If mays didnt miss the time he did to serve in the korean war, do you think he would have broken babe ruth's record?
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Mays and the war
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--It would have been pretty darn close anyway. He only came up 54 short with the two missed years. He hit 20 as a rookie in not quite a full season, then 41 his first year back. Something around 60 for the lost time is the most likley projection (he actually had 4 before his call up so 60 would have him breaking it by 2). If he had been a few short at the end of his last year the temptation surely would have been there to hang around one more season to break it. I hope he would have resisted that temptation though, since that final season was already one too many.
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--Mays was more popular than Aaron. Aaron didn't get hate mail because he was an unpopular player though (he wasn't). He got hate mail because there were alot of bigoted idiots in this country. I doubt Mays would have fared much better.
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Originally posted by leecemark View Post--Mays was more popular than Aaron. Aaron didn't get hate mail because he was an unpopular player though (he wasn't). He got hate mail because there were alot of bigoted idiots in this country. I doubt Mays would have fared much better.
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A good question, one that I've thought a lot about over the years.
I think that Mays would have squeezed past Ruth and finished in the 720's or so. I think he would have received a lot of hate mail, but not as much as Hank did. Aaron had become a bit more outspoken in the years before his run than he had been earlier in his career, and that rubbed some people the wrong way and I think it increased the ardor of the hate mailers.
I think if Aaron had been chasing Mays in '73 and '74, his reception would have been something like Maris' in '61, i.e., that he was overtaking a popular New York sports figure and would have been viewed as something of an interloper (absurd as that would have been.)3 6 10 21 25 29 31 35 41 42 44 47
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Originally posted by fenrir View Postprobably less racism in the north though, assuming he would of broken it with newyork.
Northerners like to pretend that racism, and slavery, are or were Southern things, but it's not accurate.
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Originally posted by Los Bravos View PostA good question, one that I've thought a lot about over the years.
I think that Mays would have squeezed past Ruth and finished in the 720's or so. I think he would have received a lot of hate mail, but not as much as Hank did. Aaron had become a bit more outspoken in the years before his run than he had been earlier in his career, and that rubbed some people the wrong way and I think it increased the ardor of the hate mailers.
I think if Aaron had been chasing Mays in '73 and '74, his reception would have been something like Maris' in '61, i.e., that he was overtaking a popular New York sports figure and would have been viewed as something of an interloper (absurd as that would have been.)
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Originally posted by spark240 View PostAccording to this article from ESPN.com, Aaron's hate mail "came from every state, but most were postmarked in northern cities."
Northerners like to pretend that racism, and slavery, are or were Southern things, but it's not accurate.
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Originally posted by spark240 View PostAccording to this article from ESPN.com, Aaron's hate mail "came from every state, but most were postmarked in northern cities."
Northerners like to pretend that racism, and slavery, are or were Southern things, but it's not accurate.
The population difference was probably 3-1 or even 4-1 at the time.
If 5% of the population of Chicago and NY were racist, that percentage would be more than the entire population of most southern cities and even some states at the time.
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