SportsCentury: Babe Ruth

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he was an original in every way he had a librarians legs an oversized head wrists thickest pipes and a moon shaped face so ugly it was lovable when he stood in the batter's box he seemed to have just grown out of the earth a primitive statue the when he swung sweet music played and when he smiled he lit up a nation an incorrigible kid with clout became the Sultan of Swat I give you the father of modern baseball a Sports God for the ages Babe Ruth [Music] [Music] when it was discovered that the 1919 White Sox had thrown the World Series baseball reached its lowest point in history baseball needs a savior and he's standing there to save baseball but more important suddenly here's this man theity four home runs that other teams are hitting people didn't trust the game anymore now all the sudden you know into the sunlight here's this big rob elation do this one thing that nobody has ever really done well before his 29 home runs of 1919 it was a record no one ever hit 500 for next year he went 250 for the long ball became the prime thing in baseball and Ruth led the way and the others follow instead of a infield hit and a stolen base and a sacrifice and a groundout to the right side now there was an infield hit and wait for Babe to come up and hit one of the far Booth's aerobic efforts and his home-run-hitting and his popularity brought people back to the ballpark and nobody questioned whether the game was honest or not because the day was hitting all runs and there was nothing you could do to stop that he changed the extent of the appeal of baseball I don't know of anyone in any other sport who as an individual had as much effect on the popularity of the game received a tremendous injection of adrenaline and came back to roaring life on his shoulders primarily every place he went every field he played over people came to see this monumental thing started cheering as he walked out of the dugout there was a joy that you had come to see something and then when you saw it he'd scream with delight there was something different about that man he walked in a ballpark people stood up oh there's the pain there's a babe he's a home owner struck out he's single double triple he get through him the butterfly ever start flopping around you think you get over but you don't he projected he had impact he didn't hold off the public he was accessible they lived two blocks from where I did and my parents would let me go down to the hotel alamak where he lived on 71st Street then one day he saw me and smiled and ran his hands through my hair [Music] and I went running home nobody was allowed to touch me again but as the Twilight crept across his towering career this baseball God was reduced to the status of orphan to a game that had been his only real home for two decades still he hung on face pressed against the window [Music] he was not asked to manage the Yankees he was hurt he wasn't mad he was hurt we know that they wanted a manager team he was never given the chance to manage the team I believe to this day the owners disliked Babe Ruth because he was beyond their control I think that's their way of getting back at a guy they could not stand I said how to be rejected by the one thing that was his feet it was more than disappointing he went to such a severe depression that he just didn't want to live anymore [Music] [Laughter] born February 6 1895 to a distracted mother and a hard-working father George Herman Ruth was at odds with this world almost from the day he took his first steps the neighborhood where Babe Ruth grew up in Baltimore was a tough working-class neighborhood I don't know if you'd quite call it a slum it was a tough neighborhood his father was running a bar and he had absolutely no supervision whatsoever and he was just running wild we used to like to go to Lexington Market and kicked over the baskets of vegetables and fruit and infuriate the Italians fellow workers and they would be chastening down you toss fruit he was throwing rotten fruit a passing truck drivers he was swelling the the drags of the beer and his father's saloon he was a strong tough bullheaded willful youngster and he was the despair of his parents he was just constantly getting into scrapes they drank and he smoked and he was just a young kid and they just couldn't handle it his sister said I wish I could have counted the number of times there was a knock on our door and there'd be a woman with another boy and say mrs. Ruth did you see what your boy to urge did to my Jimmy his parents wind up putting him into the st. Mary's industrial school with the hope that it was straightened him out and give him some structure in his life described as a moral hospital that treats maimed Souls the xavarian brothers of st. Mary's did not discriminate applying love in the form of strong corrective measures to any deserving student there were kids of all faiths a lot of them were orphans they went there they learned trades to be printers plumbers shoemakers the goal of the brothers of Saint Mary's was to bring out the best in each show some were highly delinquent and were involved in committing serious crimes other ones were there simply because their parents died and they were truly orphans I have to think that God was looking out for him when his father took him to st. Mary's and says here I can't do anything with him see what you can do mr. Varian brothers were strong disciplinarians they realized and saw a lot of the good it was in the babe the bugs restrict didn't mess around because they could but they they loved us and we loved them the babe was taught by the brothers to read to write to the right from wrong and I realize he needed a trade they try to teach him her tricky [Music] Ruth was saved from the jury prospect of making shirts by one particular brother who took an interest in him from that day in 1904 the nine-year-old went to stay behind the walls the babe had great admiration in sensitivity to word brother Matthias there was a big 250 pound brother strong and disciplined but great sensitivity brother Matthias was legendary with the fungo band he would go out in the what they called the big yard and after dinner each night and take dozens of baseballs and hit them as high as you possibly could and he had tremendous clouds which word has it were only exceeded by the clouds that worth yet many years later when he would come back and visit st. Mary's brother Matthias picked him out at st. Mary's and told him that the potential for being a baseball player when he got to st. Mary's he discovered that baseball being better at baseball than anybody else was was a way of fitting in it was the first thing that we ever felt he could do and be complimented on if baseball was roots liferaft in a social sea of 800 boys it also served as a replacement for a mother's love he had never known they quite sadly would say that his mother never came to visit him during the 12 years that he was at st. Mary's Industrial School if it wasn't for the fact that people recognized this skill and harnessed it he could have been incarcerated by the time he was 18 years old and America never would have heard the name instead Ruth made a name primarily as a picture in the semi-pro leagues around Baltimore but he was discharged from st. Mary's at 19 the six to one over 80 pound left-hander was signed by Jack Dunn owner and manager of the International League struggling Baltimore Orioles for $100 a month babe got the name babe in that 1914 Worrell training camp the first thing you did was to buy a bicycle and crashed it let's do the fun of the other Oriole players who were sitting on the porch of the hotel they said who is that young monkey on the bicycle and they said well that's Dunn's latest babe the babe had never been on a train he had never been in a hotel he had never been in a restaurant so all these magnificent wonders of the world were opened up to him for the first time he was a misbehaved kit in Carville in that sense uncontrolled was probably a better word he did things he he would wear the same underwear day after day after day on people kidded him about it he just stopped wearing underwear would wear underwear for years he had this wonderful positive outgoing personality with a great sense of humor and I don't think that started when he became a star I think that was the way he was from his early days he had had all these baseball experiences but never had any experiences dealing with women and he ended up proposing to the first woman who you talk to him for any length of time almost like allowing an animal that had been restricted for 15 16 years of let him out into the open and just could run for as long as he wanted by July the talent Laden Oreos were in the first place and Ruth had compiled a 14 and six record but eager attendance force done to sell off his stars to the big leagues and Ruth went to the Boston Red Sox favorite was a hero of the 1916 World Series and a hero of the 1918 World Series he was 21 years old in 1916 and he was a pitcher he was the best left-handed pitcher in the American League he would have been a Hall of Fame pitcher had he never hit a home run in the four years that he was a pitcher he won more games and had a lower under on average than any pitcher in the American League except Walter Johnson and he beat Johnson repeatedly in one-nothing games in six seasons with Boston Ruth's 189 games and hosted a 2.19 er a in 1918 he also began hitting homers at an impressive rate tying for the league lead with 11 this double talent of hitting and pitching posed a dilemma for the Red Sox manager at Barrow later became the Yankee general manager resisted making him a hitter because he said they'll string me up alive if I take the greatest pitcher in the American League and make him an outfielder because he was a pitcher when he tried to hit homeruns with more or less every swing they didn't coach it out of him the way they would have had he been a young hitter brief the pitcher only appeared in 17 games in 1919 winning nine but his 29 homers caught the collective eye of the Yankee brass Harry Frazee the owner of the Red Sox was in some financial pickle and needed money and he started casting around looking for money and suddenly down in New York they came up with the cash and said we'll give you the money if you'll give us Babe Ruth the money was there he grabbed the money and sent the Dave Sal I don't think Boston has recovered ever since [Music] papers would never have been babe ruth's if he had played up his career in Boston he would not have been the American cultural figure he was for he not playing on this stage in New York in the spring of 1920 they've slipped into a Yankees uniform just as a seminal decade in American history began neither the country nor the game would ever be the same [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he came along in the 1920s the war was over for the Jazz Age was upon us the art of public relations and a value of creating public excitement had come along with radio larger than life in his gargantuan appetites his prodigious performance on the field and equally provincials off the field favorite symbol of the 1920s this was a man who wanted it all this is a man breaking the bonds of this sterile childhood it was an orphanage an upbringing he was bringing America along with us the 20s is the decade that gave us celebrity this was the New York of Jimmy Walker it was the New York of Rudolph Valentino it was the New York of Lindbergh it was a time of larger-than-life figures and there was no one who was larger on that magnificent stage than Babe Ruth there was something about this convergence of Babe Ruth and the communication revolution of the 1920s that really changed American lives and changed our entire culture we had no television so no one actually saw a Babe Ruth unless you went out to the ballpark so all kinds of things were were sort of concocted in the press some members of the press realized that they had a sort of a treasure he was an instrument that they could use to tell wonderful stories just as he was a player that the Yankees could use to in fall game the Golden Age that we think of at the 1920s of Runyan and gallico and Bryce was in fact an age of myth making they were in the business of creating legends they were like medieval troubadours singing the saga of the joust they were the only storytellers and therefore the whole of what you knew about sport came from these people Ruth offered something for every one of them for Damon Runyon he was the Broadway figure for Paul calico at the Daily News he was the New York wise guy standing up to management and particularly for Grantland rice he was the Homeric figure on the field whose exploits lent themselves to these flights of fancy that made Rice's reputation and fashioned the personality of Ruth on the sports pages this symbiosis between Ruth and the sports riding fraternity extended outside the lines where the babe played freely without fear of public exposure what today's sports riders will not ignore and sometimes we're digging out the writers in the 20s and 30s covered up and so roots peccadilloes were widely known to the writers but they never wrote about them they protected the babe I've heard a story that the babe is chasing this naked woman through the through the pullman in the the right of a playing card they don't even pay attention it was a time of excess in a city of excess Babe Ruth was welcomed and wanted in every restaurant in every speakeasy at every party in New York talk about subject he was Babe Ruth absolute example he's free he's making more money than he ever dreamed them so you can just imagine a young man with the normal amount of testosterone with money in his pocket he was just having a ball the babe tells the cabbies that stop you wait about 10 to 15 minutes I'll be right back he goes up has a little session with one of his girlfriends and the cabs waiting he comes back Gibson goes to the ballpark in Tokyo he was at night five or six of us up to his suite after the game and they all drank these little girls that were serving because they've been more than 15 years of age when they walk by his bed and he was sitting propped up there like a Maharaja he'll grab one of the girls when they walk by him drop him by the road and pick them up and bounce them on the stomach and threw him down Ruth did represent a hedonistic ethic and you might even say he represented a consumer heck I can't remember the name of the writer who once described Ruth's appetite and said Babe Ruth anything that doesn't eat him babes gargantuan appetites went unchecked despite his ill-fated marriage to Helen Woodford they were very young married Ruth was 20 and she was 60 and there's Joe Dugan said she was just a kid and Ruth got bigger than the president Helen probably was just a victim of circumstance babies on the road running around and she was a poor girl from New England but his star was on the rise and he just left her behind he wasn't malicious he wasn't mean toward he just didn't pay attention to her when he was with her he would buy her things he could buy her jewelry my name is off again and she was Lonesome she was a neglected wife that marriage resulted in one child but as events would later come out that that child was not the child of their Union but the child of one of babes flings with another girl my mother told me that my grandfather went to California for an exhibition game and he met a woman named Juanita Jennings and that woman turned out to be my grandmother when Juanita came to New York to have the child babe literally took the baby from Juanita and gave it to Helen to a juanita Jenny she was always in my mother's life and she kept it a secret until 1980 when she told mom on her deathbed that she was her mother [Music] the babes behavior was sometimes even outrageous to his teammates the showers are awful Eve main part of the clubhouse where you dress and I was in there and I was facing the showerhead lathered up with soap and all of a sudden in the middle of my back I felt a degree of hot water that was different than the shower water and he was urinating in the middle of my back Joe Dugan who was his teammate under 27 Yankees said that four or five of the guys would go out on a little bit of a bender one night and Dugan the next afternoon would be sitting in the dugout nursing this terrible hangover and Ruth would just get up and hit a home run Ruth made his own rules and he did think and that he was bigger than baseball and no one could stop him from doing what he was doing just as Ruth needed to be controlled by the brothers of st. Mary's he also needed and got a serious reality check from Yankees manager Miller Huggins didn't like Ruth and Ruth didn't like Huggins Ruth was out of an orphanage with a minimal education Huggins was just a well-read man well educated man so the two were bound to clash after repeated infractions by the babe the inevitable clash came on August 29th 1925 the truth arrived late for batting practice following a night in the town Miller Huggins confronted him in the clubhouse in st. Louis and talked about to put his uniform on you were suspended booth raised hell Huggins said you're going back to New York you're suspended until you apologize to the rest of the team publicly Ruth stormed out of the clubhouse that he's gonna go see Commissioner Landis and he stormed the New York to see Jake Rupert Huggins had the support of the Yankees and the Yankees backed them all the way so Ruth either had to do what Huggins wanted or he was gonna be barred from playing baseball you had a reserve clause he either played for the Yankees or he didn't play at all so Ruth finally came down from his temper tantrum and he went to Huggins and tried to apologize and plug and said but we'll see and Huggins just let him hang and hang and hang until Ruth finally realized what an apology was and after that he was no trouble Huggins made Ruth understand that he was part of the team and that the team would not be run by Babe Ruth when the dust settled the Yanks proceeded to win three straight pennants and two World Series meanwhile as somewhat chastened Ruth was altering the game with his back having hit 54 homers in 1920 and 59 the following season the babe reached his zenith in 1927 with sixty more than any other American League team how am I gonna make the taro I don't know if I were flying through the buffering cap I hope it be matching dragon hearing your funnel right but the good times were running down soon the heady bags that had been the golden age of the 19th plane put in as Wall Street Stocks plummeted and baseball's lovable manchild played out his final seasons a subdued America entered the 1930s with a huge hangover in empty pockets even Ruth seemed team if not by the times than by his second wife their Hodgson who managed him off the field as effectively as Miller Huggins had on the field no one could ever say one word against him she wouldn't stand for that from anybody with her loyalty to her famous husband unquestioned Clair had a second side of her nature but sometimes pushed the babe to the edges of his patience my mother often said how Claire was very controlling and she would pretty much dictate what babe should wear what babe should wear he had to sneak around and do what he wanted to do Claire was not this unsophisticated young girl like the first wife she was a much more of a sophisticated urban woman she'd already been married and had one child of her own and she was probably the exact opposite of babes first wife Helen Claire added a lot of structure and discipline to babes life beyond harnessing her husband spending there created a home environment that was less than warm Claire would often play favorites julia was pushed in the foreground my mother pushed in the back my mother would tell me they had it like a 3,000 square foot apartment and she was on the other end from the other bedrooms disconnected from the family my mom spent so much time in her room she said she counted the flowers she knew how many flowers were on the wall it didn't make for a happy home life for my mom [Music] well no all the same thing I'm going down clean feet now to try to get in film for a good piece [Music] Wrigley Field Game three of the 1932 World Series Derry was in his light chief major-league season he had already had 650 home runs he was at the end of the rope the Yankees beat the Cubs twice in New York now they go to Chicago Bruce in the outfield even messes up a play that's the Cubs tie the game so he comes to bat and the crowd is now all over him mercilessly from the dugout then he hurt him after each pitch the roof put up one finger and then two fingers with two strikes on and they pointed to deep center field supposedly saying that's where he's gonna hit the next picture well I did see that but I think the reason you finger and that happened to point in the region was because he still had another stripe silly Jurgis went to his grave believing it to fade called the shot and from this perspective playing shortstop he believed he saw the babe gestured towards the center field flagpole the most remarkable part of that was that with only the shouting and the battering and the yelling going on back and forth the ruse was able to step in and concentrate and hit that next pitch [Music] the one he did it about there and a spot that nobody could hit so far everybody believed immediately that there was a direct connection they just stunned the crowd that in this furor and fight he hit the ball so hard no one ever had a ball that far before that he pointed didn't point doesn't matter a damn he was challenged by the Cubs and he's stuck into them isn't it wonderful to wonder whether or not he did it isn't it so much better than having a replay from 16 different angles and have had a hundred and fifty riders asking him about it after the game we wanted to believe it because it was Babe Ruth was any other hitter that would have been dismissed suddenly we have this Herculean meant to wrap him in and so we're not gonna let it go when your whole life is series majestic event when you do one more everybody is going to believe it by 1933 Ruth was aware that his greatness was draining out of him [Laughter] forever but you can bet your sweet life he had gotten heavy couldn't run the way he did the aches and pains were there he was swing and miss a little more often by 1934 Ruth had played out his welcome on the Yankees after several steep salary cuts had reduced his annual take from an all-time high of 80,000 to 35,000 a distorted Ruth's pursuit a dream he had for years he wanted to manage the Yankees he didn't get along with John McCarthy the new manager he wanted to be the Yankee manager himself and that was never going to happen it's possible they remembered back to the difficult times that they had not only with salaries but with other types of disputes and maybe just simply wanted to cut their ties with them [Music] burned by the Yankees they have accepted an offer by the Boston Braves in the hope that it would lead to bigger things [Music] [Music] dressed in a Braves uniform Ruth began the 1935 season with each at legs and a child's hope he knew that his career as a player was nearing an end but I just he was desperately reaching out to keep some connection with the game Ruth always harbored the hope that by signing on with the Boston the Braves as a player this could mean a transition to becoming a manager he thought he was gonna have some administrative or managerial role and what they really wanted him for was almost the carnival character I mean he was a drawing card that's all he was on May 25th Ruth provided a final flash of his old self by hitting three homers against Pittsburgh he retired a week later Ruth wanted to stay in baseball and it was his life I can't question whether Ruth would make a great manager or not I have no knowledge of that my own sense of it is that he would be a lousy manager as a player he had no peer his 714 home runs and 342 lifetime batting average more than qualified him to be among the first five players inducted into the Hall of Fame of the five all but Ruth had the opportunity to manage in the big leagues the owners had no love for him because among other things you know he really skewed the salary scale Babe Ruth had a good sense of his own work he knew he was a great athlete he knew that he was bringing in fans for the turnstiles so there was no reason why he shouldn't be paid for it he was a pioneer always believed that they thought that he would raise the salaries of both limbs and that he would give the ballplayers a lot more than they were getting his early carefree irresponsible days I think kind of you know stained his reputation of the fact where they saw the babe happily managed team he couldn't manage himself I don't think anybody wanted to take a chance on him those stories that were referred to that these sports writers did not write in the 20s or 30s the baseball establish Ben do they knew the stories baby was just too big and I think that would want to be eclipsed by a manager he couldn't control in 1938 Ruth signed as a coach with the Brooklyn Dodgers on the hope that he might one day get his chance to manage that day never came all of his life he had been in the game and the idea that you can't manage you can't remain in baseball what else is this man going to do he had no other real interests he loved the game he loved the limelight he loved the excitement of it and suddenly you're being told you can't do this any longer [Music] I think his last few years of life were probably very sad ones for him he was very frustrated he tried playing golf he would go to the charity events it was like the wind was taking that out of his sails somehow when he just looked sort of deflated in a letter to Yankees GM Larry MacPhail at the end of the 1946 season Bruce simply and touchingly made his case I feel it would be a fitting and happy climax to my baseball career to manage the club I was so successful with as a player when the news came back mom said he just put his head in his hands and just cried because everything was gone then that's when the Depression started and maybe he drank a little more than he should have and she got a call one day from a friend that said you better get over to the apartment because babe won't come out of his room he was trying to jump her and my mother's banging on the door of course pleading with him not to do this and he did finally open the door but I know that stuck with mom forever [Music] coming up next America bids farewell the mighty babe [Music] I saw a picture in the paper and he looked terrible I called mother and I said mother what on earth is the matter with daddy and she said we have no idea he's going to doctors and they haven't been able to find anything but he has living horrendous headaches they didn't tell him that it was cancer he didn't know what's the matter with him they was dal used with cards and letters crowds of kids would stand in the street down below the window of his room and they'd stand there by the hour he would sign his name and he'd tell a nurse to give those to the kids that were standing outside and a little later when Connie Mack came for the hospital to visit him the last time who said that termites egami mr. Mack Pino he was dying in the spring of 1947 Ruth was given a day at Yankee Stadium [Music] little more than a year later a frail babe would have a second and final opportunity to say goodbye he helps celebrate the 25th birthday the ballpark is homers built I covered him only once and that was his last day with the help of a male nurse who was with him Ruth with difficulty got undressed and got into his uniform for the last time very slowly they're coming up the stairs he was shaky and any robbers in our first baseman grabbed the bat give it to babe to use the steady at you walk to home plate and finally and now [Music] I wrote that he walked out into that tunnel - which he must have been more familiar than any other living there it was really so sad to hear him talk and I knew he was in such pain that he could highly stand be out there let he went back into the dugout and the male nurse helped them back into the clubhouse and he sat there and Joe do he came back and said I get your drink judge and that's when Ruth said I'm gone Joe I'm gone and Dugan told me he started crying Andrews did too and that was the end of his life [Music] it was a sad day in this country never lost a great man he was really idle for the children this is such a tremendous sense of loss he was so young I mean 53 years old it was probably the greatest of farewell the biggest week and he sports figure at our time the fact that baby could die if actually he was mortal was an extremely sobering thing and I think made a lot of people particularly baseball fans in perspective for a time he died 1948 after the war and after an awful lot of death in this country and after America had begun to realize that the heroes that they had always clung to were as frail and as mortal as anyone Babe Ruth was a part of the American family [Music] wait - Joe Dugan came out of the Cathedral together terribly hot day and Dugan said I sure could use a beer and Hoyt said so good debate so could the babe [Music] laborious life is not a failure it's as dramatic a success story as any you could find in America there were an awful lot of kids who grew up fatherless who grew up with the same sort of background and not a single one of them turned into Bieber it was time when heroes were created from common men the roots seemed to embrace it vigorously and to shake every ounce of life out of the 24 hours in a day the understood that people came to the ballpark to be entertained that maybe is like they use a first guy figure this all out it was a stage it was an that this was Broadway this was the theater I think that's why we're talking about Ruth now in a new millennium his legacy is that he is baseball he is the human symbol of Facebook and I think that's no small legacy [Music] the babe left another less publicized legacy not in baseball lore but in the annals of Medicine it was among the first patients to undergo an experimental treatment for his cancer at first Ruth showed dramatic improvement putting back much of the 80 pounds he lost his progress was so encouraging that his case was read at an international cancer Congress meeting in st. Louis but within months the cancer reclaimed him and on August 16th 1948 the babe was gone three Espeon classic sports century I'm Chris Fowler [Music]

Channel: Max Carey

Views: 58,720

Rating: 4.7219253 out of 5

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Id: 5GkZRw21kho

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 21 2018