______________ #3 ______________

Jackie Robinson had his number 42 permanently retired on April 15 1997, the 50th anniversary of his major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. I thought it was a good thing and I still do. Now there are some people calling for baseball to retire Roberto Clemente's number 21. I don't buy it. Clemente was truly a great player and a winner. He represented the game as a player and a person at least as well as anyone else ever did, and as a Hall-of Famer, he's an icon in all Hispanic countries. That accounts for a hell of a lot. However, in Major League Baseball, he's not a pioneer in the same vein as Robinson. Many Hispanic players appeared in the majors before Clemente's rookie season in 1955, although none of them were within light years of his level. Quick, name the first Hispanic baseball player in the majors. Go ahead, I'll wait (Dum dee da, dee dee do). ...Well? Don't feel bad, nobody else can either. Luis Castro, from Colombia, was the first Hispanic player in the modern era when he played one year for the Philadelphia A's in 1902. If one wants to be really literal in this assessment, you can go all the way back to 1871 when a Cuban player named Estaban Bellan played for the Troy Haymakers of the National Association, the predecessor of the National League. But, I digress: Clemente was the first superstar of Spanish descent, but his career didn't have the same social impact that Jackie Robinson's did. Robinson's arrival affected immeasurable change in baseball, sports, and American society in general. That said, with the exception of Robinson, race should not be a sole consideration for permanently retiring a number. It should be treated as the absolute rarest of accords; the kind of honor that's reserved literally for one-of-a-kind historical significance. Jackie Robinson meets those qualifications.

[If there's a way to similarly commemorate a baseball excecutive, Branch Rickey should be the one, not only for signing Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but for creating the first franchise-owned farm system for the St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1940s]

In truth, there's only one other number that should be retired by baseball and that's Babe Ruth's number 3. There can be no doubt whatsoever that Ruth was the greatest player ever, so great in fact that he changed the game on the field and in the mind of fans more than any other player in sports history.

Now before any of you Barry Bonds athletic supporters chime in with your apologies, let's compare, shall we?

Bonds out-homered Ruth 763-714. However, Bonds played 483 more games, mostly because Ruth was a full-time pitcher his first 4+ years in the bigs (and one of the best pitchers in baseball, for that matter). It stands to reason that if Babe Ruth started out as an everyday player he would have rendered the home run record unreachable.

Bonds' career batting average was .298
Ruth's was .342, just two points behind Ted Williams, who many regard as the best overall hitter in baseball history.

Bonds' career slugging percentage was .607.
Ruth's was .690, by far the highest of any player (Bonds is 6th on the list.).

Bonds OPS (On-base + slugging) was 1.0512
Ruth's was 1.1638 (Bonds was 4th all time, behind Ruth, Williams and Lou Gehrig).

Bonds stole 514 bases and was a five-time 30-30 player, with a 40-40 season to his credit.
Ruth was 93-44 as a pitcher, was a two-time 20-game winner and had another year of 18 wins. He threw 17 shutouts (nine in one season) and his career ERA was 2.28. Ruth also had a streak of 29.2 consecutive scoreless innings - in World Series play.

Bonds had 1996 RBIs in 2986 games.
Ruth had 2217 in 2503 games.

Bonds' career high in RBIs is 137.
Ruth had 137 or more nine times.

In 1920 Ruth hit 54 homers. No other team in the league had more than 50. That would be the equivalent of a player today hitting over 220 homers in a season. Not likely. By the way, Babe did it again in 1927 and in that celebrated season, Ruth outhomered the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox combined, 60-54.

Barry Bonds appeared in 48 postseason games and hit a total of nine homers with 24 RBIs.
Babe Ruth appeared in 41 postseason games (all in the World Series) and hit 15 homers with 33 RBIs. He was also 3-0 as a pitcher with a 0.87 ERA.

Babe Ruth played in seven World Series, winning four.
Barry Bonds played in one, and he didn't win it.

Ruth was the first player to hit 30 homers, as well as the first to hit 40, 50, and 60. The most convincing evidence of a player's greatness is when he sets the standards that all others are measured against. Wilt Chamberlain and Wayne Gretzky did it, and Babe Ruth did it over 80 years ago!

You see, the comparison is not really a comparison at all, especially when you take into account that Bonds had the advantage of having today's remarkable achievements in medical technology that didn't exist in the 1920s. The 21st century professional athlete has a virtually unlimited variety of specialized workout regiments, high-tech equipment, private trainers, weight rooms, special diets, nutritional supplements among other expensive top-shelf perks that science has made available. In the '20s, it was not much more than routine calisthenics, and a lot of the "weight-lifting" was confined to the hotel bar.

The most glaring fact of all is that Babe Ruth did not use performance enhancing drugs. That's the biggest difference between Bonds and Ruth and it should keep Bonds (as well as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens) out of the Hall of Fame forever.

Wayne Gretzky dominated hockey in much the same way Babe Ruth owned baseball and Gretzky's number 99 has been rightfully retired. Wilt Chamberlain's legacy will be forever tainted by comparisons to Bill Russell's 11 championships, so #13 won't don the rafters around the NBA. But Babe Ruth's career isn't the only reason his number should be similarly honored. His record-shattering accomplishments made him the top drawing card in sports and one of the most popular people in the country and that impact served to help baseball fans forget about the Black Sox scandal of 1919 when several White Sox players conspired with professional gamblers to throw the World Series. It was one of the darkest times in baseball's history and Ruth's on-field play as well as his boisterous personality (another facet of the man that was ahead of it's time) is generally regarded to have helped save the game. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were doing the same thing for baseball after the 1994-95 strike until their involvement in the steroids scandal derailed all that progress and then Bonds proceeded to rub salt in the wounds. Babe Ruth was no angel, but he never cheated on the field.

All this is why it's just as important to retire #3 as it was to retire #42 because if it wasn't for Babe Ruth, Major League Baseball would likely have not existed as we've known it all this time and if that were the case, Jackie Robinson would never have gotten the chance to change the game as only he could.