Statistics*

as·ter·isk (st-rsk)  n. - A star-shaped figure (*) used chiefly to indicate an omission, a reference to a footnote, or an unattested word, sound, or affix.  tr.v. as·ter·isked, as·ter·isk·ing, as·ter·isks   To mark with an asterisk[i]

Statistically, baseball was a much easier game to follow when I was a kid. Every NYC newspaper (Daily News, Daily Mirror, Long Island Press, Newsday, New York Times, Herald-Tribune, Journal-American) had a daily box that showed you the top ten league rankings of batting average, home runs, runs batted in, and a few more stats like doubles, strikeouts, and ERA. You could take a walk to your neighborhood candy store and buy The Sporting News, which flooded you with all the stats in the game, but that was for a few of the real hardcore fans. The rest of us lived with the top ten list.

None of us knew anything about the dead ball era and any reference to black socks were the pair we wore to church every Sunday. It didn’t matter whether Babe Ruth drank too much or if Ty Cobb was a bastard. It was just baseball.

Statistics hit the front page in 1961, when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were going after Ruth’s home run record.  It wouldn’t have been an issue except for the fact that baseball had extended the amount of regular season games in 1962 from 154 to 162. I always found it interesting that people had problems with the fact that it took Maris 162 games. The 154 game schedule started in 1898; however, baseball went to 140 from 1900-1904, and it happened again in 1919. No one bitched then.

Although no one did anything wrong, this became baseball’s first big scandal in my lifetime. The Billy Crystal movie, 61*, has brought everyone up to speed on the pressure Maris felt during his run. This was supposed to be a good thing, but quickly became total hell for both Roger, and his family.

The Maris mess was basically due to the popularity of ‘The Babe’. The ironic thing was that most fans don’t remember that both Maris and Mantle were chasing Ruth’s record, and, both were New York Yankees. Lastly, no one was more loved in New York than “The Mick” and yet, no one seemed to want Ruth’s record to be broken. Even baseball in general didn’t fall into line here. The then Commissioner, Ford Frick, actually announced during the chase that there would be a special notation in the record books unless the 61^st home run was hit in the 154^th , or less, game. Enter the mythical asterisk. 

One of the fallacies of this drama is that there really isn’t any asterisk in the major league baseball record book. It was just a term that an old New York sportswriter penned in a column about Frick’s comments. Credit the New York Daily News Dick Young for creating this shit storm. It was common knowledge in those days that Commissioner Frick idolized Babe Ruth.  It was only a matter of time before he would throw a press conference and issue the following statement:

Any player who has hit more than 60 home runs during his club's first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after this club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark on the record books to show that Babe Ruth's record was set under a 154-game schedule.

(The shame of all this drama is the fact that no one spent any time breaking out the amount of at bats it took for each player to hit their home run total. Ruth hit his 60^th home run on his 689^th at bat. Maris hit his 61^st on his 684^th, five less than Ruth)

Another fact known to few is that the proper use of an asterisk in baseball is placing it in a scorebook next to a particular ‘great defensive play. Thus, ‘4-3’ in a scorebook, would read ‘4*-3’. This identifies a great play by the second baseman. Still, the general opinion today is that an asterisk, next to a baseball number, means that this number has been tainted in some way.

It took 46 years for the asterisk to rear its ugly head again, this time during the Barry Bonds chase of Hank Aaron’s overall home run record. The number of games wasn’t the issue. Instead, the issue became performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) a subject we are going to devote the entire next chapter. There always have been some ballplayers that have chosen to enhance their performance in some way. The problem here was a good share of the names in baseball’s record book were being replaced by a new group of superstars that have either tested positive for drug use, or was suspected in using PED’s during their record chasing seasons. People like Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire were not your run-of-the-mill ballplayer. These were the stars of the game, knocking off other stars of the game, and they were doing it under the influence of illegal substances.

There are now 50-year old  fans that never enjoyed baseball without an asterisk. The exception is no longer the tainted. Take a survey of today’s fans and ask them what the asterisk is all about, and the overwhelming winner will be Bonds. It’s really a combination of two things. One, everybody loves Hank Aaron. And two, no one loves Barry.

We’re talking about a ballplayer whose college teammates took a petition out and asked their coach to remove this guy from the team.  We still don’t know the whole story about Bonds, but no one believes him anymore. No one cared anymore how many games Roger Maris played. They were too busy wishing Bonds never played any.

Henry Chadwick was the man that invented baseball statistics. According to local legend, Chadwick watched his first game of rounders around 1856, played by two clubs in New York, Gotham and Eagle. He became a (first?) baseball writer in 1857 for the New York Clipper, after being turned down by the New York Times.

Chadwick went on to publish The Beadle Baseball Player , which is accredited to being the first publication to breakout games played, outs, runs, home runs, and strikeouts. He also was the first to create the box score and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938.

None of us can possibly imagine following this game without statistics, but none of us also ever thought that the exception would become the rule. The asterisk has been the cause.

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[i] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/asterisk