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The National Broadcasting Company presents a biography in sound, The Legend of the Babe.
We often hear the expression that someone made a name for himself.
One well-known man in our time did that almost literally.
When Babe Ruth signed his first contract for the Boston Red Sox,
he gave his name as Earhart, E-H-R-H-A-R-D-T.
Later, Ruth told a New York baseball writer that his real name was Earhart, E-R-H-A-R-D-T.
You see, he left out an H this time.
And then later in life, the most famous baseball player of our time decided that his name had been Ruth all along.
By that time, it didn't make any difference. Everyone knew him as the Babe, a man who really made a name for himself.
Come and listen to a tale I will tell Of a hero we all love so well
He played ball, what a hitter, what a man And he'll never be forgotten in our land
This is a biography in sound, The Legend of the Babe, produced and transcribed by the National Broadcasting Company.
Our narrator is the famous sports announcer Mel Allen, and our music is written and sung by folk singer Tom Glazer.
Here's the babe, here's the babe, hear the frenzied people rave
Send the fielders back against the farthest wall
When he missed, what a miss, all the air around him hissed
When he hit the ball, there was no ball at all
This is a land of heroes and legends. Maybe we should choose scientists and scholars, poets and statesmen.
But that's not the way we are. We choose our heroes for ourselves.
We spin yarns about Daniel Boone and his long Kentucky rifle and Davy Crockett with his coon-skin cap.
There was Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack, John Henry, the steel driving man, and Johnny Appleseed,
who spread the bloom of apple blossoms through the wilderness.
These were big men in our land. You'll find some of them in history books.
Some live only in the hearts of the people. Those are all legends from the past.
But there's one legend we helped create ourselves in our own time, The Legend of the Babe.
When Babe Ruth died on August 16, 1948, just seven years ago,
there were 41,194 names in the book Who's Who in America.
These were the names of the most notable men and women of our time.
The name George Herman Ruth wasn't among them.
But don't worry, no one will ever have to look him up in any book.
Just say The Babe or The Bambino or The Bigfella. They'll know who you mean.
He's well remembered by people in every walk of life.
That is not all that Babe Ruth meant to baseball, nor to the United States of America.
He represented a part of our American dream.
Ruth was a big kid at the time.
He had a moon face, he was that day was wearing a blue suit and a grey check cap.
We fellas who played with him, we learned to love him.
Sometimes he became a little gruff, sometimes he became a little like, oh, you'd say,
sort of a big shaggy guy, you know, and a fella that could get a little off base once in a while.
But nevertheless, you had to pat him on the back. He had a heart as big as gold.
He has had probably more direct influence on the youth of this country than any other player during my time.
It seems almost unbelievable that in three years of frequent competition with an individual like The Babe,
that there would be no spoken word between us.
As Washington and Lincoln still live in the White House, so Babe Ruth will always be in the Yankee Stadium.
In a lot of ways, he was like a little boy at a circus.
If he hit a home run that day, he would give me a baseball.
And sometimes if he struck out two or three times, he'd still give me a ball saying, kid, you bring me luck.
The other thing about Babe which always upset me was that Babe ended in baseball, a rather embittered man.
You know, in the days of the Depression, one of the few things you could really count on was the surety of going up to the Bronx
and sitting in the Yankee Stadium and seeing the Babes slam the pill around.
Babe Ruth, you are like a lighted candle coming into a blind man's house.
You know, no one can say just why certain individuals stand out in certain fields of activity.
It's not just because of their accomplishments, it's something beyond that.
Babe Ruth may or may not have been the greatest ball player yet. You can get an argument about that.
It's true that he hit 60 home runs one year more than anyone else ever hit in a single season, 714 in his lifetime.
But you can say, so what to that?
He holds 56 records, if you want to check the statistics, but what do baseball records mean?
No, his fame has something to do with us, with the way our country ticks.
And of course, the special way we feel about a game called baseball.
One of Babe Ruth's fans was a man who played an important part in government and politics for many years,
the former Postmaster General James A. Farley.
I am sure that I have met my share of the great and famous men of our time.
And I am proud to say that among them was the incomparable Babe Ruth.
We enjoyed a fine and lasting friendship.
We had many similar points of view and interest.
And among them, a love of baseball.
I've been a baseball fan ever since I played on the hometown lots as a young boy in Rockland County and along the Hudson River.
I have no idea of the number of times I have watched big league games, and especially the Yanks and the Babe.
I cannot understand those persons who think it is strange that we Americans have made a hero of a man
who hit a baseball father than anyone else.
But actually that is not all that Babe Ruth meant to baseball, nor to the United States of America.
He represented a part of our American dream.
He made his own way through poverty and loneliness.
And we neither asked nor cared about his social background.
We admired him for his own particular skills.
And we loved him for his generosity, his compassion and human qualities.
It is a tribute to him and to others who love baseball that today no one would question the integrity of the sport.
Of course, Babe, the player was a sight no man who ever watched him walk up to the plate can ever forget.
I still remember the thrill that I felt when he hit the ball out of the park,
when he throttled around the bases with those quick short steps of his,
and then tipped his cap just before he ducked into the dugout.
God rest you, Babe. We will never forget you.
The facts about Babe Ruth's life are simple and familiar.
After all, he lived his life in newsprint.
He was born in Baltimore on February 6th, 1895.
But it wasn't until his 40th birthday when Newspaper Man did some research that he found out the true date of his birth.
His mother died early in his life, and his father made a living now and then working on the waterfront.
George grew up on the streets and alleyways until he was sent to St. Mary's, an industrial school for boys.
He was scared, but acted tough so he wouldn't show it, and he was a little like that all his life.
He was an awkward kid with a wide face and floppy ears, and at first he was shy and sullen and sort of stood apart.
But they had a rocky playground there, a cracked bat that was spliced together and a lopsided ball wrapped with layers of tape.
Even at St. Mary's they shared a game with kids everywhere.
You can't take that away because you're poor.
Yes, that playground at St. Mary's is where a lonesome kid first stood at home plate determined to make good, to show the other fellows who he was.
At the age of 19, he walked through the gates of St. Mary's to try out for a professional baseball team.
They laughed at him at training camp. He was wearing his first suit of store-bought clothes.
He had never ridden on a Pullman train or stayed at a hotel or learned to eat without gulping to make sure he got his share.
But nobody laughed when he threw the ball with a slingshot arm or when they heard a sound like a rifle crack and saw the ball flying over the fielder's heads.
He was a Southpaw pitcher for Providence and then the Boston Red Sox, and he was a great pitcher, too.
In a recent conversation, one of his teammates, Wade Hoyt, said,
He was the one man, in my estimation, that could enter the Hall of Fame today on two counts. One is a pitcher and one is a great batter.
Yes, he was a great pitcher, but the crowd yelled to see him hit the ball, so he went to the outfield where he could play every day.
In 1919, he hit 29 home runs and was sold to the New York Yankees. Even then, he was more than a great baseball player.
There was a young fellow growing up in Chicago then who was a White Sox fan.
The English philosopher of the 19th century, Spencer, once lost a game of billiards.
He declared that to be a good billiard player is a sign of a misspent youth.
My misspent youth was in watching baseball games and in reading the baseball news and in poring over the box scores.
This is James T. Farrell, internationally famous novelist and critic and author of the Studs Lonagon trilogy.
Back in 1915, I was a boy in Chicago and my team was the Chicago White Sox.
After some years of drought, the White Sox had a team with pen and potentialities.
One of their main rivals was the Boston Red Sox.
The great star of the Red Sox was Chris Spiegel, the center fielder.
But there was a left-handed pitcher on the Red Sox called Babe Ruth.
In those days, no baseball fan, whether he were a boy or a man, believed that Babe Ruth would have the fantastic career
and become the savior of baseball as it happened that he did.
I saw him pitch and beat the Cubs in the opening game of the World Series of 1918.
The year before, the White Sox had been world champions and my brother and I had gone down at 5 o'clock in the morning
to stand in line.
We did the same thing for the 1918 World Series played between the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs.
In 1920, Babe Ruth played with the Yankees.
The Yankees with Ruth and with their first of their murderer's row became a contender for the pennant.
The other members of the original murderer's row of the Yankees were Frank Baker, the third baseman,
Musel, the left fielder, Ping Bodie, the center fielder, and Wally Pipp, the first baseman, who was succeeded later by Lou Gehrig.
Ruth's sudden rise as a home run hitter was sensational and it was quite significant in the history of baseball.
I used to go under the stands after the games and watch the players.
I usually watched the White Sox, but this time I also watched the Yankees to watch Ruth.
Ruth was a big kid at the time.
He had a moon face, he was that day was wearing a blue suit and a gray check cap.
And I recall that about 200 boys crowded around him.
They did it in a way that they never did again around Ty Cobb or Joe Jackson or Chris Beaker or Eddie Collins or Walter Johnson or any of the stars of those days.
And Ruth, a very big man, a very powerful man, could scarcely move because of the boys and men, mostly boys, crowding around him.
And I remember how this procession with Ruth in the center went under the stands of Comiskey Park and out of the main entrance.
And Ruth sort of smiled. He was a little bit bewildered.
He was somewhat shy. He swayed and rolled with the crowd.
He was pushed this way. He was pushed that way. And he narrowly escaped being pushed into a big barrel of mustard.
Now I tell this story for the simple reason that it is quite indicative of what must have been the genuine simplicity and niceness about the man.
Of course, it was with the fabulous New York Yankees of the 1920s that Ruth won his greatest fame.
Perhaps it was destiny that he came along in that golden age of sports, a time of great champions.
There was a big red horse called Man O' War, Jack Dempsey in the ring, Bobby Jones on the fairways, and a galloping ghost named Red Grange on the gridiron.
But the clearest picture of them all is that of a huge hulk of a man delicately balanced at home plate.
There was the white flash of the ball, a graceful mighty swing, the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd,
and then the big fellow trotting deliberately with quick little steps around the bases, touching his cap and disappearing into the dugout.
Wade Hoyt was the boy wonder of the Yankee pitching staff in those days.
Now he's a veteran baseball announcer with the Cincinnati Red Legs.
I played with the Babe some 15 years, I should say 12 years with him and about 5 years against him.
And you knew immediately that when you stepped into the presence of Ruth that you were in the presence of some extraordinary figure.
He wasn't a particularly good looking fellow, but he had a sort of a fascination for everyone.
I can remember back in 1933 that the New York Giants played the Washington Senators in the World Series.
And Babe was sent along as a sports reporter for the New York papers.
It was President Roosevelt's first term in office.
And they invited the sports writers around to the White House.
And when President Roosevelt met Babe, he greeted Babe very effusively and he said,
Babe, he said it's wonderful to meet you again.
And Babe said, tickle of death to see you, Prez.
And Mr. Roosevelt, the president at the time, went on and told this story in great glee.
He says, you know, Babe, he said, this is not the first time our paths have crossed.
And Babe said, no, why?
He said, well, you see, Babe, it was back in 1920.
And I was running for the vice presidency of the United States.
And he said, we were a little weak in a precinct that we thought that we needed a major speech.
So he said, I took a private train and went to Binghamton, New York.
And he said, I arrived in Binghamton, New York early in the morning and there were some 15 to 20,000 people down there.
This was in October.
And he said, I was, oh, I was elated, Babe.
He said, I was just overjoyed to think that all these people were down there to greet me at that station.
And he said, when I arrived at my hotel, Babe, you don't mind if I call you Babe, do you?
And Babe said, no, I don't care.
Go right ahead, President.
And the president continued.
He said, Babe, he said, when I got to my hotel, I turned to my secretary and I said, don't you think it's remarkable the turnout we had this morning?
He said, I'm very much encouraged.
I'm very optimistic now that I've seen that huge turnout.
My secretary turned to me and he said to me, Mr. Roosevelt, I wouldn't be quite that optimistic if I were you.
He said that Babe Ruth, that great home run hitter, is going to play an exhibition game in town this afternoon.
Most of those people were down there to see him.
Don't you think that's funny, Babe?
He said, yeah, Prez, he says, that's a scream.
He said, but you know, Prez, he says, that happens all the time.
The Babe was tremendous.
The things that he did were just out of this world.
In Chicago one time, we were playing the Chicago White Sox.
And we had to catch a 730 train out of the south side of Chicago.
And the game ran into extra innings.
And Mark Roth, the secretary of the Yankees at the time, he came down to the bench and he said to the Miller-Huggins hour manager,
he said, gee whiz, Hug, he said, if we don't get this game over, we will never get that train out of the south side of Chicago.
And Babe was just picking up a bat to go up to the plate.
And he heard Mark say that and he said, I'll fix that for you.
He went up the first time at bat and he called for the 13th inning and hit the ball up on the roof of the right field pavilion out there in the White Sox Park.
We caught the train.
We fellows who played with him.
We learned to love him.
Sometimes he became a little gruff.
Sometimes he became a little like, oh, you'd say a sort of a sort of a dog that you might love like a ne'er-deal big shaggy guy, you know,
and a fellow that could get a little off base once in a while.
But nevertheless, you had to pat him on the back.
He had a heart as big as gold.
Here's the babe, here's the babe.
Here the frenzied people rave, send the fielders back against the farthest wall.
Maybe Ruth's home run slugging was a part of the spirit of those roaring 20s.
Maybe it's a part of the spirit of our nation at Salwa.
It may not be much of an accomplishment to hit more home runs than any other man, but we admired him for what he was.
A fellow who came out of nowhere and made his mark in the only way he knew.
We paid him more than a million dollars for his skill, and we gave him even more than dollars for what he was.
A man like ourselves with all his faults and failings who yet became the very best in his own line of work.
Not everyone admired his fame, and there were many who didn't like his influence on baseball.
And yet we couldn't help liking the babe.
Ruth revealed that the home run was good box office.
And coincidentally the rules of the game were changed, spitballs and trick delivery were outlawed to lessen the effectiveness of pitchers.
Fences were here and there moved in toward home plate to put them within range of more hitters.
The stolen base deteriorated as an effective tactic, terribly, unfortunately too.
Pitchers in order to cope with the increased scoring violated the balk rule and still continue to violate it.
With umpires making almost no effort now to enforce it.
Everybody in baseball was aware that the complexion of the game was shifting.
But few of us stopped to ponder how it affected the game's basic metabolism, if I might call it that.
This is Branch Rickey, General Manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates and one of baseball's keenest observers and outstanding spokesmen.
There was only one Ruth, really.
Two or three boys now in the National League are typical home run hitters and they have that kind of power.
And it's a great gate attraction. It's good.
Men with power should be home run hitters. I like home run hitters.
I certainly do. The public likes to see home runs.
And he contributed more in the change of the game itself from a base running game to a slugger game than any other factor during his time.
And that influence will last perhaps indefinitely.
But there is another phase to Ruth's contribution to baseball that certainly should be mentioned.
He has had probably more direct influence on the youth of this country than any other player during my time.
He has created an expectation of hero worship on the part of the youth of this country.
And it was a most fortunate thing that Ruth kept faith with the boyhood of America because they loved him.
He created a responsibility on the part of players today to keep faith with these boys by what they do and by what they say and by how they act off the field as well as on it.
During a part of the 1920s when Babe Ruth and the Yankees were riding high, the St. Louis Browns, who usually managed to finish up near the bottom of the American League, strangely enough had the one pitcher in the league who had a peculiar knack of striking out the mighty Bambino.
He gave up baseball long ago to become a distinguished doctor in St. Louis, but in baseball circles he still remembered as, quote, the man who could strike out Ruth, unquote.
This is Dr. Hubert Pruitt, who used to answer to the name of Shucks.
In retrospect, it seems almost unbelievable that in three years of frequent competition with an individual like the Babe that there would be no spoken word between us, not even hello or how are you.
But such was the case.
We settled our differences face to face without conversation.
The bone of contention between us consisted of in which direction the baseball should travel.
During the season of 1922, I all but convinced him that my opinion was going to prevail.
But late in September, a home run off me by him made me realize what a dogged, plugging nature he possessed.
He wasn't a man of words, but one of action and deeds.
It was years later, and only a few months before his passing, that we met officially and had the first exchange of words.
The occasion was a luncheon here in St. Louis, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, in the interest of boys in baseball.
I was asked to present, not introduce, the Babe to the gathering.
I did this by presenting him as the man who financed my way through medical school.
His reply to this was that it gave him great personal satisfaction to know that he had one medic's education to his credit,
and that he hoped that in that audience of boys there would be others he could in some manner help.
When he missed, what a miss, all the air around him missed.
When he hit the ball, there was no ball at all.
Maybe one reason we liked Babe Ruth is that although he hit more home runs than anyone else, he also struck out more often.
That was a total of 1,330 times.
He went all out for the fences and took his chances.
I guess we like it that way.
When he fanned, he was the most struck out man in baseball, but we knew he wasn't up there to keep that bat on his shoulder.
It's hard to recall now just how much excitement the Babe used to stir up.
They talked about him in country stores, read about him in small towns, and really raved about him in this biggest of all small towns, New York.
They still talk about him wherever sports fans gather.
For instance, at the Lambs Club, a meeting place for people in show business,
one of the fellows in every baseball conversation is the popular entertainer, Senator Ford.
You know, the Babe was a big kid who loved little kids.
Nothing was too much for him where the lollipop set was concerned.
One day he was beginning to get dressed to go out on the field for morning practice when he heard that a 12-year-old boy was dying in a New York hospital.
The Babe was the kid's idol.
One ball player suggested that perhaps an autographed ball might help the kid's morale.
Ruth thought a while and then decided he could do better than that.
So he yanked his camel's hair cap out of his locker and taxied over to the hospital.
The sick boy's eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw his guard walk in and sit on the bed.
The Babe said, Hi, kid. You know what I'm going to do?
This afternoon I'm going to hit a home run just for you. It's going to be your home run.
Now you hurry up and get well so I can take you out to the ballpark and see me play.
Now I don't know if Ruth called his home run shot in the 32 series, but I do know that he called this one.
He hit a home run that afternoon as he promised.
What's more important, the kid got well.
In that case, Ruth was more of a doctor than the doctors were.
It was things like that that explain why Ruth was the most popular figure in the game.
There have been a number of guys in baseball who could cloud a ball a country mile, but the boys who should know will tell you that nobody hit a ball harder than Ruth.
I can recall back around 1927 when the Babe hit a ball that scared everybody in the ballpark except pitcher Hod Lisenby.
Hod wasn't scared. He was beyond that sensation. That guy was numb.
You see, Lisenby was pitching for Washington when Ruth stepped up to the plate.
Hod fired, the Babe swung, and the ball rifled back at Lisenby.
It shot between his legs and without touching the ground it rose and sailed over center field at Triss Beaker's Gray Noggin.
Lisenby was stunned without being hit.
The blood drained from his pan and he froze. For a minute he looked like an unveiled statue.
Yeah, the Babe sure could whack him.
Ruth's integrity and his big bat saved baseball in its gloomiest hour.
Back in 1919, an economy-sized scandal reared its ugly head.
You know, that was the year that some of the white socks turned black and threw the series.
Baseball looked like a stretcher case at that time, but along came Ruth with his black pet-see,
and the patient began to sit up and take nourishment.
Nourishment in the form of stitched white pills being socked into the seats by the Babe.
Under Ruth's treatment, the game got well and has been in good health ever since.
The Babe not only saved the game, he changed it.
And Ruth's fame wasn't restricted to this country either.
He was an international figure.
Here's a little story that will give you an inkling of the magnitude of his importance.
An Englishwoman came to the United States and became a citizen.
One day a friend took her to the stadium to see the Yanks play.
In the second inning, the mighty Babe lashed one into the furniture in right field.
The Englishwoman turned to her friend and said,
I've had my citizenship papers for some time, but up to now I never considered myself a full-fledged American.
Somehow I felt that I would never be a real American until I saw Babe Ruth hit a home run.
Yeah, he was quite a man, this big kid, and I doubt that any of us will ever live long enough to see another Babe Ruth.
They threw the mold away when they hung up that uniform with the big three on it.
But as Washington and Lincoln still live in the White House, so Babe Ruth will always be in the Yankee Stadium.
Biographies and sound will continue after a brief pause for station identification.
You're listening to Same Time, Same Station, the best of old-time radio.
And I'm your host, Jerry Hindigis.
Come and listen to a tale I will tell Of a hero we all love so well
He played ball, what a hitter, what a man And he'll never be forgotten in our land
This is a biography and sound presented by the National Broadcasting Company with narration by Mel Allen and with music by Tom Glaser.
The Babe was too much like the rest of us for sudden wealth and fame to leave him untouched.
This was a kid who never had enough to eat, so it's not strange that he ate too much.
Just as he went all out on the baseball field, he went all out in everything he did.
This was a big man with a big appetite for food, for fun, for living.
I know the Babe as a fan, as a good customer, and as a friend.
This is the voice of a man who has been a familiar figure at almost every sporting event for many, many years.
The firm of Harry M. Stevens is the official caterer at four Major League Baseball parks and many racetracks.
And here is Frank Stevens, president of the firm who helped to make the hot dog a national institution.
He had a big appetite, and I remember the time before an important ball game at the Yankee Stadium, Mr. Barrow, then the general manager, was having pig's knuckles for his luncheon.
The Babe said that he wanted some also.
And we said before the game starts, and he says right now.
So he ate three, and then went out and hit two home runs.
And he also did a lot for the Frankfurter.
He not alone liked to eat them, but he liked to eat them in volume.
And many a time that he would have a full-size luncheon and eat a half a dozen Frankfurters for dessert.
He liked to play golf. He liked to go bowling, and he loved to hunt.
I remember when we used to go down to North Carolina after the baseball season closed with Damon Runyon, Bill McBeth, Bud Fisher, Bill McGahan, Grantlin Rice, and John Caron.
The Babe was a glutton for hunting.
Perhaps someday if he thought he was going to miss a duck hunt, he'd stay up all night.
In a lot of ways, he was like a little boy at a circus.
He just couldn't see and do enough.
More than that, he was a wonderful fellow around camp, a fine companion, and everybody loved him around the country.
You know, after eating the way the Babe had eaten as a boy, it was great to be able to order anything you wanted on the menu.
And his favorite was a huge steak with a few lamb chops for trimming.
Oftentimes, he gulped hot dogs and soda pop.
After hours, he gulped whatever was handy.
This was a kid who had been looked down on and laughed at.
And remembering that, he showed off a little.
He was fined and suspended for breaking training rules.
He quarreled with an umpire and threw a punch.
He went into the stands with a baseball bat after a fan who had called him names.
He forgot the interest of the teammates who helped him make him great.
This kid who had never had a dollar flashed his roll like a tin horn sport and threw his money away like a drunken sailor on a never-ending spree.
He drove his big car fast as if he were beyond such things as traffic laws.
There's no need to take lightly or gloss over the mistakes he made.
Even those who loved to cheer him were forced to grumble.
He hardly seemed to understand.
For when you've had too little for so long, you're apt to take too much.
One night at a baseball writers' dinner where he was being honored for his feats at bat,
a man who didn't pretend to be perfect himself turned to him.
It was Jimmy Walker, a kid from the sidewalks of New York.
He knew how easy it is to make mistakes.
Now, this is not his voice nor his exact speech, but this is about what he said.
Look, babe, they asked you here to honor you, and in my book they should.
But these aren't the guys you're most important to.
Although they write your name and every paper from here to West Vancouver,
the guys who mean the most to you, the guys who care about you most, are the kids on the street,
the kids with dirty faces who've never had a chance.
They look up to you.
And once you were one of them, and your success is theirs.
Sports writers can find another hero, but these kids can't.
These kids believe in you, and they think that anything you do is right.
You don't owe us anything.
We're baseball fans, and we go to see you play because we like the game,
and we know that you're the best. We're not denying that.
But you owe them something, the kids with eager hearts and dirty faces,
because they think you are somebody, not just a home-run hitter.
Mmm.
They wondered why Jimmy Walker bothered with such a speech.
After all, he was a quick fellow with a wisecrank.
He could have gotten a few laughs, with jokes about the babes' troubles.
And the babe could have laughed it off, too.
The babe didn't have to take talk like that, even from Jimmy Walker,
the mayor of New York.
But the babe understood, and he was never in trouble after that.
He was fooling sometimes, but never wrong at heart.
We make jokes about the famous stomach ache that was heard around the world.
It was written about as if it were an eruption of Vesuvius.
But the fact is that the babe was truly ill and fighting for his life.
The kids hung around St. Vincent's Hospital night and day
until they knew the babe was well.
And that told him even more than Jimmy Walker had about who he was
and what he meant to us.
After that, you didn't need to worry anymore about the babe,
because he had found his friends, the kids of America.
Here's one of them who knew the babe better than most of us.
I was fortunate enough to be one of his pet clubhouse people.
I was a little fellow of about six years old in short pants,
and the babe used to carry me around the dressing room on his shoulders.
And if he hit a home run that day, he would give me a baseball.
Of course, it wasn't the one he had hit,
because that was somewhere in the far reaches of the house that Ruth built,
Yankee Stadium.
But he would give me a ball.
And sometimes, if he struck out two or three times,
he'd still give me a ball saying,
kid, you bring me luck.
This is the son of a famous former sports editor of the New York Times,
John Kieran, Jr.
In 1926, the year before the poem which I will read to you was written,
the babe had a bad year,
and it started off with what is called the famous stomach ache in baseball
when the babe had overindulged himself on a training trip.
He'd eaten too much, and a few of his other habits had gotten the best of him,
and he was out of action for a long time.
The babe had a bad season, for the babe, that is,
and lots of his critics began to indicate that the big fella might be over the hill.
My father didn't believe this, and he wrote copy to that effect.
At the end of the year 1927, my father was proven right,
and in justification he wrote this poem.
It starts with the words, A Query.
You may sing your song of the good old days, till the phantom cows come home.
You may dig up glorious deeds of yore, from many a dusty tome.
You may rise to tell of Rue Baudel and the way he buzzed them through,
and top it all with the great fastball that Roussey's routers knew.
You may rant of brothers Keefe and Ward and half a dozen more.
You may quote by rote from the record book in a way that I deplore.
You may rave, I say, till the break of day, but the truth remains the truth.
From one old cat to the last at bat, was there ever a guy like Routh?
He can start and go, he can catch and throw, he can field with the very best.
He's the prince of ash and the king of crash, and that's not an idle jest.
He can hit the ball or the garden wall high up and far away,
beyond the aftermost picket lines where the fleet foot-fielders stray.
He's the bogeyman of the pitching clan, and he clubs them soon and late.
He had manned his guns and hit home runs from here to the Golden Gate.
With them in verve he has walloped the curve from Texas to Duluth,
which is no small task, and I beg to ask, was there ever a guy like Routh?
And in conclusion, you may rise and sing till the rafters ring that sad and sorrowful strain.
They strive and fail, it's the old, old hail, they never come back again.
Yes, it's in the dope, when they hit the slope, they're off for the shadowed vale.
But the great big bam with the circuit slam came back on the uphill trail,
came back with cheers from the drifted years where the best of them go down,
came back once more with a record score to wear a brighter crown.
My voice may be loud above the crowd, and my words just a bit uncouth,
but I'll stand and shout till the last man's out, there was never a guy like Routh.
Sixty times in the year of twenty-seven, sixty baseballs went sailing up to heaven.
Sixty home runs the babes smacked, and I'll bet that those sixty baseballs all are sailing yet.
Here's the babe, here's the babe, hear the frenzied people rave,
send the fielders back against the farthest wall.
When he missed, what a miss, all the air around him hissed.
When he hit the ball, there was no ball at all.
Those were the glory days for Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees.
Crowds in the thousands packed the stadium to see teammates like Lou Gehry,
Girl Combs, Bob Musial, Tony Lazari, Joe Dugan, Wade Hoyt, George Pipgrass, and Herb Pennock,
and most of all the big fellow himself.
Babe Ruth had his picture printed more often and had more words written about him than any other athlete.
But we began to see a different picture in the papers.
Not a picture of the bambino at the end of a giant swing watching the ball sail off another homer.
No, a picture of the babe with a big smile on his face sitting at the bedside of some hard luck kid in the hospital,
or with a gang of youngsters gathered around him at a school, a home, or an orphanage.
Yes, he'd come a long way from the back streets and alleys of Baltimore,
but now he remembered where he'd come from.
One of the men who traveled with him was Tom Meaney, a newspaper sports reporter,
and now sports writer for Collier's Magazine.
Now I'd like to say one thing about Babe which always upset me was that Babe ended in baseball,
a rather embittered man, and it was only his last illness.
When Babe was sick and his kids crowded around the French Polyclinic Hospital,
it was only in those days that Babe realized the hold he had on the public,
and his last 18 months, the last year of his life,
he was a much happier man than he'd been in the 12, 13 years that he'd been out of baseball.
Now Babe, his last official major league engagement was with the Brooklyn Dodgers as a coach,
and Babe volunteered, nobody asked him to, Babe volunteered to play first base
in the three or four exhibition games the Dodgers had scheduled that year during the regular season,
and Babe's sight was failing then, and the lights in the minor league ball parks were poor,
much poorer than they are today,
and the guy McFaylor was the president of the Dodgers was very fearful that one of these wild young pitchers
might hit Babe, well it's remarkable, although his eyesight was failing,
he had to wear glasses to read at that time,
he was never hit with a pitch ball and he made only one hit, innocent,
these four or five exhibition games he played, he hit a home run in Albany,
and it was the longest home run ever hit in the Albany ballpark.
Yes, after 20 seasons, age caught up even with the great Bambino,
in 1934 he left the stadium he had helped to build,
he played a few games for the Boston Braves in 1935,
was a coach and an exhibition attraction for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938,
and then it was all over, there was no place in baseball for the game's greatest hero.
When the Babe hung up his spikes, we all felt a little older,
for he was a part of our youth, a part of the golden time when all of us were younger,
after that we saw him less and less, but the game always stopped for a moment,
when the big fellow with a cap pulled over his eyes appeared in the stands,
the legend lived on and so did the Babe,
Ben Grower remembers that he was still a hero to youngsters who never saw him play.
Well, getting a close-up of the Babe occurred in a radio show called Here's Babe Ruth,
which I did in NBC in 1943 and 44,
it was a sports show for the kids on Saturday afternoon,
sponsored very fittingly by the Spalding people.
On the program the Babe answered baseball questions which were fired at him by youngsters,
whom I brought out of the audience and introduced to him,
the Babe would talk briefly with the youngster, ask him what his ambition was or who his favorite player was,
answer any baseball questions that the youngster posed,
and then award an autographed baseball for appearing on the program.
The kids were about eight or ten years old, sometimes maybe twelve,
and surely the Babe had stopped playing ball some ten years before
and none of them had ever seen the Babe actually in front of the plate performing as a baseball star,
they'd only heard about him, but to them he literally was a legend come to life,
just perhaps as it would feel to us to actually see and talk face to face with John L. Sullivan or Diamond Jim Brady,
that's the way the Babe was to the kids.
They were just nice kids who were crazy about baseball, and baseball to him was a way of life,
it was the thing he understood best above anything else in the world.
The Babe was quite simple and elemental in his tastes and point of view.
He didn't relish philosophy or deep talk about the meaning or rhythm of the game,
but he had a thorough understanding of every baseball situation,
of the rules and strategy and the remarkable recollection of players and personalities and their records.
Besides the questions which the youngsters would fire at him,
he'd introduce familiar baseball figures of those days,
some of the greats of baseball, Billy Southworth, Lou Boudreau, Mel Ott,
and a lad from the Dodgers, I recall, named Leo DeRosha.
Well, the broadcast went easily enough, but I could tell they were sort of a strain on the Babe.
He was a star on the baseball diamond, but anywhere else exposed to public gaze
was a performance to him and one in which he felt vaguely uncomfortable.
So after the broadcast, we'd go down to the neighboring coffee shop so that the Babe could relax.
He'd order a tall glass of cool beer to ease his nerves and his throat.
His voice, as I recall, was rather hoarse and scratchy at that time,
maybe already his throat was giving him serious trouble.
This sort of simple conviviality, a bunch of the boys sitting around a table
and stretching our legs under it and just gassing,
that was very much a part of the Babe's personality and character.
Every generation has a personality that emerges, luminous and complete within itself.
By just the mention of the name, you recall the whole sense and feeling of the person and his period.
In our generation, you can just say, Touloula or Bing, and you've got it.
Somehow, in the sports world of yesterday, there was only one,
the Babe.
Here's a recollection of those days by Ed Byron.
Yes, I saw Babe Ruth once.
This was back in the spring of 1944.
I was still in the Army then.
And after I'd come back from overseas, I was put in charge of what you might call a traveling hospital show.
It was called Visiting Hour.
And we used to go all over the country and bring stars and a band
and such entertainment as we could get voluntarily to the wounded veterans.
At that particular time, we happened to be in Indianapolis.
Aside from the usual coterie of stars who would come to give autographs
and to sing songs for the soldiers, there was a man named Babe Ruth.
Now, I'd never even seen Babe Ruth play ball.
But I was aware of the legend. I was aware of the impact of it.
It didn't really mean much to me, except I did notice a few things.
The Babe wasn't too good on the formal part of the show.
He seemed ill at ease.
And as soon as the show was over, he disappeared.
It wasn't for some time later that I found out where he'd gone.
And he'd gone through the wards all by himself.
Well, after the show was over and that evening, we were gathered in this hotel.
Sort of to cut up the show and to have a few drinks and a few laughs, tell a few stories.
No Babe Ruth.
I wondered about that because I had heard that he was a gregarious fellow and liked to drink,
liked to talk, liked to be with people.
He wasn't there. So I made inquiry.
I found out what room he was staying in and I went around to see it.
This must have been about at past 10 at night.
I knocked on the door and a voice said, come in.
And there was the Babe, sitting all alone in front of an open window, looking out at the lights.
And we got into conversation.
Wasn't an important conversation.
Nothing startling was said.
But there he was all alone.
He had done his job, thought nothing of it.
And he sat there all night long because as he told me, he wasn't sleeping well those days.
And he used to like to sit and think.
And that's about all I know about Babe Ruth.
We began to hear stories that the Babe was seriously ill.
We read of his visits to clinics and hospitals, not to cheer up others as he always did, but for himself.
But he appeared again at Yankee Stadium on Lou Gehrig Day when we honored the pride of the Yankees,
a gallant figure whose career and life itself was being ended by a tragic illness.
Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
It was the Babe who cried first of all, his arm around his old teammate's shoulder,
as Lou Gehrig spoke not of his misfortune, but of his friends.
The Babe may have been a bitter man as the cheers of the crowds faded away,
but this man without any background, without any great talents off the diamond, found a place for himself.
During the last four years of his life, I probably knew him as well as anybody.
Throughout these years, when I know the pain was very great, he traveled over the country
as a commissioner of the Junior American Legion Baseball League.
Many times when he was very sick, he made the effort and appeared before the public,
particularly where kids were concerned.
This is a New York businessman, Paul Carey, president of the Carey Cadillac Company,
treasurer of the Babe Ruth Foundation and director of the Babe Ruth Baseball League.
One particular thing that is very vivid to me is an experience we had in Carl Gables, Florida, in March of 1948.
It was only about five months before he died.
He was asked to referee a golf match for the Damon Rundin Cancer Fund,
and although it was a great effort on his part to do so, we went to the golf course.
The match was between Babe Seharius and Sammy Byrd, a former ball player and colleague of the Babe.
While walking down the fourth fairway, a newspaper man approached me and asked if Babe would go and visit Colin Kane,
who was blind and a former public relations director for the National League.
Without telling Babe who it was, I asked him if he felt up to doing this.
I knew that he was greatly fatigued, but without any hesitation he said,
Of course I will. Where does he live?
When we rang the doorbell when Mrs. Kane opened the door and recognized Babe,
she called to Colin and said there was somebody there to see him.
And as he appeared, Babe said, Colin, how are you?
And Colin replied, Babe Ruth, you are like a lighted candle coming into a blind man's house.
It's great to be with you. Come on in.
We sat in the living room and the perspiration poured from the Babe.
I knew he was really suffering, but he spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes talking over all times with Colin
and from the enthusiastic replies of Colin I am sure he could see again.
After our departure the Babe sat in the car with his head buried in his hand,
and I could see that he was greatly touched because his eyes were moist.
He died one minute after raid on Monday evening August the 16th, 1948,
and today there is a living monument to his memory in the Babe Ruth Baseball League,
which is organized throughout the country for kids between the ages of 13 through 15 years.
I have a deep feeling that the Babe is up there somewhere looking down on these youngsters
and saying come on kids and rooting them on.
In April 1947, once again the Babe stood at home plate in Yankee Stadium.
This time it was Babe Ruth Day, and now he stood in the mighty stadium built for him
as 60,000 people cheered, and that cheer echoed the thunder that shook the stands so many times so long ago.
Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.
You know how bad my voice sounds when it feels just as bad.
You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth.
Babe Ruth, dying, was saying his last goodbyes.
If you were a boy and grew up to know how to play ball,
then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in your national pastime.
The only real game I think in the world, baseball.
There's been so many lovely things said about me and I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to thank everybody.
Thank you.
It was spring again that day, spring again 45 years after he had stood at home plate on the rocky playground at St. Mary's.
He had learned a lot, and he made this Babe Ruth Day an event not for himself, but for the kids of America.
In the years, in the baseball years to come, when the fans gather at the stadiums,
when the bags are full and the count is three and two, the Babe Big Bat will always pull the Yankees through.
That day marked the beginning of the Babe Ruth Foundation, a fund to give a better chance to kids who have had too little.
After that, the Babe spent all the time and strength he had left in giving back all that had been given to him.
And when the Babe died on August 16, 1948, just seven years ago tonight,
Tom Glazer wrote a ballad, a sort of a folk song in his memory.
I guess that's the way the Babe should be remembered, very simply.
A sports hero isn't very important really, and yet we do have a sort of pride in Babe Ruth.
Maybe it's the pride we have in ourselves that we gave him a chance to make his mark in his own way.
Maybe it's the pride we have in a country that didn't ask him who he was or where he came from,
but only what he could do and could he do it well.
So let him join the heroes who are partly real, partly legend,
fellows like Daniel Boone and David Crockett, John Henry and Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed and all the rest.
In his own way, he helped to prove a part of our tradition,
that every kid should have his chance to play, his chance to grow into a man,
each with his own opportunity, regardless of birth, to become whatever his abilities, great or small, can make of him.
That's the legend of America, the legend of which Babe Ruth is now a part.
Here's the Babe, here's the Babe, hear the frenzied people rave.
He made our hearts beat faster than the band.
Gone the cheers, gone the thrill, and his booming bat is still.
But he'll never be forgotten through the land.