Babe Ruth
Stan Musial
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Babe Ruth leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Babe Ruth at #1 and Stan Musial at #10.
Head-to-head FAQ
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The case for Babe Ruth
The gap between Ruth and his contemporaries remains the largest any team-sport athlete has opened. His 182.6 career WAR leads all players, and the shape of it is absurd: before becoming a full-time hitter he went 94-46 as a pitcher with a 2.28 ERA, led the AL with a 1.75 ERA in 1916, and threw nearly 30 consecutive scoreless World Series innings. Then he invented modern offense. His 54 home runs in 1920 exceeded the total of every other American League team; his 60 in 1927 out-homered each AL rival again. His career .342 average, .474 on-base percentage, and 1.164 OPS — still the all-time record — came with a slugging percentage (.690) no qualified career has matched. He faced a segregated talent pool, which the debate must acknowledge, but dominance relative to environment is the fairest cross-era test, and by that test Ruth has no peer.
The case for Stan Musial
Musial's symmetry is the stuff of legend: 3,630 career hits, exactly 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road. The consistency behind the coincidence is the case for him — a .331 average across 22 seasons, 475 home runs, 6,134 total bases (second all-time behind only Aaron), three MVPs, seven batting titles, and 24 All-Star Games, all for the St. Louis Cardinals, with a missed 1945 season to Navy service. In 1948 he came one rained-out home run short of the Triple Crown, hitting .376 with 39 homers and 131 RBI while leading the league in eight major categories. He struck out only 696 times in nearly 11,000 career plate appearances — fewer than many modern hitters accumulate in five seasons. He was never suspended, never ejected, and never controversial, which is partly why history underrates him. The numbers do not.