Two Careers in One Uniform

Every baseball fan eventually plays the Babe Ruth what-if game. What if Boston had just put him in the lineup every day from the start?

It's a fair question, but it skips over something. Before he ever hit a home run in pinstripes, Ruth was one of the best left-handed pitchers in baseball. He won the ERA title in 1916, threw nine shutouts that season, and strung together 29 2/3 scoreless innings in the World Series, a record that held until Whitey Ford broke it in 1961. Boston wasn't wasting him. They won three championships with him.

Once the Red Sox started playing him in the field on his off days, the bat took over fast. In 1919 he hit 29 home runs, a new single-season record. His entire team hit 33.

Here's the twist. Ty Cobb floated a theory that the pitching years didn't cost Ruth his home runs. They may have made them. Nobody expected much from a pitcher at the plate, so Ruth was free to take huge, uppercut swings in an era when hitters were taught to put the ball in play and run.

So maybe the real answer to the what-if isn't a number. It's that one man very nearly had two Hall of Fame careers.