The Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal): Babe Ruth corked his bat?!!*

July 23, 2009

Babe Ruth corked his bat?!!*

A thoughtful and thought-provoking argument(pdf) by Bill James on baseball's Hall of Fame and performance enhancing drugs.

*Yep.

2 comments:

Tom Shieber said...: Bill James's assertion that Babe Ruth "was caught using a corked bat" is incorrect. Here's the real story: http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.com/2011/02/uncorking-truth.html; February 22, 2011 at 5:01 PM
peter ramus said...: Hi, Tom. Thanks for stopping by.

Looking back, the article I linked to at Historybluff.com claiming that Ruth corked his bat isn't a good source for the story at all. There aren't any cites, just a bald assertion that Ruth used a number of corked bats in the early 1930's. I searched around a bit and couldn't find any further details on the matter, except for other sites like mine referencing the original Historybluff article.

I don't think of Bill James as an inveterate slinger of bullshit, but on the other hand I don't know where he got his information either.

Your research on Ruth's Quadrebuilt bat is fascinating, but it doesn't bear on the question raised by the Historybluff article since the Quadrebuilt episode predates the age of the claimed corked bats by seven or eight years. You show that Ruth doctored his bat once and the commissioner didn't turn a blind eye, and if that was the only time he doctored his bat, then James got the story wrong. Were there other times, with cork? Bill James may know. I don't.; February 27, 2011 at 5:15 PM

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For some years now I've travelled bumptiously about the internet commenting on other people's blogs under the pseudonym "peter ramus," pointedly and I regret to say at times heatedly disclosing the general shape my own intricately devised misapprehension of current events in contradistinction to the remarkable torrent of misapprehensions made known daily on that medium by everyone else.

Nominally I associate myself as much as possible with the views of those who seem to know what they're talking about, but often enough I find myself obliged, like so many others, to go on about things I'm not in the least qualified to address simply because it is my way when the opportunity presents itself. I find this shortcoming as personally irritating as it is to those I've favored it with over the years, an as yet irrepressible feature of my discourse. Thus the admittedly defensive assumption of the nom de blog, "peter ramus."

"peter ramus" isn't to be confused with Peter Ramus, another fellow entirely, who lived and died a long time ago around the sad times leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, an event which saw his own undoing in the chaotic days that followed.

He was a zeolot, Peter Ramus was. He had a particular bone to pick with Aristotle over the stuff and substance of rhetoric, which led him to propose revolutionary changes in the subject and manner of teaching which prevailed in higher education in those times. A quaestio was convened, a solemn gathering of all the branches of civil society, to see what was to be done about him. The King sent a man, and the Church sent a man, and of course the University of Paris couldn't help but send one, too. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in favor of Aristotle and against Peter Ramus. In addition, it pleased the members of the assembled body to pronounce Peter Ramus personally disagreeable and notably ugly to boot. Strictly as an aside.

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July 23, 2009

Babe Ruth corked his bat?!!*

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