I keep reading this lunacy of "short porch" where Babe Ruth is concerned. In every media published, printed or filmed, Ruth is widely heralded as the most powerful hitter to ever play the game.  Yet when presented with facts, those facts are ignored and yet another incredible sentence appears about the "short porch" in Yankee stadium.  This is beginning to look like a mental disorder and not a debate. Maybe it's like Bush Derangement Syndrome, only it has to do with the dimensions of Yankee stadium?  When someone is presented with facts about unrivaled performance and they respond with the dimensions of a single field as the focus of accomplishment, you begin to wonder.

But let's not rely on one fans opinion, from the Baseball Almanac,  http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/art_hr.shtml, we get this:

Babe Ruth, it can be said defies rational analysis. Not only did he set distance records in every major league ballpark (including National League stadiums where he played only infrequently), he also set similar standards in hundreds of other fields, where he made exhibition and barnstorming appearances. Amazingly, many of those records remain unequaled, which is to say that Ruth is a true athletic anachronism. In virtually every other field of endeavor in which physical performance can be measured, there are no Ruthian equivalents. In 1921 alone, which was Ruth's best tape measure season, he hit at least one 500 foot home run in all eight American League cities.

There should be no doubt about the authentication of these conclusions. Despite the scarcity of film on Ruth, we can still make definitive evaluations of the approximate landing points of all of his 714 career home runs.

Ruth played during the height of American's newspaper culture, when approximately 10 New York papers gave first hand accounts of each Yankee game. When you consider that the other baseball town's average about five comparable publications, it is clear that we can draw upon approximately 15 descriptions of most of the hundreds of four-base blows struck during his career. A suitable example can be identified in Ruth's classic Comiskey Park roof topper on August 16, 1927. Fifteen writers from New York, Chicago, and other places emphatically stated that Ruth's fifth-inning drive cleared the 52-foot-wide grandstand roof by a considerable margin.

Although other sluggers occasionally reached the rooftops during Comiskey's long lifetime, the only other left-handed batter known to have flown the right-field roof was Detroit's Kirk Gibson in 1985. That magnitude of Ruth's accomplishment can be understood with the knowledge that, because home plate had been moved, the distance to the grandstand for Gibson was 341 feet, while for Ruth it was 365 feet. Similarly, Comiskey's left-field roof was also visited by many batted balls, but only one is confirmed to have cleared it on the fly. That homeric deed was performed by the powerful Jimmie Foxx on June 16, 1936. As Ruth's talents waned in the early 1930s, Foxx began his ascendancy. In 1932, the muscular "Double X" almost equaled Ruth's season record of 60 home runs. Many of them even rivaled the Babe's for distance.

It was heresy to suggest that Ruth's accomplishments could be surpassed, but for a few seasons it appeared that Foxx might do just that. One of the greatest quirks in baseball history is that Jimmie Foxx, following immediately in the footsteps of Babe Ruth, was to establish the second-greatest distance legacy in the annals of the game. Foxx never quite measured up to Ruth, but it is remarkable that no once since Foxx has measured up to him. The other great distance hitters of that period were Lou Gehrig and Hank Greenberg, but their optimum drives fell about 50 feet short of those struck by Ruth and Foxx.

But what do those guys at the Baseball Almanac know.  Yankee Stadium had a short porch so Ruth was a pipsqueak hitter, right?

This from the Scranton/Wilkes Barr newspaper.

It's one thing to prefer another player or condone drug use or like to eat cheese dogs.  But to just keep refusing the delivery of facts and continue to write inanities, well, some people will NEVER know right from wrong.

For those who are capable of learning, and some obviously are not, I strongly suggest Bill Jenkinson's "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs". It's a rather starry eyed look at Ruth, but the documentation is absolute, complete with photos of the titanic shots he hit,  footnoted to death and an overall great read. The conclusions are factual and any suggestions that he was seriously aided by the "short porch" are dispelled. Every player sneaks one over the fence sometime. But for Babe Ruth that was the exception to the Sultan of Swat's rule: GO DEEP!

Just about everyone has heard the admonishment from his or her parents at one time or another that "you should know right from wrong". The terse tone normally accompanying the phrase frequently indicated that the listener was about to be given an abject lesson on the difference. Things like it's right to help the old lady across the street, but wrong to kick her walker out from underneath her and take her purse. Similarly it's right to wait for the verdict before we put you in the electric chair and pull the switch. Conversely it's wrong to put you in the chair and pull the switch before the verdict, even though some would like that prescription sometimes.

How does this relate to sports? Simple. In the wonderful world of sports debates it's becoming more and more the case where ardent supporters of a player or team ignore the cold hard facts surrounding the topic and instead cling feverishly to arguments that sound right, but are in reality utterly and completely wrong. Those desperados of the cause, intentionally blind to the light, will take pillory and post rather than accept facts contrary to their "belief".

Take the Barry Bonds dramady for example. A significant number of people are devout in their fanaticism that Bonds has not been proven to take steroids. On the surface this sounds right, and in fact is right; Bonds has not been proven or admitted "knowingly" taking steroids. But the fact is he did take them. The whole sordid affair has been leaked from grand jury testimony that he took the "cream" and the "clear", both being steroid products from the BALCO labs. The leak was illegal, but that doesn't change the facts as admitted to by Bonds himself. What is it that makes some people willfully ignore what is right and proselytize what is wrong?

In conjunction with the Barry blemish is the incessant need to tarnish others to lessen the impact of Bonds' maladroit behavior. Both Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth have been subject to fanciful screeds that sound right, but again, are staggering in their actual wrongness. We read how Ruth faced wimpy arms that pitched full games, yet there is silence about the arms like Koufax, Gibson, Mclain, Drysdale and others that 30 years ago were Hall of Fame bound for pitching complete games. One Bonds acolyte has even gone so far as to claim Ruth hit most of his home runs over a short fence at Yankee stadium, confidently ignoring reams of firsthand newspaper and eyewitness accounts of each and every home run ever hit by Ruth, stating the exact opposite.

Hank Aaron has now been branded a drug user for his offhand remark that he took a "greenie" once. Once. It is perfectly right to say that Aaron took amphetamines. Once. Foolishly wrong to infer he took them any length of time. And yet that unpretentious comment has now evolved into the clarion call to smear Aaron for all his work ethic and professional accomplishments throughout his career.

Quite simply put, some people never learn how to tell right from wrong.

You can go ahead and stick a fork in them they're done: But for entirely different reasons.

Phil Mickelson and Seve Ballesteros both bid farewell to the game this weekend. One, a valiant fighter who wrested 5 major championships from a group of competitors the likes of which the world will not soon see again, and the other a complex amalgam of hits and misses resulting in a slap-stick joyride of an up and down career.

Seve quit the game due to persistent back pain, preventing him from joining the seniors tour, where he surely would have continued to thrill with his amazing assortment of scrambling shot making. No one who follows the sport didn't marvel at least once with Seve's ability to get up and down from practically anywhere, including from the kitchen sink if necessary.

Phil on the other hand may as well concede his game to his psyche, which gets the best of him at every turn.

As is becoming commonplace, Phil breaks to the lead in a tournament, the Scottish Open this past weekend, only to throw a shoe down the home stretch. One can barely imagine the tone and tenor of the cacophony ringing inside his head as he approaches another 18th tee on Sunday with the lead.  I wonder if the voices are in English?

Time and again we are witness to a man's inability to execute the simple need of a straight drive when necessary.  We read about the poor sot Van de Veld and how he once lost a seemingly insurmountable lead on the 18th of the British Open.  How about Philly "Cheese steak" repeating the feat ad nausem? It's not unrealistic to think Phil's best days are behind him.  Doubtless he will win more regular tour events before joining the seniors. That much can be expected from this talented but inconsistent lot on the tour now.

But as for competing to victory in majors, Mickelson won't see another until the golf gods allow him to skip the 18th tee and drop somewhere in the middle.

With all the fuss going on about this and that, and that and this, why not take a needed break from the action to look at what some girl at Cal is doing to the sports world, and by association, the image painted in the male psychy by the title of this post.

Allison Stokke, pole vaulter from Cal, and the freshman record holder in the event, demonstrates for all of us again that just because you're super-natural hot and near close to nuclear fission, doesn't mean you can't be good at sports!

Augusta, GA - With grim, ashen faces the group of men is gathered at the edge of the 17th green in the predawn hours.  It had been several days since the debacle, and answers were in demand. "How could this happen?" was chief among them. "What are we going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?" they grieve. Bulldozers grumble in the dark, tearing at the ground to undo the done.

Their aggravation concerns the disastrous performance of the world's de facto greatest golfer at the 2007 Masters. Just how did some pumpkin farmer from Iowa end up in the coveted green jacket? Did anyone have a plausible reason as to why a Tiger Woods wedge went so far astray on the 17th, on championship Sunday?  Surely it was the course they surmise. Anyone with discernable brain activity knows it wasn't Tigers fault he chunked such a short iron at such a critical moment. "The course" they mumble as they look to each other and nod in agreement, "The course".  Just kidding about the dozers though!

Had they gone too far in "Tiger Proofing" the course? Had he in fact been "proofed" out of winning? Stubby, money-counting hands rubbed at furrowed brows as they contemplated the unexpected results.  But was it really the course? Doubtful.

Maybe, as has been the case with just about every major Tiger hasn't won recently, that it was a relative unknown, with no real experience in major pressure, shooting a nominal final round score as the others imploded.

Augusta was set up to play hard, as always.  But this year the rough was left longer and due to a dry spell, the greens more firm (if that's even possible). The complaint from the players, "It was like a U.S. Open out there". Well how about that, Professional golfers required to hit the fairway.  What a novel idea.  And as usual with the caliber of golfer on the tour today, when Woods plays poorly, it's up to a first timer to step up.

Ogilvey backed in, Zach hacked in, and at the Open, if Tiger doesn't win, look for ANOTHER first time major champion.