2% Runs created-Ruth 176, Gehrig 167 Ruth and Gehrig played the in same years as team mates. As you can see their stats are similar. So Ruth at the time was not dominating the game. Ruth's numbers were not so dominant that they are the greatest. The year he set the record of 60 HR in a season, Lou Gehrig hit 47 HR. Gehrig outhit Ruth (.373 to .356) and almost matched him in on-base percentage (.474 to .486), and slugging (.765 to .772). Gehrig led in extra base hits (117 to 97), total bases (447 to 417), and RBIs (175 to 164). Gehrig led the league in doubles, was second in triples, second in home runs, second in hits, and third in batting average. Ruth set records but many of them have been broken. http://www.baseball-reference.com..., http://www.baseball-reference.com... My opponent says "Babe was always personable and friendly with others", but he did many inappropriate and irresponsible things during his career. -He ate and drank to excess. Ruth often frequented prostitutes. -Fought fans during games. -He broke his toe after kicking a bench due to being walked. -He constantly argued with umpires/challenged them to fights. -Punched an umpire after walking a hitter in four pitches. Also threw dirt in another umpires face for calling him out. -feigned exhaustion or a sore arm to avoid pitching, wanting to hit. -Quit team because he wanted to hit more. -Refused team rules on curfew. -"I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands" http://sabr.org... The link my opponent said of the polls ranking him at number one leads here. http://community.foxsports.com... As you can see Ruth was not so dominating at his sport. You have to take in to account all parts of the game. Many people forget that when judging players. Babe Ruth was not the total package. When talking about a five tool player, (http://www.squidoo.com... speed, arm strength, fielding ability, hit for power, hit for contact) Babe Ruth had only 2 of those. He does not deserve to be called the greatest.