What he did: In 1934, Babe Ruth was nearing the end of his storied career. With Ruth’s production having once again slipped and his 40th birthday looming, the New York Yankees chose to release their legend after he returned from a goodwill trip to Japan. The Sultan of Swat’s fondest wish was to manage in the majors, though the best the Yankees could offer was for him to run their top farm club. As owner Jacob Ruppert famously remarked of Ruth, “How can he manage a team when he can’t even manage himself?”

Ruth rejected New York’s offer, listening to his wife who told him he was strictly a big league person. Instead, Ruth went to the Boston Braves for one more bleak, bloated season, looking grotesque in the outfield and serving in an empty role as vice president. He lasted a few months, and save for a role as hitting coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers two seasons later was done in baseball. The apocrephyal story, told by Ruth’s wife after his death in 1948, was that he sat by the phone the rest of his life waiting for a call to manage that never came.

Era he might have thrived in: It’s interesting to wonder what might have been if pride hadn’t gotten the best of the Bambino. The minor league team he refused to run, the Newark Bears went on in 1937 to have one of the greatest seasons ever for a farm club, going 109-43 and winning the International League by 25-1/2 games. A number of future big leaguers starred for those Bears including Charlie Keller, who hit a circuit-best .353.  Once, after a player got promoted to the Yankees, a fellow Bear remarked it was “because he couldn’t crack the lineup here.” It seems if Ruth had sat on the Newark bench, he’d have gotten some credit for their success and earned his shot managing in the majors.

Why: First of all, this tact worked for the Newark manager in ’37, Ossie Vitt, who parlayed his team’s brilliance into a stint the following three seasons managing the Cleveland Indians (interestingly, Vitt went 262-198 those years, never finishing worse than third, though he was unpopular with his players and didn’t last as manager beyond 1940.) While I don’t know if the Bambino could have unseated Joe McCarthy in pinstripes, as the Yankees were on an unprecedented run of their own in the late ’30s, an impressive showing in Newark might have gotten Ruth the job in Cleveland or elsewhere.

I’ll add that I think Ruth was unfairly judged. No doubt he drank and caroused, but I can’t see character resolutely determining a manager’s odds for success. There have simply been too many exceptions to this throughout baseball history, the Boston Red Sox new hire Bobby Valentine only the latest example. In earlier years, John McGraw was a wild young manager with the New York Giants, Leo Durocher returned from a gambling-related ban to lead New York to multiple World Series, and Billy Martin won and drank everywhere he went. Even Casey Stengel told his players not to drink at the hotel bar “because that’s where I do my drinking.”

I don’t know if Ruth was terribly worse as a person than any of these men, and he’d have also brought a wealth of baseball experience. I doubt it’s on talent alone that he swatted 714 home runs, hit .342 lifetime, or won 94 games as a pitcher. It’s a shame he couldn’t have passed more of his knowledge on.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies,Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson,Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe,Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film),Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Ollie Carnegie, Paul Derringer, Pedro Martinez, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson,Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson,Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Wes Ferrell, Will Clark, Willie Mays

What he did: Ruth may have been the greatest baseball player of all-time, perhaps the best athlete ever with all of his varied abilities, but I’ve noticed there’s a view of him today that seems pervasive. The idea, which I’ve seen in Baseball Think Factory forums and elsewhere, is that early greats like Ruth and Shoeless Joe Jackson would find themselves horribly out of shape if whisked from their eras to the modern game, sultans of sweat in flannel uniforms. They supposedly wouldn’t hold up against current competition.

But I think this does a disservice to the Babe. Fred Lieb, a New York sportswriter during Ruth’s years on the Yankees, offered an interesting anecdote in his 1977 memoir, Baseball As I Have Known It. Lieb wrote:

During the years that Babe was in his prime, a professor at Columbia College gave Ruth a thorough physical examination, testing such measurable traits as the speed of his muscular and nervous reactions to various stimuli. The New York Times, in recording the professor’s findings, gave the story the head ‘ONE MAN IN A MILLION.’ The report said nothing about Babe’s IQ, but in twenty categories, Babe ranked well above the average male. All of his five sense were keener and sharper than average. He also scored high in strength, response to stress, and reaction time. As I recall it, the professor explained: ‘Take twenty men off the street and you will find that several of them may score above average in two, three, or four of these tests, but it [is] only one in a million who will score above average in all twenty.’

I couldn’t find any record of this article in the New York Times archives. But supposing Lieb’s story is true, it leads me to believe Ruth would excel in pretty much any era. Playing in recent years, when his natural abilities could be strengthened with modern fitness there’s no telling what Ruth might do.

Era he might have thrived in: Ruth played his prime years in a Golden Age for hitters, the 1920s and early ’30s and in a ballpark literally built for him, old Yankee Stadium which boasted a short porch in right field that suited him as a left-handed pull hitter. Thus, in most other eras, Ruth’s numbers would drop, even if he remained relatively dominant to the rest of baseball. But if we put him on one of the top American League offensive juggernauts of the late 1990s, he might hit .400 or smack 70 home runs.

Why: All the reasons we’ve talked about so far would help Ruth in the 1990s. He’d go from one Golden Age for hitters to another, facing the same weak pitching. Ruth would also have access to modern strength training which wasn’t emphasized in baseball before the 1960s (and for the purposes of this article, we’ll assume Jose Canseco doesn’t turn Ruth on to steroids.) Ruth would retain all the same preternatural instincts and abilities that made him one of a kind in his own day. It’s a wonder, really, he achieved as much as he did. Talent can only take a person so far in life. In the 1990s, Ruth’s talent would be coaxed and developed.

The projected numbers speak for themselves. On the 1996 Texas Rangers, Ruth’s historic 60-home-run season in 1927 converts to 70 home runs, 201 RBI, and a .379 batting average. In fact, 12 of his 22 seasons convert to .370 or better on the ’96 Rangers, and the stat converter has him hitting above .400 for his converted 1923 and 1926 seasons. He also hits at least 60 home runs for his converted 1920, 1921, and 1928 years. The thought here is that if Ruth played most of his career on a team like the Rangers or the Kingdome-era Seattle Mariners or even the Yankees, he’d top 800 home runs lifetime.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty O’Doul, Michael Jordan, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays