The airwaves have been flooded with all the hysteria of the otherworldly accomplishments of Shohei Ohtani, and rightly so. He is indeed a “unicorn”, a unique baseball player who has taken MLB by storm since coming from Japan to the US.

To be able to hit and pitch with such excellence is almost unequal to any other baseball player ever, especially when you take into account that he is in the upper echelon of both pitchers and hitters at the same time. But is Ohtani not really unique and is he just following in the footsteps of someone who accomplished the same over 100 years ago? Of course I’m talking about Babe Ruth.

Most of us know the story of Babe Ruth, the hitter. But when he began his major league career with the Red Sox he was a full-time pitcher.

He joined the Red Sox in 1914 when the team purchased Babe, Ben Egan (a rather lackluster catcher with a career batting average of .165) and Ernie Shore for $25,000. Ernie Shore would have a great 4 years with the Red Sox (1914-17) where he had a 58-33 win-lost record and never an ERA under 2.63. Ernie and Babe would combine for one of the most bizarre games in baseball history. Babe was the starting pitcher in a game on 6/23/1917 when he walked the first batter. He ended up getting into an argument with the home plate umpire and was tossed from the game. Shore came on to replace him. The batter that Babe walked was thrown out trying to steal and the next 26 batters failed to get a hit or on base at all. It was initially call a perfect game, but with new rules to determine no-hitters and perfect games, it is now considered a no-hitter.

Back to Babe. From 1914-17 Babe would have a 62-34 win-loss record and except for 4 games pitched in 1914, he would have no ERA higher than 2.44. In 1916 he would lead the league with a 1.75 ERA, 40 games started, 9 shutouts, an ERA+ of 158, 6.4 hits/9 and would not give up a home run. He would give up 230 hits in 323.2 innings pitched.

Around that time the team started noticing that not only did they have one of the top pitchers in the league, but this guy could hit.

In the 1915 season he had a batting average of .315 with 4 home runs and 20 RBI’s and an OPS+ of 189 while pitching and pinch hitting (11 times). He was not as successful in the 1916 season but did have a batting average .272 with 3 home runs and 16 RBI’s, to go along with an OPS+ of 122. He pinched hit in 24 games in the 1916 season. For the 1917 season Ruth hit 2 home runs, drove in 14 runs, batted .325 and had an OPS+ of 162.

The big experiment began in 1918, when Babe pitched and also played in the field. He appeared in 95 games in total, and he pitched in 20 of them. As a position player he played 47 games in left field, 12 games in center field, 13 games at first base and pinch hit in 5.

For the 1918 season, here are his pitching stats:

W-L- 13-7, IP-166.1, BB-49, K-40, ERA-2.22, ERA+-122, FIP-2.75, WHIP-1.046

BB/9-2.7, K/9-2.2

The stat that jumps off this chart is strikeouts, Babe averaged 2.2 strikeouts per 9 innings. In looking at the American League pitching stats for 1918, the strikeout leader was Walter Johnson with 162 (326 innings, 4.5/9), Jim Shaw with 129 (241 innings, 4.8/9), “Bullet” Joe Bush with 125 (272 inning, 4.1/9), Guy Morton with 123 (214 innings, 5.2/9), Carl Mays with 114 (294 innings, 3.5/9) and Eddie Cicotte with 104 (266 innings, 3.5/9). Carl Mays would become infamous for an incident in 1920 when he hit Ray Chapman with a pitch fracturing his skull. Chapman would die the following day, being the only play to die directly from an injury received during a baseball game. And Eddie Cicotte would be remembered as one of the players banned for life in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

For the 1918 season, here are his batting stats:

AB-317, Hits-95, 2B-26, 3B-11, HR-11, RBI-61,

BB-58, K-58, Avg.-.300, Slug.-.555

OPS-.966, OPS+-192, WAR-4.7

These batting stats include games where Babe appeared as a pitcher.

In 1918, Babe was tied for 2^nd in doubles, tied for 5^th in triples, tied for 1^st in home runs (with Tillie Walker???), 6^th in RBI’s, 8^th in walks, 1^st in strikeouts, tied for 7^th in batting average, 2^nd in OBP, 1^st in Slug. Pct., 1^st in OPS, 2^nd in OPS+, and 7^th in WAR. All of this was accomplished with Babe being 43^rd in plate appearances and 44^th in times at bat. His greatness as a batter was becoming more and more apparent.

For the 1919 season Babe pitched in 17 games over 133 innings. His stats were:

W-L 9-5, IP-133.1, Hits-148, BB-58, K-30,

ERA 2.97, ERA+-102, FIP-3.58, WHIP-1.545,

BB/9-3.9, K/9-2.0

There is no question that there had been a bit of a regression in his pitching performance.

He was now 20^th in ERA, 21^st in ERA+, 32^nd in FIP, 33^rd in WHIP, and 33^rd in K/9. Obviously pitching in 17 games and appearing in 116 games as a batter was taking its toll on his pitching success. The Red Sox would play 138 games that season and Babe would play in 130 of them (he had 3 games where he pitched and played in the field).

While his pitching was on a downward trend because of pitching or playing the field in practically every game, his batting stats were on the upswing

AB-432, Hits-139, 2B-35, 3B-12, HR-29

RBI-113, BB-101, K-58, Avg.-.322, Slug.-.657

OBP-.456, OPS+-217, WAR-9.1

In 1919, besides pitching in 17 games, Babe played 110 games in LF, 1 in CF, and 5 at 1B, he would also pinch hit in 1 game.

In comparing the Babe to all the other hitters in the American League, he finished: 27^th in batting appearances, 43^rd in times at bat, he finished 1^st in runs scored with 103, 21^st in hits, 5^th in doubles, 7^th in triples, and 1^st in home runs. Babe had 29 home runs in the 1919 season, finishing 2^nd was George Sisler, Tillie Walker and Frank “Home Run” Baker who had 10 each. There were a total of 240 home runs that year and Babe had 12.1% of the league total. Four of the eight American League teams had fewer home runs as a team than Babe had by himself. His Red Sox teammates hit a total of 4 home runs for the season.

Prior to Babe’s 29 home runs in 1919 the American League record for home runs was 16 in 1902 for Ralph (Socks) Seybold.

In addition to the stats for 1919 already mentioned, Babe let the league in RBI’s, was 2^nd in walks, was 2^nd in strikeouts, 8^th in batting average, 1^st in OBP, 1^st in slugging percentage (.657 to George Sislers’ .530), 1^st in OPS, 1^st in OPS+, and he lead the league in WAR with 9.1 with Bobby Veach 2^nd at 6.7.

After the 1919 season the New York Yankees received the best Christmas present ever. On December 26^th they purchased Babe Ruth’s contract from the Red Sox for $100,000. This began the “Curse of the Bambino” in which the Red Sox would not win another World Series (they won in 1918) until 86 years later when they finally won in 2004.

Ruth’s pitching career pretty much ended with the trade. He did pitch in 1 game (4 innings) in 1920, 2 games (9 innings) in 1921, 1 game in 1930 and 1 game in 1933. Interestingly in those 5 games he pitched 31 innings, gave up 40 hits, walked 16 and struck out 5, but had a W-L record of 5-0!

Babe Ruth went on to have a legendary remainder of his career with the Yankees, but after the trade he would no longer be the “Unicorn”, just one of the greatest, or the greatest hitter of all time.

The one major difference between Babe and Shohei was that when Babe was in the game as a hitter he would play in the field, however in his entire MLB career, Ohtani when not pitching, would only be on the field for 7 games!

Are you ready to call both Babe and Shohei “Unicorns” or are you reserving the title for Shohei only?