1948 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth

RUTH'S TOP HOMER
"Q.- (Asked of Babe Ruth)- What home run do you remember most fondly?
A.- I hit a lot of homers and I was fond of every one of them. But I guess the one I treasured most was that one I hit off Moses Grove in [1928]. That was the year the Yankees went on the road thirteen games ahead and came back half a game behind the Athletics. We had to win two out of three with the A's to take the pennant and when Grove had us 5 to 2 it looked like curtains. But that homer of mine won for us and we got into the World Series. It made a difference of $6,000 to every one of us."

-Prescott Sullivan in the San Francisco Examiner (Baseball Digest, January 1948)

BABE RUTH POINTS

Most Dramatic Home Run In World Series History

"There was a grim bitterness between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs as they met in the 1932 World Series. The Yanks had taken the first two games.

It was the third inning of Game Three when mighty Babe Ruth stepped to the plate to face Charlie Root. Jeers and catcalls greeted the great Yankee home run king. Root whipped over the first ball and the Babe himself held up a finger for 'Strike One.' The second ball blazed over and Ruth held up two fingers for 'Strike Two.'

Then, with the huge crowd roaring, Ruth pointed toward the centerfield bleachers. Root wound up and threw-  and Ruth's bat met the ball with the sound of TNT exploding. It disappeared over the centerfield wall- almost exactly where Ruth had pointed."

-1948 Swell Sport Thrills No. 12

THE GREATEST

"It had to come sometime, of course. But Babe Ruth had seemingly acquired a cloak of immortality as if he were a demi-god who had sprung from Zeus. He was not an ordinary mortal even in life. Now in death he will assume still more grandiose proportions as an almost legendary figure. The Babe was a truly fabulous man, the best beloved and the best known person of our times, greater even than the sport which spawned him.
Here are two striking and most illustrative incidents. One Sunday morning last March the Babe was kneeling in church when a prim, bonneted old lady tapped him on the shoulder. 'Mr Ruth,' she whispered, 'I just want you to know that I pray for you every day.' Obviously she had never seen a baseball game in her life. Yet her imagination had been so captivated by the Bambino that she remembered him in her prayers. And that undoubtedly was multiplied of hundreds of thousands throughout the country.
The other incident happened during those grim days at Guadalcanal in the early stages of the Pacific war. The Americans and the Japanese had come to grips at long last in their fight to a finish. Among other things they exchanged were insults on hastily lettered placards. Important personages on each enemy side were vilified until our boys reached their supreme. 'Emperor Hirohito is a stinker,' the card said- except the last word was considerably stronger. Thereupon the Japs countered with their insult supreme. Their retaliatory card said: 'Babe Ruth is a stinker.'
Their choice is illuminating. It could have been Roosevelt or MacArthur. But the Nipponese mind seemed to sense that the Babe was a greater figure than either of them.
The hold that Ruth had on the public mind has never been matched by anyone in sport or out of it. He commanded it just by being himself, the most natural and unaffected man in this wide world. He lived a full and lusty life. He did incredible things, some of which have seen print and some which never will. In a way it is unfortunate that the entire story could never be told, because it would make the Babe a still more unbelievable person than he actually was.
The King of Swat was much more than a magnificent baseball player. Experts will argue themselves blue in the face as to whether Ruth or Ty Cobb was the greater performer. It doesn't particularly matter. The Babe was in a class by himself when it came to color. He teemed with it, vibrated with it and exuded it from every pore. He could strike out and excite a crowd infinitely more than Cobb hitting a grand slam home run with two out in the ninth.
As a left-handed pitcher at the beginning of his career he was one of the very best and his record for consecutive scoreless innings in the World Series still stands. As an outfielder he also was one of the very best, a beautiful thrower and a more than adequate ball hawk. As a batter he was superb. That was his forte. If he had concentrated on singles instead of homers, he would have left hitting marks which never would have been approached.
There can be no questioning the fact that he saved baseball when that structure was rocked to its very foundation by the Black Sox scandal of 1919. And along came Ruth with the distraction of his thunderous bat. The fans thronged to see him and the scandal was brushed aside. He hit more home runs and longer home runs than any man had ever fashioned before.
His appetites were prodigious. His physique was prodigious. His feats on and off the field were prodigious. He made money on a massive scale and he spent as faster or even faster than he made it.
His failures were also cut from the heroic mold, such as his .118 batting average in the 1922 World Series and his disastrous season of 1925 when he hit only .290 and lost his rebellion against the authority of Manager Miller Huggins. But his failures were so few that only his glorious successes will be remembered. Even the record book, ordinarily dull and statistical, takes on a certain enchantment and glamor where it lists the fifty-four marks the mighty Bambino left behind him.
His most extraordinary contribution to the game, however, rests in the fact that he alone changed its complexion and contour. It had been a game of 'inside baseball,' a tightly-played contest of single runs- stolen bases, squeeze plays, placement hitting. But the booming bat of the Babe demonstrated that runs could be gathered like bananas- in bunches. He soon had everyone swinging from his heels, shooting for the fences and trying to follow his lead.
Not only did he transform its strategical concepts, but he revitalized it in the box office, making new fans in untold numbers. He raised the general salary scale of all major leaguers until rookies now get higher wages than stars received before he brought his boisterous bat and boisterous personality on the scene.
Babe Ruth's records may all be broken someday, but the imprint he left on the game can never be erased. He was baseball's greatest figure and the sport never will see his like again."

-Arthur Daley, condensed from the New York Times (Baseball Digest, October 1948)