-Bruce Lee in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, November 1954)
HE GOT HIM TO HIT INTO THE GROUND ALL RIGHT
"Waite Hoyt, the ex-Yankee pitcher who now broadcasts the Cincinnati Redlegs' games, was talking about Babe Ruth's last home runs. The Babe was with the Braves in Pittsburgh that day (May 25, 1935) and the Pirates asked Hoyt how to pitch to the big guy. 'How do I know?' he said. 'I never pitched to him. But maybe I'd try him high and outside or low and outside and pray.'
'Nuts, I don't think he's as tough as you guys make him out to be,' Guy Bush said. 'I'd throw my sinker and he'd hit it into the ground.'
Bush was in the bullpen in the early innings that day when Babe blasted one into the stands. Eventually, Bush was called in to pitch and the Babe hit two more out of sight before the day was over. Those were the last homers he ever hit.
'You got him to hit it into the ground, all right,' Hoyt told Bush later, 'only the ground he hit was 500 feet from home plate.' "
-Sid Friedlander in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, November 1954)
HOW WILL WE KNOW WHEN THE BABE'S RECORD IS BROKEN?
Changing Park Conditions Make Home Run Comparisons Difficult
"In Kansas City next season the foul lines will be 312 feet long. There are shorter home run distances in the American League- but not many. The slugger who can pull the ball to either field should enjoy himself in the circuit's newest city.
If he can't pull the ball, he'll be unhappy. Except at those 312-foot marks, the garden is expansive. The center field wall is 460 feet from the plate.
But I'm not interested in surveying. I'm just wondering what will happen in the unlikely event that a major league batter ever hits 61 home runs in a single season. Will we have to say he broke Babe Ruth's record?
I don't see how we can, and have the statement mean much. Since Ruth drove 60 pitches beyond the boundaries in 1927, three clubs in the American League and two in the National have changed parks. Most of the others have redesigned their perimeters, usually to the advantage of the musclemen.
You couldn't well compare the talent of two musicians if one played a Stradivarius and the other plucked a ukulele. Similarly, you can't sensibly compare home run totals achieved under different conditions.
In some instances, the hitters have a tougher time today than they had in 1927. Ruth himself lifted four of those 60 homers over the fence at Cleveland's old League Park. He refused to try for distance in Cleveland Stadium.
That was long before Bill Veeck installed the inside fence, but even today, a man who hits long, high flies toward right field doesn't do as well as he would have done in League Park.
A right-handed slugger at the Stadium, on the other hand, has a target much more inviting than his predecessor had at League Park. But in Baltimore the distances are more depressing than they were while that franchise stayed in St. Louis.
Probably we're speculating about something which will never happen. Some mighty maulers have challenged Ruth's record in the last 27 years, but only two men- Hank Greenberg and Jimmie Foxx- have come interestingly close to breaking it. Each hit 58.
Considering the fact that more parks, then as now, favored left-handed hitters; that most pitchers, then as now, were right-handers, and that Ruth's home stadium was built to order for his specialty, I'd guess that both Greenberg and Foxx packed more power than the Babe. That opinion and a dime will get them the proverbial cup of coffee. Ruth holds the record.
But isn't it remarkable, with all of baseball gone slug-nutty for more than a quarter of a century, so few hitters have come close to duplicating the Bambino's mark?
'We haven't as many big men in the game today,' is Greenberg's explanation. 'I mean big men physically. Fellows of the build of Rudy York and Hack Wilson, as well as Foxx and myself.'
That could be at least part of the answer. Al Rosen, after leading the league in homers in 1953, told me he had no ambition to repeat the performance.
'What would be the point?' he asked. 'I've proven I can hit 43 home runs in one season. What if I hit 50? I'd still be ten short of the record. The fellow who breaks Ruth's record will have to be a bigger, stronger man than I am.'
Others believe the widespread popularity of the pitch known as the 'slider' has reversed the trend toward lofty home run totals. When it doesn't break right, the slider is an easy pitch to kill. But oftener than not, it is impossible to get good wood on this delivery.
To return to Ruth, how many of those homers did he hit in Yankee Stadium? Only 24. He hit eight in Boston, seven in St. Louis, five each in Philadelphia and Washington, four each in Cleveland and Detroit and three in Chicago."
-Ed McAuley, Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, March 1955)
RUTH'S TWO-FOOT DOUBLE
"Johnny Pohlmeyer, a Red Sox scout, was recalling a Babe Ruth pop fly. 'I saw him hit one right in this park- and for two bases. Charley Berry was catching and the ball landed two feet in front of the plate for a double. Nobody hit pop flies the murderous height Ruth did. Berry started for the dugout, then swung back towards third base, then towards first. Finally, the ball landed two feet in front of home plate and there was Ruth, laughing like mad, and standing on second base.' "
-Gerry Hern in the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1955)
THE BABE'S SHIRT TALE
"Once Babe Ruth became baseball's greatest home run hitter, he just about made his own rules. It wasn't that way, however, when he was a young and relatively slender pitcher for the Red Sox.
Mike McNally, farm chief of the Cleveland Indians and a great friend of the Babe's in their playing days, tells one about a clash Ruth had with the volcanic Bill Carrigan.
The Red Sox manager called his players together one day for a discussion of their habits off the field.
'On this club we hit the hay at midnight,' he roared. 'Most of you have been telling me the truth, but you are one of those who lied!' He was pointing at Ruth as he said that.
'You told me you went to your room at a quarter to 12, but one of my coaches saw you come in at 4:30 in the morning,' he continued.
The guilty Babe shifted his weight nervously and matched stares with Carrigan.
'I ain't lying,' he finally protested. 'I did so go to my room at a quarter to 12. I needed a clean shirt. Nobody asked me what time I went out again!' "
-Frank Gibbons in the Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, April 1955)
RUTH'S RECORD HOMER WAS UNSCREENED
N.L.: Sluggers To Get Old Target In St. Louis
"Long before the Cardinals decided this winter to haul down the 25-foot screen in front of the right field pavilion at Busch Stadium, a mild controversy had been going on about one aspect of it.
Was the screen there when Babe Ruth hit his record number of 60 home runs in one season, 1927?
It has been mentioned before, but it is worth repeating for the sake of the record that the screen was not there in 1927. It was put up prior to the 1930 season.
But that still left an argument unsettled.
Did the absence of the screen help Ruth to his record that year?
Many people have snorted at the idea, as several have done these past weeks, when the argument, freshly fueled by the removal of the screen, flamed again.
'Ruth never needed any help in hitting his homers,' one man said. 'He could bunt the ball into that part of the pavilion. Any time he hit one it was really tagged. The only place they needed a screen was in front of those plate glass windows on the other side of Grand Avenue. He used to break them regularly.
'I think I saw every game the Browns and Yanks played that year in St. Louis,' he went on, 'and I can't ever remember the Babe hitting one into the pavilion.'
It is worthy of note that this gentleman was a brave man indeed. The Yankees won 21 out of 22 games from the Browns that year, including all 11 in St. Louis. But, sad to relate, the man might have been brave but his memory was a little faulty.
The Babe needed the absence of a screen for just one of his homers.
That, however, was just enough to give him an all-time record of 60 homers in a season.
The home run in question was not the sixtieth of the year.
It was the seventh of that season, the first one he hit that year in St. Louis and it happened on May 10.
Milt Gaston was the Browns' hurler at the moment. The Babe whacked it in the first inning with Earle Combs and Mark Koenig on base to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead and an early boost to an 8-7 victory. The story on the game reported as 'a line drive shot dead to right field into the pavilion.'
For the others he hit in St. Louis that season, the Babe needed no help. All were tremendous blasts and more typical Ruthian homers hit tremendously high and far.
Gaston was his real patsy among Browns' hurlers. In addition to four he slugged in St. Louis, Ruth whacked five more against the Browns in Yankee Stadium. Gaston served up four of the nine home run pitches thrown to Ruth by Browns' hurlers that season. Ernie Nevers threw two and Ernie Wingard, Tom Zachary and Walter Stewart one.
Zachary it was who delivered the most important home run pitch of all. The Browns sold him to the Senators in midseason and he was the pitcher who was on the mound for Washington on September 30 in Yankee Stadium when Ruth connected for number 60, breaking his own record of 59 he had hung up in 1921.
So just in case you've been wondering whether the absence of that screen helped Ruth to his home run record in 1927, the answer is 'not much- but just enough.' "
-Robert L. Burnes, condensed from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, April 1955)
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