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Over one hundred years ago, Babe Ruth, amid arguably the greatest offensive season any ballplayer has ever enjoyed, spent more than three hours being tested by a pair of psychology researchers to discover the source of his superiority.
Their conclusion? As most American League pitchers knew at the time, Ruth, compared to the average man, was both physically and mentally exceptional.
In 1921, the 26-year-old Ruth – the former southpaw hurler then a slugging outfielder with the New York Yankees – walloped 59 home runs, setting a new major league single-season record for the third consecutive year. He also led big league baseball with 168 RBI, 177 runs scored, 145 walks, and a .846 slugging percentage, and his 457 total bases and 119 extra base hits remain big league records. And the only reason he didn’t win the MVP Award was that the sport was in a period where they weren’t being presented.
This was the “Roaring Twenties” as well as the “Golden Age of Sports,” and Ruth, with his childlike enthusiasm and hard-to-resist charisma, was its human embodiment. Newspapers, of which there was more than a dozen in New York City, seemed to document his every move.
So when word spread that this diamond hero had visited a college’s psychology department to ascertain the secret of his greatness, it made news not only in the Big Apple but around the country. It even ran on the front page – above the fold – of The New York Times.
The source of the hoopla was the October 1921 edition of Popular Science Monthly. For 25 cents, a reader could check out the magazine’s cover story, “Babe Ruth’s Home Run Secrets Solved by Science.
Authoring the Ruth exclusive was Hugh Fullerton, the sports editor of New York’s The Evening Mail and the 1964 recipient of the BBWAA’s prestigious Career Excellence Award for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing.”
This is not a well-known article now, but it is a prime example of the popularization of experimental psychology in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. The story of its origin can be found in Alfred H. Fuchs' (1998) "Psychology and 'The Babe', "Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 34, 153-165.
Why Babe Ruth is the Greatest Home-Run Hitter
Hugh S. Fullerton (1921)
Published in Popular Science Monthly, 99 (4), 19-21, 110.
The game was over. Babe, who had made one of his famous drives that day, was tired and wanted to go home. "Not tonight, Babe," I said. "Tonight, you go to college with me. You're going to take scientific tests which will reveal your secret."
"Who wants to know it?" asked Babe.
"I want to know it, "I replied," and so do several hundred thousand fans. We want to know why it is that one man has achieved a unique batting skill like yours - why you can slam the ball as nobody else in the world can."
So, away we went. Babe in his baseball uniform, not home to his armchair, but out to Columbia University to take his first college examination.
Babe went at the test with the zeal of a schoolboy, and the tests revealed why his rise to fame followed suddenly after years of playing during which he was known as an erratic, although a powerful hitter. How he abruptly gained his unparalleled skill has been one of baseball's mysteries.
Albert Johanson, M.A., and Joseph Holmes, M.A., of the research laboratory of Columbia University's psychological department, who, in all probability, never saw Ruth hit a baseball, and who neither know nor care if his batting average is .007 or .450, are .500 hitters in the psychology game. They led Babe Ruth into the laboratory of the university, figuratively took him apart, watched the wheels go round; analyzed his brain, his eyes, his ears, his muscles; studied how these worked together; reassembled him, and announced the exact reasons for his supremacy as a batter and a ball player.
Baseball employs scores of scouts to explore the country to discover baseball talent. If club owners take the hint from the Ruth experiments, they could organize a clinic, submit candidates to the comprehensive tests undergone by Ruth, and discover whether or not other Ruths exist. By these tests it would be possible for the club owners to determine whether the ball players are liable to be good, bad, or mediocre; and, to carry the practical results of the experiments to the limit, then may be able to eliminate the possibility, or probability, of some player getting to third base, before the season starts, how liable he is to do so.
The scientific ivory hunters of Columbia University discovered that the secret of Babe Ruth's batting, reduced to non-scientific terms, is that his eyes and ears function more rapidly than those of other players. His brain records sensations more quickly and transmits its orders to the muscles much faster than does that of the average man. The tests proved that the coordination of eyes, brain, nervous system, and muscle is practically perfect, and that the reason he did not acquire his great batting power before the sudden burst at the beginning of the baseball season of 1920, was because, before that time, pitching and studying batters disturbed his almost perfect coordination.
The tests revealed that Ruth is 90 percent efficient compared with a human average of 60 percent. His eyes are about 12 percent faster than those of the average human being. His ears function at least 10 percent faster than those of the ordinary man. His nerves are steadier than those of 499 out of 500 persons. In attention and quickness of perception, he rated one and a half times above the human average.
In intelligence, as demonstrated by the quickness and accuracy of understanding, he is approximately 10 percent above normal.
It must not be forgotten that the night on which the tests were made was an extremely warm one, and that in the afternoon he had played a hard, exhausting game of baseball before a large crowd, in the course of which he had made one of those home-run hits which we at Columbia were so eager to understand and account for. Under such circumstances, one would think that some signs of nerve exhaustion would be revealed. The investigation lasted more than three hours, during which Ruth stood for most of the time, walked up and downstairs five times, and underwent the tests in a close, warm room. At the end of that time, I was tired and nervous, and, although Ruth showed no symptoms of weariness, it is probable that under more favorable conditions, his showing would have been even better.
The tests primarily examined motor functions and gave a measure of the integrity of the psychophysical organism. Babe Ruth was posed first in an apparatus created to determine the strength, quickness, and approximate power of the swing of his bat against his ball. A plane covered with electrically charged wires, strung horizontally, was placed behind him, and a ball was hung over the theoretical plate so that it could be suspended at any desired height.
I learned something then which, perhaps, would interest the American League pitchers more than it will the scientists. This was that the ball Ruth likes to hit best, and can hit hardest, is a low ball pitched just above his knees on the outside corner of the plate. The scientists did not consider this of extreme importance in their calculations, but the pitchers will probably find it of great scientific interest.
Science Discovers the Secret
The ball was adjusted at the right height, and, taking up a bat that was electrically wired, Ruth was told to get into position and to swing his bat as if striking the ball for a home run, to make the end of it touch one of the transverse wires on the plate behind him, then swing it through its natural arc and hit the ball lightly. The bat, weighing fifty-four ounces (the weight of the bats Ruth uses on the diamond), was swung as directed, touched the ball, and the secret of his power- or the amount of force with which he strikes the ball - was calculated. At least, the basis of the problem was secured: The bat, weighing fifty-four ounces, swinging at a rate of 110 feet a second, hits a ball travelling at the rate of, say, sixty feet a second, the ball weighing four and a quarter ounces, and striking the bat at a point four inches from the end. How far will it travel? There are other elements in the problem, such as the resilience of the ball, the "English" placed on it by the pitcher's hand, and a few minor details. But the answer, as proved by the measurements, is somewhere between 450 and 500 feet. This problem cannot be worked down to exact figures because of the unknown quantities.
The experimenters, however, were not so much interested in the problem in physics as they were with the problems in psychology. The thing they wanted to know was what made Ruth superior to all other ball players in hitting power, rather than to measure that power.
Babe Could Beat His Own Record!
Before proceeding to the psychological tests, however, we tried another in physics to satisfy my curiosity. A harness composed of rubber tubing was strapped around Ruth's chest and shoulders and attached by hollow tubes to a recording cylinder. By this means, his breathing was recorded on a revolving disk. He was then placed in position to bat, an imaginary pitcher pitched an imaginary ball, and he went through the motions of hitting a home run. The test proved that, as a ball is pitched to him, Babe draws in his breath sharply as he makes the back-swing with his bat, and really "holds his breath" or suspends the operation of his breathing until after the ball is hit. But for that fact, he would hit the ball much harder and more effectively than he now does. It has been discovered that the act of drawing in the breath and holding it results in a sharp tension of the muscles and a consequent loss of striking power. If Ruth expelled his breath before striking the ball, the muscles would not become tense, and his swing would have greater strength and rhythm.
The initial evaluation to assess the effectiveness of his psychophysical system was an experiment to test his coordination: a straightforward test. The researchers created a triangular board resembling a Ouija board, featuring a small round opening at each corner. Each hole contained an electrified plate that recorded every instance it was activated. Ruth was given a small device that appeared like a miniature curling iron, which fit perfectly into the openings. He was instructed to hold the device in his right hand and insert it into the holes in succession, as many times as possible within one minute, moving around the board from left to right.
He grew interested at once. Here was something at which he could play. The professor "shushed" me, fearing that I would disturb Ruth or distract his attention as he started around the board, jabbing the curling iron into the holes with great rapidity. He would put it into the holes twelve to sixteen times so perfectly that the instrument barely touched the sides. Then he would lose control and touch the sides, slowing down. Only twice did he pass the hole without getting the end of the iron into it. With his right hand, he made a score of 122. Naturally, his wrist was tired, and Babe shook it and grinned ruefully.
Then he tried it with his left hand, scored 132 with it, proving himself a bit more left- than right-handed - at least in some activities. The significance of the experiment, however, lies in the fact that the average of hundreds of persons who have taken that test is 82 to the minute, which shows how much swifter Ruth is with the coordination of hand, brain, and eye than the average.
Every Test but Another Triumph
In a sequel to this test that followed, Babe tapped an electrified plate with an electrically charged stylus with the speed of a drum-roll, scoring 193 taps per minute with his right hand and 176 with his left hand. The average score for right-handed individuals undergoing this wrist-wracking experiment is 180. While there is no data covering right-handed persons using the left hand, Ruth's record is certainly much above the average, as he is highly efficient with the left hand.
But steadiness must accompany speed, and so they tested the home-run king for his steadiness of nerve and muscle by having him thrust the useful little curling-iron stylus in different-sized holes pierced through an electrified plate which registered contacts between the stylus and the side of the hole. These measured respectively sixteen, eleven, nine, eight, and seven sixty-fourths of an inch; small enough, but not too small for Babe, for he made a score that showed him better than 499 persons out of 500.
The tests that interested me most were those that determined how quickly Ruth's eye acts and how quickly its signals are flashed through the brain to the muscles. Demonstrating a quick reaction time, they interpreted what happens on the ballfield when the stands rock under the cheering that greets another of Ruth's smashes to the fence, proved an eye so quick that it sees the ball make an erratic curve and guides the bat to follow.
The scientists discovered how quickly Ruth's eye functions by placing him in a dark cabinet, setting into operation a series of rapidly flashing bulbs, and listening to the tick of an electric key by which he acknowledged the flashes.
The average man responds to the stimulus of the light in 180 one-thousandths of a second. Babe Ruth needs only 160 one-thousandths of a second. There is the same significance in the fact that Babe's response to the stimulus of sound comes 140 one-thousandths of a second as against the average man's 150 thousandths.
Human beings differ very slightly in these sight and sound tests. The fractions are so small that they seem inexpressive, yet a difference of 20 or 10 one-thousandth of a second indicates a superiority of the highest importance.
Translate the findings of the sight test into baseball if you want to see what they mean in Babe Ruth's case. They mean that a pitcher must throw a ball 20 one-thousandth of a second faster to "fool" Babe than to "fool" the average person.
If we, who see Ruth as a quick-thinking athlete, find the results of these tests at Columbia surprising, they must be even more astonishing to someone who only knows the big guy outside of baseball and thinks he's slow and uncommunicative when talking about non-professional topics.
The scientific "ivory hunters" at Columbia demonstrated that Babe Ruth would have been the "home-run king" in almost any line of activity he chose to follow; that his brain would have won equal success for him had he drilled it for as long a time on some line entirely foreign to the national game. They did it, just as they proved his speed and his steadiness by simple laboratory tests.
For instance, they had an apparatus with a sort of a camera shutter arrangement that opened, winked, and closed at any desired speed. Cards with letters of the alphabet on them were placed behind this shutter and exposed to view for one fifty-thousandth of a second. Ruth read them as they flashed into view, calling almost instantly the units of groups of three, four, five, and six letters. With eight shown, he got the first six and was uncertain of the others. The average person can see four and one-half letters on the same test.
When cards marked with black dots were used, Ruth was even faster. He called up the number of dots on every card up to twelve without one mistake, The average person can see eight.
To test him for quickness of perception and understanding, he was given a card showing five different symbols -- a star, a cross, and three other shapes -- many times repeated, and was told to select a number -- one, two, three, four, or five -- for each symbol, then to mark the selected number under each one as rapidly as he could go over the card. He scored 103 hits on that test, which was the average of all who have tried it. But when given a card covered with printed matter and told to cross out all the a's, he made a score of sixty, which is one and a half times the average.
The secret of Babe Ruth's ability to hit is revealed in these tests. His eye, his ear, his brain, and his nerves all function more rapidly than do those of the average person. Further, the coordination between eye, ear, brain, and muscle is much nearer to perfection than that of the normal healthy man.
The scientific "ivory hunters" dissecting the "home-run king" discovered brain instead of bone and showed how little mere luck, or even mere hitting strength, has to do with Ruth's phenomenal record.
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