such as Hank Aaron and Rickey Henderson. Yet, even though some of Ruth's records have been broken, the greatest hitter of all time remains the Babe. While it may seem like nostalgia for the 1920s boon or fondness for baseball lore, the statistics, including Ruth's otherworldly .690 career slugging average and 207 OPS+, show that it is disingenuous to come to any other conclusion.

In his book Clearing the Bases: The Greatest Baseball Debates of the Last Century, Allen Barra claims that people "start out assuming Ruth was the greatest." However, a close examination of the data does indeed support that Ruth is the greatest. Rarely was Ruth not at the top of the pile in on-base and slugging percentage, and, not surprisingly, over the course of his career,he led the league in OPS+ 13 times, with 11 of those years surpassing 200.

Of course, Babe Ruth is synonymous with home runs. The man essentially invented home run hitting. In 1919, Ruth's first full season as a hitter, he set the home run record with 29, breaking Ned Williamson's 1884 mark of 27. A year later, in his first season with the Yankees, Ruth belted 54 home runs, 35 more than the runner-up, St. Louis Browns first baseman George Sisler.

Attracted by his home runs, New York crowds came out as never before. In 1920, the Yankees drew 1,289,422 fans, doubling their mark of the previous year without Ruth and becoming the first team to pass one million in attendance. Large turnouts would continue through the 1920s, and