World Series Flops
Ruth, Cobb, Williams Had October Stumbles
Coming off a brilliant regular season performance, superstar Alex Rodriguez is the target of bitter criticism for his fourth consecutive sub-par post-season performance. A study of more than a century of the World Series, however, shows that he has plenty of company among baseball immortals as an October flop.
A-Rod has never even made it to the World Series. His embarrassing failures have come in the two rounds of preliminary competition instituted by Major League Baseball in 1995, and specifically since he joined the New York Yankees in 2004. But the World Series, which was virtually the entire post-season until 1969, has witnessed many October collapses by some of the game's greats.
Ty Cobb, holder of twelve batting titles and the highest lifetime average of .367, hit .200 in his first Fall Classic in 1907, no doubt contributing to his Detroit Tigers' loss to the Chicago Cubs (yes, they won World Series in those days). Interestingly, he came back to hit .368 in the '08 Series, and the Tigers still lost to the Cubs, as they did to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1909, when he batted .231. Although he played for almost twenty more years, Cobb never got another opportunity to shine in October.
Babe Ruth, who generally enjoyed success in the World Series, was a total flop in 1922, hitting .118 as the Yankees fell to the New York Giants. He went on in subsequent years to set single-game, seven game, and lifetime Series home run records. Decades later, Mickey Mantle broke the lifetime record and Reggie Jackson equalled the single-game record as he exceeded the Babe with five homers in one Series. As the ace lefthander of the Boston Red Sox in 1916 and 1918, Ruth had set a World Series record for consecutive scoreless innings that stood for over 40 years.
The greatest hitter of the 40s and 50s, Ted Williams, got only one shot at October fame. Coming off a typical .342 season, the Boston Red Sox slugger batted an anemic .200 as his team bowed to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games in 1946. Frank Robinson, a member of the still exclusive 500-home run club, managed only a .188 average as his Baltimore Orioles suffered one of the most notable World Series upsets to the New York Mets in 1969.
Speaking of upsets, the Oakland Athletics were not supposed to have much trouble with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. But their young home run hitter, Mark McGwire, who would eventually hit 70 in one season, eked out a .059 batting average as the Dodgers triumphed in five games. By contrast, Barry Bonds, who proceeded to break McGwire's single season record, hit .471 with four home runs in his only World Series appearance in 2002.
The individual flops are not always decisive for the Series. Albert Pujols hit .333 as his Cardinals lost in 2004 and .200 as they were crowned world champions in 2006. And, as seen with Ruth and Cobb, a disappointing performance can be reversed in a future year. But the phenomenon of failure by a star in the full glow of Autumn is as regular as it is unenviable.
Who will make them forget A-Rod in the 2007 World Series?
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