RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #16 (Karl Malone)

[Sublime187]

This is complete disrespect to D Rob, Barkley, Erving, Moses etc. They would absolutely thrash Mikans league if they were born then whereas it is questionable if Mikan being in their Era would be even close to what they became...

Imagine Barkley in Mikan's place...he would literally make the rest if the league look like a high school team...

[DQuinn1575]

You mention Red Grange, but the better comparison might be Babe Ruth, who still is generally rated the greatest baseball player of all-time despite being born over 100 years ago. And replace Jim Thorpe with Grange, who frequently shows up in the discussion of greatest football player ever.

I don't fully agree with the Babe Ruth comparison for a few reasons. One, is that outside of segregation I don't see it as quite the same. Baseball was a sport that had its professional beginnings all the way back in the late 19th century while Mikan came into pro bb right in its infancy though it had been played on a college level for a few decades prior. So I think baseball was likely drawing from a much larger pool relative to each player while also Ruth didn't have the innate advantage of height(more so relative to era) which Mikan had. Ruth was big and strong but not to a degree that makes you think he was putting up his record numbers based purely off of size. Also, the last difference is that Ruth's records in baseball are closer to the records that Wilt set than any which Mikan did. Both Ruth's raw numbers and when used to create different metrics are still among the very best in the history of his sport. Mikan's metrics are quite good also in a few years but not to the degree which Babe's stand out. Mikan's career does not stand out the way that Ruth's does imo.

My real point is, we not only take Ruth, but Cobb, Gehrig, Hornsby, Walter Johnson in a baseball top 25 - here we are only talking about one guy - Mikan.
Baseball is still drawing from a much larger pool, simply due to physical requirement/advantage of height.

[Odinn21]

....

Comparing Mikan to Robinson is like comparing Juan Manuel Fangio to Nelson Piquet Sr. or Rod Laver to Andre Agassi. The known era norms are just too different.

But that is what this project is about. In the past, we have started at least 1 or 2 of these with the shot clock which would exclude Mikan. It was a big debate before the last one (not this one) about moving the starting point back. We decided to do so because most of the arguments against it came down to "but I didn't see him play and it's hard to compare," and we decided that wasn't a good argument unless we were going to get rid of the likes of Wilt/Russell/etc. as well.

And I have no problem comparing Laver to Agassi or Federer. Comparing them to Don Budge is trickier because I didn't see Budge but we just go with the best evidence we have. Heck, I teach history; I'm not leaving out the whole of history because we don't have televised versions of it; you use what's available and make your best judgment.

Sure. I was not saying we should avoid Mikan's case. I was just saying, I don't know enough about Mikan - thus, I'll never be sure about his placement. I'll never be sure if having him in the top 20 is just accurate or overrating him or underrating him.
The more I know about, then I'm sure more. That's all.

I think Mikan's overall impact and the resume he had are definitely top 20 worthy. But can't say more than that.

[Cavsfansince84]

My real point is, we not only take Ruth, but Cobb, Gehrig, Hornsby, Walter Johnson in a baseball top 25 - here we are only talking about one guy - Mikan.
Baseball is still drawing from a much larger pool, simply due to physical requirement/advantage of height.

The difference with those guys though that they all had very long careers. Among the longest or most productive in mlb history. Mikan didn't though you could argue he sort of made up for that by winning rings.

[70sFan]

This is complete disrespect to D Rob, Barkley, Erving, Moses etc. They would absolutely thrash Mikans league if they were born then whereas it is questionable if Mikan being in their Era would be even close to what they became...

Imagine Barkley in Mikan's place...he would literally make the rest if the league look like a high school team...

As I said, a lot of pre-shotclock stars remained relevant even in the early 1960s. I don't think Barkley would make Schayes or Pettit look like HS players.

[Cavsfansince84]

Honus Wagner/Ty Cobb then or for football, Sammy Baugh.

The other aspect where basketball differs from baseball and maybe even fb to a degree is how much skill sets have changed and developed over the last 100 years. The primary skill set for baseball for instance is extremely close now to what it was 100 years ago. I don't even know if the pitches used have changed that much in recent decades. While in basketball its just so different in terms of what guys are asked to do and the strategies/defenses used on the court. Its much easier to imagine for instance a guy like Wagner just walking onto a mlb roster and being able to play at a high level from day 1 then it would be to imagine an nba player from the 40's or 50's walking into an nba roster and being able to go out there and function at a reasonably high level. I think this difference plays into how players from long ago are perceived in each sport. Just as we can watch a video of Jim Brown from the 50's and not have much trouble imagining him being able to do the same thing now. More so when we know his size and speed which would be top notch even today.

[DQuinn1575]

My real point is, we not only take Ruth, but Cobb, Gehrig, Hornsby, Walter Johnson in a baseball top 25 - here we are only talking about one guy - Mikan.
Baseball is still drawing from a much larger pool, simply due to physical requirement/advantage of height.

The difference with those guys though that they all had very long careers. Among the longest or most productive in mlb history. Mikan didn't though you could argue he sort of made up for that by winning rings.

Sort of made up for that by winning rings? So Russell/Jabbar/Jordan/LeBron are sort of rated high because they won championships?
If you judge players by their impact on winning titles, then he is probably #2 of all-time.

[Cavsfansince84]

My real point is, we not only take Ruth, but Cobb, Gehrig, Hornsby, Walter Johnson in a baseball top 25 - here we are only talking about one guy - Mikan.
Baseball is still drawing from a much larger pool, simply due to physical requirement/advantage of height.

The difference with those guys though that they all had very long careers. Among the longest or most productive in mlb history. Mikan didn't though you could argue he sort of made up for that by winning rings.

Sort of made up for that by winning rings? So Russell/Jabbar/Jordan/LeBron are sort of rated high because they won championships?
If you judge players by their impact on winning titles, then he is probably #2 of all-time.

It's a sort of fair point but again, it requires looking at the nba/baa of the late 40's/early 50's in the same way that we look at it from roughly 1960 on. Which is where most of this discussion revolves. You also conflated Mikan yet again with guys who had better if not far superior longevity. The mlb guys didn't win as many rings.

[Doctor MJ]

4. We already have Wilt, Russell, Oscar, West in the list already. They all entered the league less than 10 years after Mikan left. I'm not sure if 1962 Jerry West would be the best player in the league in the early 50s ahead of Mikan.

5. The projects starts in 1947 - to exclude Mikan might then exclude any player who played in 1954 and before - 8 years, which is more than 10% of the project. I started above with Babe Ruth, but in baseball lists you would also get Cobb, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig. and Walter Johnson all vying for Top 20 spots - here we are only talking Mikan in Top 20; It seems fair to include the very best players from the first part of the time period.

We all have different weights we put on the criteria -regular season vs. post season, championships won, value of longevity, etc.

Appreciate the thoughts, wanted to chime in on these two things:

4. Speaking just for myself, know that I don't elevate any of these old timers lightly. Before I started doing serious analysis of historical basketball on RealGM, I had Jerry West and Bob Cousy in the same bucket. Then you look more closely and it just becomes clear that West was much, much, much, much, much better at basketball than Cousy.

Re: would West be the best player in the early 50s ahead of Mikan? Good question. What that comes down to for me is whether you'd still look at defense as dominating who won the game if you had someone as good on offense as West was back in Mikan's day. And it's not just a "how good" thing, but how he'd attack.

So much of why teams struggled against Mikan is that they sucked at shooting from distance. You bring guys into Mikan's era with more modern shooting ability, Mikan's defensive impact is a lot smaller. The same is true for any big man to some degree, but let's note that the extra mobility of guys in the Russell frame is a huge advantage to scaling against outside shooting compared to guys whose threat was merely to block shots at the rim.

I think it's important to understand also that in addition to basketball in West's time being considerably more advanced than Mikan's, West was more of an outlier compared to his contemporaries compared to the top perimeter scorers of Mikan's day.

Here are the top perimeter guys by TS Add in Mikan's BAA/NBA years:

'48-49: Arnie Johnson +120.5
'49-50: Bobby Wanzer +160.9
'50-51: Paul Arizin +183.8
'51-52: Paul Arizin +329.7
'52-53: Bill Sharman +166.4
'53-54: Bill Sharman +192.9
'54-55: Bill Sharman +130.8

West once had back-to-back years north of +370, and he spent a decade playing at a pace well above +200.

So you've got to know going in that there's really only 1 guy in the '50s who can even begin to approximate what West can do as a scorer and that's Arizin with his military-interrupted career. Now take Arizin, make him smarter, give him longer arms, a better shot, and you've got West on the offensive side on the ball. Add West almost certainly being the all-time steals leader if we had all the data and possibly quite high on the leaderboard for blocks.

Yeah, West was a different animal from the type Mikan proved himself superior too.

As I say all that:

It would have been different in the '40s before teams learned how to stop Mikan's offense. So it is true that in some situations Mikan would have been more valuable than West, but if we're talking about a more mature NBA like we saw by the mid-50s, I think West is basically the type of player offenses were looking for to move past Mikan's dominance.

5. Baseball vs basketball, Ruth etc. Do you realize that while the 6'2" Babe Ruth was the best baseball player of the '20s, Nat Holman was the best basketball player at 5'11"? To say that baseball matured to something close to its modern form earlier than basketball is an understatement. Pre-Mikan/Kurland, people weren't looking to find really tall guys. After them, that became the main thing they searched for, and that's the specific reason why Mikan was only ever going to be an outlier for that particular moment when he was close to alone among true big men.

That's not a reason to not consider Mikan - we should consider Mikan - but it's a reason to expect that he got surpassed in a considerably more dramatic way than baseball players from the era.

[eminence]

A quick reminder of the level of team success difference we saw from the Lakers when Mikan returned for the 2nd half of the season in '56.

Without Mikan
14-21 (40%)
96.3 ppg
100.5 opp ppg
-4.2 MOV

With Mikan
19-18 (51%)
102.1 ppg
99.9 opp ppg
+2.2 MOV

Change
+11%
+5.8 ppg
-0.6 opp ppg
+6.4 MOV

Russell missing the first 1/3 of the season the very next year for comparison.

Without Russell
16-8 (67%)
105.2 ppg
100.6 opp ppg
+4.5 MOV

With Russell
28-20 (58%)
105.7 ppg
100.0 opp ppg
+5.7 MOV

Change
-9%
+0.5 ppg
-0.6 opp ppg
+1.2 MOV

[penbeast0]

Honus Wagner/Ty Cobb then or for football, Sammy Baugh.

The other aspect where basketball differs from baseball and maybe even fb to a degree is how much skill sets have changed and developed over the last 100 years. The primary skill set for baseball for instance is extremely close now to what it was 100 years ago. I don't even know if the pitches used have changed that much in recent decades. While in basketball its just so different in terms of what guys are asked to do and the strategies/defenses used on the court. Its much easier to imagine for instance a guy like Wagner just walking onto a mlb roster and being able to play at a high level from day 1 then it would be to imagine an nba player from the 40's or 50's walking into an nba roster and being able to go out there and function at a reasonably high level. I think this difference plays into how players from long ago are perceived in each sport. Just as we can watch a video of Jim Brown from the 50's and not have much trouble imagining him being able to do the same thing now. More so when we know his size and speed which would be top notch even today.

Dead ball era v. 24 second clock, pretty decent analogy. I can see Mikan begin comfortable playing today more easily than a guy like Wagner playing shortstop (with those little gloves for a start) to say nothing of a league where 27 home runs in a year had been the all time record for 35 years. For football, Baugh was working out of the single wing with linemen that weighed under 200 pounds. I'd bet on Mikan as easily as either.

[Cavsfansince84]

Dead ball era v. 24 second clock, pretty decent analogy. I can see Mikan begin comfortable playing today more easily than a guy like Wagner playing shortstop (with those little gloves for a start) to say nothing of a league where 27 home runs in a year had been the all time record for 35 years. For football, Baugh was working out of the single wing with linemen that weighed under 200 pounds. I'd bet on Mikan as easily as either.

The little gloves would only make it easier to adapt to today imo. Just as going from playing with a wooden tennis racket to a modern one would be much easier than vice versa imo. In terms of fb, qb is the one position that would be the hardest to adapt to I would say because offenses are so much more complex and require so much more study of defenses and how to read them. The question I have as well as many others I think is whether Mikan's skill set truly translates well to the 60's much less to today. With Russell and even Pettit I am fairly confident it would translate quite well. With Mikan I'm not so sure. Even Wilt's offense I am not totally sold on just because I see a lot of his misses back then were bad misses and he was likely tiers above Mikan offensively. That's the glaring thing to me about watching 60's nba bb is how often guys missed badly even from 5-10 ft away.

[trex_8063]

Honus Wagner/Ty Cobb then or for football, Sammy Baugh.

The other aspect where basketball differs from baseball and maybe even fb to a degree is how much skill sets have changed and developed over the last 100 years. The primary skill set for baseball for instance is extremely close now to what it was 100 years ago. I don't even know if the pitches used have changed that much in recent decades. While in basketball its just so different in terms of what guys are asked to do and the strategies/defenses used on the court. Its much easier to imagine for instance a guy like Wagner just walking onto a mlb roster and being able to play at a high level from day 1 then it would be to imagine an nba player from the 40's or 50's walking into an nba roster and being able to go out there and function at a reasonably high level. I think this difference plays into how players from long ago are perceived in each sport. Just as we can watch a video of Jim Brown from the 50's and not have much trouble imagining him being able to do the same thing now. More so when we know his size and speed which would be top notch even today.

Dead ball era v. 24 second clock, pretty decent analogy. I can see Mikan begin comfortable playing today more easily than a guy like Wagner playing shortstop (with those little gloves for a start) to say nothing of a league where 27 home runs in a year had been the all time record for 35 years.

Why are we saddling Wagner with the small gloves if playing in the modern era?

This is like we try to translate Mikan to the modern era of basketball, but force him to wear 1940/50s style shoes (horrible [flat-soled] traction relative to today's shoes, horrible ankles support, horrible cushion) while the rest of the league gets modern basketball shoes; maybe also having some "magic machine" that instantly transforms the ball [each time that Mikan touches it, though all other players get a modern ball] to a the ball they had pre-1952 (which was an inflatable bladder inside a leather ball-case with an actual sewn seam on one side).

Also, don't you think a HUGE part of the reason home-runs are so much more prevalent is because of one or more of the following:
a) improved and better-facilitated strength training
b) (PED's)
c) recruiting emphasis on guys who can hit some dingers
d) they play marginally more games per season than they did 100 years ago
e) improved batting coaching

....that's just what I come up with off the top of my head as someone who doesn't really even follow baseball.

[trex_8063]

btw, if anyone is wondering, the reason the final tally is being delayed is to see if a complex [and frankly circumstantially muddled] multi-player run-off can be avoided by hearing back from some individual posters who already cast a counted vote. +/- maybe we get some additional counted votes in the meantime???
idk, this is one of those weird unforeseen circumstances; I'll elaborate later.

[sansterre]

The other aspect where basketball differs from baseball and maybe even fb to a degree is how much skill sets have changed and developed over the last 100 years. The primary skill set for baseball for instance is extremely close now to what it was 100 years ago. I don't even know if the pitches used have changed that much in recent decades. While in basketball its just so different in terms of what guys are asked to do and the strategies/defenses used on the court. Its much easier to imagine for instance a guy like Wagner just walking onto a mlb roster and being able to play at a high level from day 1 then it would be to imagine an nba player from the 40's or 50's walking into an nba roster and being able to go out there and function at a reasonably high level. I think this difference plays into how players from long ago are perceived in each sport. Just as we can watch a video of Jim Brown from the 50's and not have much trouble imagining him being able to do the same thing now. More so when we know his size and speed which would be top notch even today.

Dead ball era v. 24 second clock, pretty decent analogy. I can see Mikan begin comfortable playing today more easily than a guy like Wagner playing shortstop (with those little gloves for a start) to say nothing of a league where 27 home runs in a year had been the all time record for 35 years.

Why are we saddling Wagner with the small gloves if playing in the modern era?

This is like we try to translate Mikan to the modern era of basketball, but force him to wear 1940/50s style shoes (horrible [flat-soled] traction relative to today's shoes, horrible ankles support, horrible cushion) while the rest of the league gets modern basketball shoes; maybe also having some "magic machine" that instantly transforms the ball [each time that Mikan touches it, though all other players get a modern ball] to a the ball they had pre-1952 (which was an inflatable bladder inside a leather ball-case with an actual sewn seam on one side).

Also, don't you think a HUGE part of the reason home-runs are so much more prevalent is because of one or more of the following:
a) improved and better-facilitated strength training
b) (PED's)
c) recruiting emphasis on guys who can hit some dingers
d) they play marginally more games per season than they did 100 years ago
e) improved batting coaching

....that's just what I come up with off the top of my head as someone who doesn't really even follow baseball.

I did a lot of research into this for a different history project. Here's my writeup of the transition from the deadfall era:

Spoiler:

Welcome to the 20s! Look behind you! That’s the Deadball Era! Going forward scoring is about to jump big-time. And why you may ask? A lot of theories have been brought forward but it comes down to a few things:

In an effort to increase the number of runs per game the league introduced the “live ball” with a cork center, but in 1910 and not in 1920 as is often asserted. For three years hitting spiked until something curious was discovered; that if the baseball were scuffed (say against concrete or emery boards) it would lead to unpredictable breaks on the ball when pitched. Pitchers relied on this and the spitter more and more and the hitters went back to the 1900s-levels of offense. It became the job of the pitcher and every other fielder to scuff up the ball as much as possible. Compounding this problem is that, as a cost-saving measure, the ball that the game was started with was used until the stitching had started to unravel; even home runs were thrown back into play to be used. This meant that before long into the game the ball became a "misshapen, earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and, as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."

Going into the 1920 season the league decided to crack down on the defacing of the ball. Doctoring the ball in any way became illegal, including throwing a spitball. Pitchers that already threw the pitch were grandfathered in (as the league didn’t want to effectively end the career of those depending on its use) but no pitchers debuting after 1920 could (legally) throw that pitch. This change was massive in effect. Observe these differences:

1919 (defacing ball legal): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (defacing ball illegal): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team

That, my friends, is a big difference. Taking away the pitchers’ ability to doctor the ball was worth half a run per game, 13 points of average, 24 points of slugging and 11 home runs per team.

Doctoring the ball was illegal, but the league still used the same ball for as long as it could, making it harder to see and therefor hit.

On August 16, 1920, the above came to a head. In a game between the Yankees and Indians, submariner pitcher Carl Mays (known for challenging hitters crowding the plate) threw a fastball high and inside against Indians’ shortstop Ben Chapman. Chapman, apparently not able to see the pitch come in, did not move out of the way. The ball hit Chapman’s head hard and rebounded into play. The impact was so loud that Mays assumed that the ball had bounced off the end of Chapman’s bat, fielded the ball and threw to first. Chapman, dazed and stumbling, tried to take his base but fell. He rose doggedly, stumbled another few steps, fell again and did not rise. He was carted off the field and taken to a hospital where he died of his injuries at 4:30 am the next day.

Chapman’s death was a tragic accident. But it contained within it massive policy implications for the league. After all, pitchers were throwing balls that were very hard to pick up visually as they approached the batter. It took little imagination to realize that this was a dangerous set of conditions to play in, and Chapman’s death was the natural consequence of this fact.

The league moved quickly implemented a new policy, that balls be replaced as soon as any sign of wear became visible.

Between these two changes pitchers had lost one of their most effective tools and batters gained a more visible, more lively ball (not by virtue of its construction but by the absence of wear). And the changes would give hitters dominance over the game for the next two decades; only in the steroid era was the balance of power so in favor of the hitters.

1919 (defacing ball legal, old balls): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (scuffed ball illegal, old balls): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
1921 (only new balls, no scuffing): 4.85 R/G, 291/348/403 line, 59 home runs per team

These two changes were worth a run per game, 28 points of average and 55 points of slugging. The changes suggest that the difference was worth 31 home runs per team as well, but the difference was actually greater. After all, these batters had built their swings for the deadball era and it took some time to adjust to swinging for the fences more; by 1930 teams were hitting almost 100 home runs a season.

Transition points are curious things. The things that made a great deadball era player (great contact, speed and fielding) were still useful in the liveball era, but not as useful. Conversely, players with uppercut swings simply weren’t that great in the deadball era, even if they occasionally had value (Gavvy Cravath, Socks Seybold, etc). Transition points are always ripe for exploitation by either 1) people that are savvy enough to detect the change in trend and adjust accordingly, and 2) people that by their nature are already engaged in the optimal behavior for the new environment.

Enter Babe Ruth: “How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

Ruth swung as hard as he could every time, though he was willing to wait for that right pitch. He struck out a ton (leading the league in strikeouts his first season as a batter, even though he only hit in 95 games, and finishing in the top two of strikeouts from 1918 to 1928) but his incredible reflexes, eyesight and strength meant that when he did make contact it went quite a ways (and that he played in a league where 3-4 K/9 was the average meant his aggression was not penalized too much). His lines for 1919-1920:

1919: 322 / 456 / 657, 29 home runs, 217 OPS+, 128 runs created (#2 was 109)
1920: 376 / 532 / 847, 54 home runs, 255 OPS+, 200 runs created (#2 was 178)

Ruth was already great. But the liveball era was *perfect* for Ruth. And it transformed him from a great hitter into arguably the greatest hitter ever.

[trex_8063]

Dead ball era v. 24 second clock, pretty decent analogy. I can see Mikan begin comfortable playing today more easily than a guy like Wagner playing shortstop (with those little gloves for a start) to say nothing of a league where 27 home runs in a year had been the all time record for 35 years.

Why are we saddling Wagner with the small gloves if playing in the modern era?

This is like we try to translate Mikan to the modern era of basketball, but force him to wear 1940/50s style shoes (horrible [flat-soled] traction relative to today's shoes, horrible ankles support, horrible cushion) while the rest of the league gets modern basketball shoes; maybe also having some "magic machine" that instantly transforms the ball [each time that Mikan touches it, though all other players get a modern ball] to a the ball they had pre-1952 (which was an inflatable bladder inside a leather ball-case with an actual sewn seam on one side).

Also, don't you think a HUGE part of the reason home-runs are so much more prevalent is because of one or more of the following:
a) improved and better-facilitated strength training
b) (PED's)
c) recruiting emphasis on guys who can hit some dingers
d) they play marginally more games per season than they did 100 years ago
e) improved batting coaching

....that's just what I come up with off the top of my head as someone who doesn't really even follow baseball.

I did a lot of research into this for a different history project. Here's my writeup of the transition from the deadfall era:

Spoiler:

Welcome to the 20s! Look behind you! That’s the Deadball Era! Going forward scoring is about to jump big-time. And why you may ask? A lot of theories have been brought forward but it comes down to a few things:

In an effort to increase the number of runs per game the league introduced the “live ball” with a cork center, but in 1910 and not in 1920 as is often asserted. For three years hitting spiked until something curious was discovered; that if the baseball were scuffed (say against concrete or emery boards) it would lead to unpredictable breaks on the ball when pitched. Pitchers relied on this and the spitter more and more and the hitters went back to the 1900s-levels of offense. It became the job of the pitcher and every other fielder to scuff up the ball as much as possible. Compounding this problem is that, as a cost-saving measure, the ball that the game was started with was used until the stitching had started to unravel; even home runs were thrown back into play to be used. This meant that before long into the game the ball became a "misshapen, earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and, as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."

Going into the 1920 season the league decided to crack down on the defacing of the ball. Doctoring the ball in any way became illegal, including throwing a spitball. Pitchers that already threw the pitch were grandfathered in (as the league didn’t want to effectively end the career of those depending on its use) but no pitchers debuting after 1920 could (legally) throw that pitch. This change was massive in effect. Observe these differences:

1919 (defacing ball legal): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (defacing ball illegal): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team

That, my friends, is a big difference. Taking away the pitchers’ ability to doctor the ball was worth half a run per game, 13 points of average, 24 points of slugging and 11 home runs per team.

Doctoring the ball was illegal, but the league still used the same ball for as long as it could, making it harder to see and therefor hit.

On August 16, 1920, the above came to a head. In a game between the Yankees and Indians, submariner pitcher Carl Mays (known for challenging hitters crowding the plate) threw a fastball high and inside against Indians’ shortstop Ben Chapman. Chapman, apparently not able to see the pitch come in, did not move out of the way. The ball hit Chapman’s head hard and rebounded into play. The impact was so loud that Mays assumed that the ball had bounced off the end of Chapman’s bat, fielded the ball and threw to first. Chapman, dazed and stumbling, tried to take his base but fell. He rose doggedly, stumbled another few steps, fell again and did not rise. He was carted off the field and taken to a hospital where he died of his injuries at 4:30 am the next day.

Chapman’s death was a tragic accident. But it contained within it massive policy implications for the league. After all, pitchers were throwing balls that were very hard to pick up visually as they approached the batter. It took little imagination to realize that this was a dangerous set of conditions to play in, and Chapman’s death was the natural consequence of this fact.

The league moved quickly implemented a new policy, that balls be replaced as soon as any sign of wear became visible.

Between these two changes pitchers had lost one of their most effective tools and batters gained a more visible, more lively ball (not by virtue of its construction but by the absence of wear). And the changes would give hitters dominance over the game for the next two decades; only in the steroid era was the balance of power so in favor of the hitters.

1919 (defacing ball legal, old balls): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (scuffed ball illegal, old balls): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
1921 (only new balls, no scuffing): 4.85 R/G, 291/348/403 line, 59 home runs per team

These two changes were worth a run per game, 28 points of average and 55 points of slugging. The changes suggest that the difference was worth 31 home runs per team as well, but the difference was actually greater. After all, these batters had built their swings for the deadball era and it took some time to adjust to swinging for the fences more; by 1930 teams were hitting almost 100 home runs a season.

Transition points are curious things. The things that made a great deadball era player (great contact, speed and fielding) were still useful in the liveball era, but not as useful. Conversely, players with uppercut swings simply weren’t that great in the deadball era, even if they occasionally had value (Gavvy Cravath, Socks Seybold, etc). Transition points are always ripe for exploitation by either 1) people that are savvy enough to detect the change in trend and adjust accordingly, and 2) people that by their nature are already engaged in the optimal behavior for the new environment.

Enter Babe Ruth: “How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

Ruth swung as hard as he could every time, though he was willing to wait for that right pitch. He struck out a ton (leading the league in strikeouts his first season as a batter, even though he only hit in 95 games, and finishing in the top two of strikeouts from 1918 to 1928) but his incredible reflexes, eyesight and strength meant that when he did make contact it went quite a ways (and that he played in a league where 3-4 K/9 was the average meant his aggression was not penalized too much). His lines for 1919-1920:

1919: 322 / 456 / 657, 29 home runs, 217 OPS+, 128 runs created (#2 was 109)
1920: 376 / 532 / 847, 54 home runs, 255 OPS+, 200 runs created (#2 was 178)

Ruth was already great. But the liveball era was *perfect* for Ruth. And it transformed him from a great hitter into arguably the greatest hitter ever.

Awesome stuff, thanks. I'm not really someone who could be termed a "baseball fan", but I sort of love sports history, and baseball's is so full and rich. I actually watched all 16 hours of the extended version of Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, and really enjoyed it.

One small corrections: it was Ray Chapman who was hit by a pitch and subsequently died (Ben Chapman was an altogether different player [and manager] who didn't die until ripe old age in the 1990's).

[Dr Positivity]

Segregation is easily bigger factor in basketball than baseball. Imagine all American white league in 2010s - Kevin Love averages 30/20?

[eminence]

[
So you've got to know going in that there's really only 1 guy in the '50s who can even begin to approximate what West can do as a scorer and that's Arizin with his military-interrupted career. Now take Arizin, make him smarter, give him longer arms, a better shot, and you've got West on the offensive side on the ball. Add West almost certainly being the all-time steals leader if we had all the data and possibly quite high on the leaderboard for blocks.

Yeah, West was a different animal from the type Mikan proved himself superior too.

I don't really see any justifications for the fairly strong claims you're making here regarding Arizin/West.

[sansterre]

Why are we saddling Wagner with the small gloves if playing in the modern era?

This is like we try to translate Mikan to the modern era of basketball, but force him to wear 1940/50s style shoes (horrible [flat-soled] traction relative to today's shoes, horrible ankles support, horrible cushion) while the rest of the league gets modern basketball shoes; maybe also having some "magic machine" that instantly transforms the ball [each time that Mikan touches it, though all other players get a modern ball] to a the ball they had pre-1952 (which was an inflatable bladder inside a leather ball-case with an actual sewn seam on one side).

Also, don't you think a HUGE part of the reason home-runs are so much more prevalent is because of one or more of the following:
a) improved and better-facilitated strength training
b) (PED's)
c) recruiting emphasis on guys who can hit some dingers
d) they play marginally more games per season than they did 100 years ago
e) improved batting coaching

....that's just what I come up with off the top of my head as someone who doesn't really even follow baseball.

I did a lot of research into this for a different history project. Here's my writeup of the transition from the deadfall era:

Spoiler:

Welcome to the 20s! Look behind you! That’s the Deadball Era! Going forward scoring is about to jump big-time. And why you may ask? A lot of theories have been brought forward but it comes down to a few things:

In an effort to increase the number of runs per game the league introduced the “live ball” with a cork center, but in 1910 and not in 1920 as is often asserted. For three years hitting spiked until something curious was discovered; that if the baseball were scuffed (say against concrete or emery boards) it would lead to unpredictable breaks on the ball when pitched. Pitchers relied on this and the spitter more and more and the hitters went back to the 1900s-levels of offense. It became the job of the pitcher and every other fielder to scuff up the ball as much as possible. Compounding this problem is that, as a cost-saving measure, the ball that the game was started with was used until the stitching had started to unravel; even home runs were thrown back into play to be used. This meant that before long into the game the ball became a "misshapen, earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and, as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."

Going into the 1920 season the league decided to crack down on the defacing of the ball. Doctoring the ball in any way became illegal, including throwing a spitball. Pitchers that already threw the pitch were grandfathered in (as the league didn’t want to effectively end the career of those depending on its use) but no pitchers debuting after 1920 could (legally) throw that pitch. This change was massive in effect. Observe these differences:

1919 (defacing ball legal): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (defacing ball illegal): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team

That, my friends, is a big difference. Taking away the pitchers’ ability to doctor the ball was worth half a run per game, 13 points of average, 24 points of slugging and 11 home runs per team.

Doctoring the ball was illegal, but the league still used the same ball for as long as it could, making it harder to see and therefor hit.

On August 16, 1920, the above came to a head. In a game between the Yankees and Indians, submariner pitcher Carl Mays (known for challenging hitters crowding the plate) threw a fastball high and inside against Indians’ shortstop Ben Chapman. Chapman, apparently not able to see the pitch come in, did not move out of the way. The ball hit Chapman’s head hard and rebounded into play. The impact was so loud that Mays assumed that the ball had bounced off the end of Chapman’s bat, fielded the ball and threw to first. Chapman, dazed and stumbling, tried to take his base but fell. He rose doggedly, stumbled another few steps, fell again and did not rise. He was carted off the field and taken to a hospital where he died of his injuries at 4:30 am the next day.

Chapman’s death was a tragic accident. But it contained within it massive policy implications for the league. After all, pitchers were throwing balls that were very hard to pick up visually as they approached the batter. It took little imagination to realize that this was a dangerous set of conditions to play in, and Chapman’s death was the natural consequence of this fact.

The league moved quickly implemented a new policy, that balls be replaced as soon as any sign of wear became visible.

Between these two changes pitchers had lost one of their most effective tools and batters gained a more visible, more lively ball (not by virtue of its construction but by the absence of wear). And the changes would give hitters dominance over the game for the next two decades; only in the steroid era was the balance of power so in favor of the hitters.

1919 (defacing ball legal, old balls): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (scuffed ball illegal, old balls): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
1921 (only new balls, no scuffing): 4.85 R/G, 291/348/403 line, 59 home runs per team

These two changes were worth a run per game, 28 points of average and 55 points of slugging. The changes suggest that the difference was worth 31 home runs per team as well, but the difference was actually greater. After all, these batters had built their swings for the deadball era and it took some time to adjust to swinging for the fences more; by 1930 teams were hitting almost 100 home runs a season.

Transition points are curious things. The things that made a great deadball era player (great contact, speed and fielding) were still useful in the liveball era, but not as useful. Conversely, players with uppercut swings simply weren’t that great in the deadball era, even if they occasionally had value (Gavvy Cravath, Socks Seybold, etc). Transition points are always ripe for exploitation by either 1) people that are savvy enough to detect the change in trend and adjust accordingly, and 2) people that by their nature are already engaged in the optimal behavior for the new environment.

Enter Babe Ruth: “How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

Ruth swung as hard as he could every time, though he was willing to wait for that right pitch. He struck out a ton (leading the league in strikeouts his first season as a batter, even though he only hit in 95 games, and finishing in the top two of strikeouts from 1918 to 1928) but his incredible reflexes, eyesight and strength meant that when he did make contact it went quite a ways (and that he played in a league where 3-4 K/9 was the average meant his aggression was not penalized too much). His lines for 1919-1920:

1919: 322 / 456 / 657, 29 home runs, 217 OPS+, 128 runs created (#2 was 109)
1920: 376 / 532 / 847, 54 home runs, 255 OPS+, 200 runs created (#2 was 178)

Ruth was already great. But the liveball era was *perfect* for Ruth. And it transformed him from a great hitter into arguably the greatest hitter ever.

Awesome stuff, thanks. I'm not really someone who could be termed a "baseball fan", but I sort of love sports history, and baseball's is so full and rich. I actually watched all 16 hours of the extended version of Ken Burns' documentary Baseball, and really enjoyed it.

One small corrections: it was Ray Chapman who was hit by a pitch and subsequently died (Ben Chapman was an altogether different player [and manager] who didn't die until ripe old age in the 1990's).

D'oh!

[Cavsfansince84]

D'oh!

Excellent write up on the dead ball stuff. I was actually trying to remember in my head what the exact reasons were for the transition beyond just a more lively ball. You summarized it very well.