The Big Bam

Finished this week the newest book on baseball's greatest player and icon, who else but George Herman Ruth, the Babe?  I would say that reading the book reinforced everything we think.  Also, Ruth was in the 1920's something akin to Elvis Presley, Lebron James, and Kim Kardashian all rolled into one.  The guy who nobody could get enough of.  The guy who sold papers and moved product.  The guy whose every word was news.  One paper in NY assigned someone to him 365 days a year for a decade.

Of course, for you and me the important thing, the thing that gets lost, is the talent and ability.  Today his name is as big as ever, but most people hardly know anything other than the portly slugger who drank and womanized on a huge scale.  And he did.  But the Babe was the first modern athlete and certainly the first modern baseball player.  Like his contemporary Louis Armstrong he totally revolutionized his vocation and made it into what it is today.

I want to point out a few things I noted during the read:

• At the orphanage he played upward of 200 baseball games a year and played every position.  He often cited all those games as a boy as being why he was so successful.  The scout who signed him out of St. Mary's called him the most graceful big man he had ever witnessed.
• At the age of 18 (1914) he played in the International League for Baltimore and went 26-8 as a pitcher.
• In the 1916 season, Ruth pitched against Walter Johnson 5 times and went 4-0 winning 5-1, 1-0, 1-0, 2-1, and getting a no decision in a 2-2 game through 9.  They were the 2 best pitchers in baseball.  The next year as a part-time hitter, Ruth homered against Johnson out of the park into someone's front yard.
• During his prime as a pitcher, 1915-1918, the Babe allowed just 6.7 hits per 9 innings.  In 1916-1917, he threw 15 shutouts.
• By 1918 he was acknowledged as the best player in baseball, long before making his splash with the Yankees in 1920.  The debate raged as to whether he should move to the field full-time.  He started 19 games, completed 18, won 13 lost 7 with an ERA of 2.22, hit .300 and led the league in homers and slugging %.
• Also in 1918 he smashed a homer (dead ball?) that so stunned all observers that it was immediately measured.  It was judged to have flown 508 feet and rolled to 579.  John McGraw always claimed it was the longest ball ever hit.
• When Ruth hit NY in 1920 at the age of 25 and hit 54 homers, he was already a huge star having set the major league baseball record for homers in 1919 with 29.
• As he readied for the 1923 season, his weight was recorded as 202 on his 6'2" frame.  He was never this light again, but the point is that during his prime Ruth was hardly fat.
• In 1926 he started working with a personal trainer in the off season.  For the next 4-5 years he mostly played at around 220.  There was a story at this time about how good he was at handball and how quickly he moved his 220 pounds around the court getting to balls no one thought he could.
• In 1926, in the middle of the new live-ball era, Ruth won the homer title in the AL 47-19 while the NL leader had 21.  Gehrig had 16.
• For his entire career, the Babe reached base 47.4% of the time he went to bat.
• Despite rumors, Ruth used a 42-oz bat in his prime and went to lighter bats as he got older
• At the age of 39 he pitched for the last time and won a complete game 6-5 decision, throwing shutout ball through the first 5.
• Ruth and Gehrig had a good relationship until 1933 when they got in a spat about Gehrig's wife and didn't talk again until 1939.  Yes Ruth apparently slept with her.
• We forget now about barnstorming.  Ruth, Gehrig and other big stars hit the road after the season and played upward of 100 games during the off-season in every small town in America.  The Babe played 250 games of baseball year in and year out and everyone got their chance to see him.
• In retirement the Babe golfed, bowled, and hunted.  He carried a 3 handicap.  Of course many reported that he was longer off the tee than anyone they ever saw.
• There were some pictures of the Babe at the plate hitting from behind that I've never seen and really enjoyed.  He had a closed stance and you could tell that the hip turn was the key.  He looks coiled and ready to do damage as the ball is in flight.  The bat was held straight up with the left elbow exactly perpendicular to the bat.  It is classic just as I imagined it to be.  We forget that despite all the extra stuff, Babe Ruth was all about what he could do to a baseball.  How I would love to see a video sequence of him at bat in 1921!

S