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11. BASEBALL: EVERYONE A SUPERSTAR (Sept. 2002)
I was just looking at
the final stats for the 2000 baseball season and they make me sick. Everyone's
a superstar now, and because of it the beloved superstars of the past have to
die. This is a game where stats rule. Well, now the stats of old superstars are
shrinking by comparison with the phony stats of today, and in the future it
won't be possible to convince someone just how great a Willie Mays or a Mickey
Mantle really was.
Take Mantle. His
greatness an article of faith. But look at the numbers now. Suddenly, they're
surprisingly unimpressive.
Drove in 100 or more
runs only 4 times. MVP season of '57: 34 homers, 94 ribbies. You know how many
players hit 34 or more in 2000? 30. How many guys drove in 94 runs or more? 63.
Some guy named Geoff Jenkins, on the Milwaukee Brewers, exactly duplicated
Mantle's 34 and 94 in 2000. Did he get 1 vote in the universe for MVP?
But Mantle's numbers
were superb for 1957. You want to cry out: The current stats are phony! They've
been pumped up by steroids, creatine, over-expansion, new small parks, a
juiced-up ball, the death of pitching. You want to cry out: Mickey Mantle
would have batted .400 and hit 70 homers and driven in 170 today.
So I do cry it out, and
some kid tells me Todd Helton,
And you know what? In
the eternal baseball world--- the stat world--- he does.
So I'm right, but I shut
up.
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