Lessons From a Life Well Run

Sir Roger Bannister was the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile. (via Pruneau)

Sir Roger Bannister was the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile. (via Pruneau)

I’ve been meaning to write about Roger Bannister for a while. This may seem an odd subject for The Hardball Times, but what I have to say about him does tie back into baseball. I hope I’ll be forgiven the elliptical approach.

Roger Bannister, for those who don’t know, is the runner who broke the four-minute mile. At a track meet at Oxford, England on May 6, 1954, he ended years of speculation over who would breach the mark, or whether it was even possible, with a 3:59.4 time. To this day, it may still be the most celebrated single athletic feat in world history.

The problem I had was finding the proper occasion to say what I had to say. I was too late in gathering my thoughts to do anything on the 60th anniversary of his immortal race, and there weren’t any other convenient round numbers I could stand upon. I did consider holding off until Bannister passed on: Bannister is still alive, though he is 86 and was diagnosed down with Parkinson’s disease four years ago.

I rejected the notion of waiting for someone to die so I could write about him. Calendar-watching for an anniversary would be arbitrary, though that isn’t really a bad thing. Four minutes is an arbitrary time; one mile is an arbitrary distance—as is 90 feet, or 60 feet six inches.

Frankly, I got tired of waiting for an excuse for something that should not need an excuse. So I won’t any more. I’m writing about Roger Bannister, and the lessons that his life (not only his running) provide for professional baseball players today.

What Four Minutes Meant

First, though, I will give some brief perspective on Bannister’s achievement.

The pursuit of the four-minute mile, and the anticipation of breaking it, lasted for many years. It can be traced as far back as the 1920s, but it reached a high pitch of tension during, ironically, World War II. Two Swedish milers, Arne Andersson and Gundar Haegg, shielded by their nation’s neutrality, took turns breaking the mile record in an epic years-long rivalry that knocked the mark down to 4:01.4 in July 1945.

There it stayed, year after year, even as peace brought the world’s youth back to athletic pursuits. The halt not only raised the tension of the chase, it gave strength to those who argued that the four-minute mile was unbreakable, something beyond the ability of the human body.

Flowing beneath the chase was postwar optimism, a sense that people who threw down Hitler could accomplish any epic deed that might seem impossible. Chuck Yeager gave this a kick-start in 1947 by breaking the sound barrier. Edmund Hillary added to it in 1953 by summiting Mt. Everest, right when Bannister was driving himself toward his own great goal.

There may not be an analogy in baseball to this pursuit. One thinks of Aaron chasing Ruth or Rose running down Cobb, but compiling numbers over a career isn’t the same as one great dash. The McGwireSosa chase of 1998 would be close, were it not so tainted. DiMaggio’s streak fails as a comparison simply because no one can get anywhere near him.

(I cannot resist relating my favorite ancillary tale in the saga. Norris McWhirter was not only a friend of Roger’s, but the co-publisher of the track and field magazine Athletics World. He was on hand at the fateful meet, first to run one of the early races, then to call Bannister’s mile run. He was the man who announced to the crowd the world-record time, though cheering drowned him out after “Three.”

The event made him a splendid connection. Bannister’s fellow runner in the race, Chris Chataway, worked for the Guinness brewery. He got wheels turning that ended with Norris and his twin brother Ross getting an interview with the directors of the company. That interview led to a book project that put the brothers’ knowledge of remarkable feats like Bannister’s to good use. It was, and still is, The Guinness Book of World Records.)

The story goes even further beyond Bannister, including to rival runners chasing the goal who were not ciphers and certainly not villains. Of the lessons I look to draw, however, two of the three are particular to Bannister himself. I will start with the one I think is the most remarkable.

One: A Man of Parts

Had you asked Roger Bannister in 1954 to describe himself in one or two words, his answer would have been not “runner” but “medical student.” During the chase, he was taking courses and doing an internship at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Two months after claiming the record, he took the final exams that would officially make him Doctor Bannister.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

His medical work—seeing patients, heavy book study, and lab research—took up the great bulk of his time. Training to run took a little over one hour of his average day, an amount easily exceeded by other amateur competitors, not to mention the growing professional ranks.

Let’s take a moment to absorb this. Roger Bannister attained an epochal athletic achievement, something aimed at the last decade or more, winning him renown that lasts to this day and should last beyond. And he did it as a hobby. An intense, dedicated hobby, but also one very circumscribed in the effort he could devote to it.

This isn’t to deny his focus on the goal. Bannister had strong ambition, but it was controlled, subordinated, and also spread beyond the track. Indeed, the way in which he pursued the goal was part of his purpose.

He sought to exalt the amateur ideal, the belief that a man could excel in athletics beyond all others, but do so as one part of a well-rounded life, productive beyond the track. This he accomplished, in both phases. He became a respected and acclaimed doctor, making genuine contributions to research medicine. In the fullness of his years, he has said he is prouder of his medical work than of the four-minute mile.

I am not going to go as far in applying his example to modern baseball as you might fear. Times have changed too much. Turning up one’s nose at salaries that could make you rich for life is a far different practical matter than rejecting money that could provide a decent living for a few years. Neither do I expect today’s ballplayers to complete master’s degrees in the offseason to prove themselves Renaissance men.

What they can do is be more open to versatility within the game, in an era marked by specialization taken close to the limits imposed by the 25-man roster. Think of today’s relievers, some slotted into specific innings they are expected to pitch, others coming in only if the hitter bats the correct way. Batters have their own strictures, though short benches due to today’s big bullpens have forced a bit of flexibility on them.

This specialization may be most notable when it is broken. If a manager says his bullpen has no set closer, it’s a sign of tumult on the team, of struggle, of failure, until somebody, anybody, takes the role. The story of new Hall-of-Famer Craig Biggio’s move from catcher to second base is used to show how his career almost derailed as much as to celebrate his broad range of baseball ability. Rick Ankiel’s second career as an outfielder just reminds us how his first career as a pitcher burned to the ground.

There is an entrenched attitude that a player can fill only one role at the level of ability needed to justify his presence on the field. If that role has to tighten and narrow to fit his range of abilities, so be it. Anything to avoid the dread fate of being anywhere less than 100 percent.

This is a valid concern in some senses. In a mile race, the difference between 100 percent and 99 percent is more than two seconds. For Roger Bannister in May of 1954, this was the margin between history and obscurity. That final percentage point can make a real difference also to a baseball player, and his individual record.

As you are aware (if some occasionally seem not to be), baseball is not an individual sport. Getting the best possible totals in a few statistical categories is not the aim, unless those categories are runs and winning percentage. Narrow pursuit of one part of the game makes you a narrow player, and your team that much less able to adjust to difficulties.

In the name of having closers at 100 percent for the ninth inning, managers dismiss the notion of using them for tight spots in the eighth or (grab the smelling salts) seventh, where even 95 percent might be the best option available. Stretching middle relievers for two innings is much less popular than the standardized once-a-frame cycle, often leaving the cupboard bare when long extra innings set in. And heaven forbid anybody cares about how well the pitcher swings a bat.

Yes, this is a pet cause of mine, largely because it is such a widely ignored inefficiency begging for exploitation. The collapse of pitcher batting is a vicious circle. Pitchers spend less time on their batting so they can work more on their pitching, meaning their performance suffers at the plate, meaning managers de-emphasize their offensive work more, meaning they spend less time on their batting, and so on.

It leaves so much potential value on the table. But gaining 50 or 100 points of OPS with some time in the batting cage might take a percentage point away from the pitcher’s actual pitching. Even if the trade-off were clearly favorable (and perhaps it is), it would be unthinkable to take away from the pitcher’s job. At least, for a certain narrow definition of the pitcher’s job.

Spreading himself around made Roger Bannister a better person, if not necessarily a better racer. Following his lead could make plenty of better ballplayers, if not necessarily better specialists.

But Bannister did have a great method of making himself a better racer.

Two: The Science of Speed

The running and medical threads of Bannister’s life were not separate from each other. He applied his medical talents to studying human physiology under the stress of severe exercise. He put subjects on a treadmill and ran them to exhaustion, measuring gases in exhaled breath and taking many blood samples to examine its chemistry at various stages of exertion. His primary subject, naturally, was himself.

Bannister discovered how the body went from aerobic function to anaerobic as it ran short of oxygen, and the narrow window of anaerobic exertion before lactic acid buildup crippled the body with pain and muscle contractions. He could then apply this knowledge to his running, increasing with training his efficient use of oxygen, and calculating a balance between aerobic and anaerobic activity to wring the absolute maximum performance out of himself at his chosen distance.

It is probably too much to expect today’s baseball players to conduct their own biomedical research, or to run multilinear regressions on their swinging strike rates. It is not too much for them to embrace the applications of others’ intelligence meant to improve their play.

The main obstacle has always been getting people within the culture of baseball to accept conclusions and advice from people outside that culture. Allan Roth, Branch Rickey’s in-house statistical analyst with the Brooklyn Dodgers, had only a short period of influence before his work became mere fodder for sportswriters. (Meaning that of the two revolutions Rickey began on April 15, 1947, only one succeeded in its time.) It may be that Billy Beane was able to overcome resistance to his odd notions in Oakland only because he had played in the majors, giving a patina of “inside-ness” to Moneyball.

This is not purely insularity at work. As Yogi Berra possibly said, there’s no difference between theory and practice in theory, but in practice there is. There are practical aspects of baseball that cannot (yet) be boiled down to discrete numbers, and that make players and coaches wonder sometimes how naive those stats nerds can be. Look at the relationships between scientists and engineers sometime, and you will see similar dynamics at work.

Bannister did not have this problem. He embodied both halves; he could meld his research conclusions with his experience on the track. It was almost an unfair advantage, except that he earned it with hard work at both ends.

(Tangentially, Bannister had no use for unfair advantages. In the 1970s, he oversaw development of the first urine test for steroids, one of the accomplishments that brought him a knighthood. Everyone who scorns the use of PEDs in baseball or any sport owes Sir Roger thanks.)

An analyst-athlete would be an optimal way of getting a team to accept sabermetric conclusions, but as I’ve said, this is too much to ask or expect. The next-best method would be analysts with baseball experience, which at this level means analysts who once played in the majors. This isn’t as implausible, but will still be rare.

Next would be having the conclusions come to the players via the conduit of a “baseball person.” A general manager, as in Beane’s case, would be adequate, but the manager is better. This is where Joe Maddon made a great difference with the Tampa Bay Rays, and may be doing so with the Chicago Cubs. As the recent book Big Data Baseball (reviewed right here) recounts, Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle’s buy-in with the theories of GM Neal Huntington and his analysts helped snap a 20-year skein of losing and made the Bucs a yearly playoff contender.

It would be great if players would naturally accept this flow of knowledge. Of course some do, an increasing number as the competitive edge it provides becomes more obvious. But aside from scouting high-school shortstops who read The Hardball Times and FanGraphs religiously, teams can find other ways of making these new ideas a part of their game.

Three: A New Ball Game

The running world has long since left Bannister’s historic mark far behind. The mile record today is held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco at 3:43.13, more than a quarter minute faster than Bannister. From that perspective, it’s hard to see how anyone could have thought the four-minute mark unbreakable.

From another perspective, it’s not quite the same event. Advances in training have had an obvious effect, but advances in equipment may have done more.

In 1954, the most advanced tracks in the world had cinder surfaces — coal ash from electrical plants, laid over dirt. Some runners were racing on clay, crushed volcanic rock, or grass. Bannister ran on his cinder tracks in flimsy leather shoes, with half-inch steel spikes on the soles to give traction.

Today, any athletic store can provide you with running shoes far superior to those Bannister used to make history. Tracks advanced from cinders to rubber-asphalt combinations, then on to a wide variety using polyurethane, Latex, or other substances in the mix. Modern tracks are formulated for traction, shock absorption, and energy return, maximizing the athlete’s speed while minimizing injury risks.

Several factors can explain the 16-second difference between Bannister and today’s record. Better training is an obvious one; a broader talent pool is another. The biggest, though, may be the optimized equipment and track conditions enjoyed today. Were Bannister plucked out of his time and given a race on our tracks, with 2015 gear, I think he could top out at 3:50, or better.

Is baseball better today than it was 50 or 100 years ago? We certainly hope so, and there are many indications that it is. But we may want to temper our convictions that today’s ballplayers are simply superior.

Admittedly, this opinion isn’t dominant. Baseball reveres its past, and its past players. It makes more room to consider its long-retired players the best in the game than any other sport, though maybe that’s because baseball has a longer past than any American team sport.

The more analytically-minded do lean toward the modern players. They have sound reasons, such as training, nutrition, and the talent pool, to do this. They should, though, keep in mind the more external advantages that today’s players have.

Many of those advantages come on defense. Gloves are bigger than half a century ago, and massively bigger than a century back. Padding sheaths many walls, brought on by hard impact after hard impact over the years. Outfields are more even than previously; infields are combed smooth, pebbles now an offense instead of a regular feature.

For hitters, better understanding of the physics of bat sizes has forever raised the level of home run hitting. For pitchers, the accretion of new pitch types invented over the decades has left them almost with too many weapons to choose from. And for everybody, the sciences of kinesiology and biometrics have honed performance, with further leaps sure to come as computing power surges ever forward.

Saying that old-time athletes did the best they could under the circumstances can carry a whiff of patronizing. A closer look at the matter, an understanding of those past limitations and the gulf between then and now, may instead foster a greater respect for them—along with a better-informed gratitude that we’re watching the athletes of today.

So that runner who would be a quarter-lap down to modern times is not so far behind after all. In some ways, you could say he was really ahead of his time.

References and Resources


A writer for The Hardball Times, Shane has been writing about baseball and science fiction since 1997. His stories have been translated into French, Russian and Japanese, and he was nominated for the 2002 Hugo Award.
4 Comments
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Paul
8 years ago

Great article. It’s not uncommon for me to lose interest in the middle of articles of this length, but this was interesting start to finish. I feel a little bit more cultured now that I know who Sir Roger Bannister is.

Scott
8 years ago

THT Long form articles like this are a joy to stumble upon.

I am a huge fan of all the different sorts of content that THT is giving a home to.

Fantastic writing and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

rico vaniam
8 years ago

that was a fun read. certainly the effects of better equipment, training and surfaces has contributed to todays faster times.

Shane Tourtellotte
8 years ago

Adding a coda to this piece: on September 9, Dr. Bannister put the running spikes he wore in breaking the four-minute mile up for auction. They were expected to fetch as much as $75,000. Instead, they got $407,000. Part of Bannister’s proceeds will go to a neurological research trust.

For a bit more detail, you can readthis article.