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The Colossus of Clout, the Sultan of Swat, the Great Bambino, Maryland's finest, George Herman "Babe" Ruth
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00:08he was an original in every way he had a librarian's legs an oversized head wrists thick as pipes and
00:16a moon-shaped face so ugly it was lovable when he stood in the batter's box he seemed to have
00:22just grown out of the earth a primitive statue but when he swung sweet music played and when he smiled
00:29he lived in the
00:29nation an incorrigible kid with clout became the sultan of swat i give you the father of modern baseball a
00:37sports god for the ages babe ruth yes sir
01:05when it was discovered that the 1919 white socks had thrown the world series baseball reached its lowest point in
01:12history
01:14baseball needs a savior and he's standing there to save baseball but more important suddenly here's
01:22this man hitting more home runs than other teams are hitting people didn't trust the game anymore
01:29now all of a sudden you know into the sunlight here's this big revelation character who can do this one
01:39thing that nobody has ever really done well before his 29 home runs in 1919 it was a record no
01:46one ever
01:46hit that many before next year he went to 54 the long ball became the prime thing in baseball
01:52ruth led the way and the others followed instead of a uh infield hit and a stolen base and a
01:59sacrifice
01:59and a ground out to the right side now there was uh an infield hit and wait for babe to
02:07come up and hit
02:08one out of the park ruth's heroic efforts and his home run hitting and his popularity
02:14brought people back to the ballpark and nobody questioned whether the game was honest or not
02:20because today was hitting home runs and there was nothing you could do to stop that he changed
02:26the extent of the appeal of baseball for all time i don't know of anyone in any other sport
02:33who as an individual had as much effect on the popularity of the game
02:39it received a tremendous injection of adrenaline and came back to a roaring life on his shoulders
02:47primarily every place he went every field he played on people came to see this monumental figure
02:56crowd started cheering as he walked out of the dugout there was a joy that you had come to see
03:02something and then when you saw it you'd scream with delight there was something different about
03:07that man then he walked in the ballpark people stood up oh there's the babe there's a babe he's a
03:14homeowner struck out he said a single double triple he'd get booed every time he'd face him the butterflies
03:22would start flopping around you think you'd get over but you don't he projected he had impact
03:30he didn't hold off the public he was accessible they could reach out and touch him hey listen you
03:37fellas need a ball player you mean you want to play i play ball who wants your name babe
03:43who lived not two blocks from where i did and my parents would let me go down to the hotel
03:52alamac where
03:53he lived on 71st street and one day he saw me and smiled and ran his hands through my hair
03:59and i
04:01went running home and nobody was allowed to touch me again but as the twilight crept across his towering
04:07career this baseball god was reduced to the status of orphan to a game that had been his only real
04:14home for
04:15two decades still he hung on face pressed against the window i don't want to fool the public i don't
04:22want to fool myself i figure that i can't play a full season anymore it's no use me trying but
04:27you
04:27can bet your life as long as baseball wants me i'm going to stay with him he was terribly disappointed
04:33when he was not asked to manage the yankees he was hurt he wasn't mad he was hurt we know
04:42that they
04:42wanted to manage a team he was never given the chance to manage the team i believe to this day
04:48the owners disliked paper because he was beyond their control i think that's their way of getting
04:55back at a guy they could not stand my mother often said how to be rejected by the one thing
05:06that was his
05:08being it was more than disappointing he went through such a severe depression that he just
05:15didn't want to live anymore
05:30born february 6th 1895 to a distracted mother and a hard-working father george herman ruth was at odds with
05:37his world almost from the day he took his first steps the neighborhood where neighbors grew up in
05:44bolden working class i don't know if you'd quite call it a slum but it was a tough neighborhood his
05:50father was
05:51running a bar and he had absolutely no supervision whatsoever and he was just running wild he used to
05:57like to go to lexington market and kick over the baskets of vegetables and fruit and infuriate the italian's
06:03stole markers and they would be chasing him down utah street he was throwing rotten fruit at passing
06:09truck drivers he was swilling the the dregs of the beer in his father's saloon he was a strong tough
06:19bullheaded willful youngster and he was the despair of his parents he was just constantly getting into
06:25scrapes he drank and he smoked and he was just a young kid and they just couldn't handle it his
06:31sister
06:31said i wish i could have counted the number of times if there was a knock on our door and
06:37there'd
06:37be a woman with another boy and say mrs ruth did you see what your boy george did to my
06:42jimmy
06:43his parents wound up putting him into the saint mary's industrial school with the hope that it would
06:48straighten him out and give him some structure in his life described as a moral hospital that treats
06:54maimed souls the zavarian brothers of saint mary's did not discriminate applying love in the form of
07:00strong corrective measures to any deserving student they were kids of all faiths a lot of them were
07:07orphans they went there they learned trades to be printed to teach him shirt making
07:14ruth was saved from the dreary prospect of making shirts by one particular brother who took an interest
07:20in him from that day in 1904 when the nine-year-old went to stay behind the walls the babe
07:26had great
07:27admiration and sensitivity toward brother matthias it was a big 250 pound brother strong one discipline
07:35but great sensitivity brother matthias was legendary with the fungo band he would go out in the what they
07:43call the big yard after dinner each night and take dozens of baseballs and hit them as high as he
07:51possibly could and he hit tremendous clouds which word has it were only exceeded by the clouds that ruth
07:59hit many years later when he would come back and visit saint mary's brother matthias picked him out at
08:05saint mary's and told him that he thought he had the potential for being a baseball player when he got
08:11to
08:12st mary's he discovered that baseball being better at baseball than anybody else was was a way of fitting
08:21in it was the first thing that he ever felt he could do and be complimented on if baseball was
08:30ruth's
08:31life ramp in a social sea of 800 boys it also served as a replacement for a mother's love he
08:37had never known
08:38they quite sadly would say that his mother never came to visit him during the 12 years that he was
08:46at saint mary's industrial school if it wasn't for the fact that people recognized this skill
08:54and harnessed it he could have been incarcerated by the time he was 18 years old and america never
09:00would have heard the name instead ruth made a name primarily as a pitcher in the semi-pro leagues around
09:06baltimore when he was discharged from saint mary's at 19 the 6-2 180 pound left-hander was signed by
09:14jack
09:14dunn owner and manager of the international league struggling baltimore orioles for 100 a month
09:21babe got the name babe in that 1914 oriole training camp the first thing he did was to buy a
09:29bicycle and
09:30crashed it much to the fun of the other oriole players who were sitting on the porch of the hotel
09:35they
09:36said who is that young monkey on the bicycle and they said well that's dunn's latest babe the babe
09:43had never been on a train he had never been in a hotel he had never been in a restaurant
09:48so all these
09:50magnificent wonders of the world were opened up to him for the first time he was a misbehaved kid
09:58incorrigible in that sense uncontrollable is probably a better word he didn't know how to do things he he
10:03would wear the same underwear day after day after day when people kidded him about it he just stopped
10:08wearing underwear wouldn't wear underwear for years he had this wonderful positive outgoing personality
10:14with a great sense of humor and i don't think that started when he became a star i think that's
10:20the way
10:20he he was from his early days he had had all these baseball experiences but never had any experiences
10:29dealing with women and he ended up proposing to the first woman who talked to him for any length of
10:35time it was almost like allowing an animal that had been restricted for 15 16 years and let him out
10:42into the open and just could run for as long as he wanted by july the talent laden orioles were
10:48in
10:48first place and ruth had compiled a 14 and 6 record but eager attendance forced dunn to sell off his
10:55stars to
10:55the big leagues and ruth went to the boston red sox babe ruth was a hero of the 1916 world
11:03series and a
11:04hero of the 1918 world series he was 21 years old in 1916 and he was a pitcher he was
11:10the best left
11:11handed pitcher in the american league he would have been a hall of fame pitcher had he never hit a
11:15home run
11:16in the four years that he was a pitcher he won more games and had a lower earned run average
11:21than any
11:22pitcher in the american league except walter johnson and he beat johnson repeatedly in one nothing games
11:28in six seasons with boston ruth won 89 games and posted a 2.19 era
11:36in 1918 he also began hitting homers at an impressive rate tying for the league lead with 11. this double
11:43talent of hitting and pitching posed a dilemma for the red sox manager i had barrel who later became the
11:49yankee general manager resisted making him a hitter because he said they'll string me up alive if i take
11:55the greatest pitcher in the american league and make him an outfielder because he was a pitcher when he
11:59tried to hit home runs with more or less every swing they didn't coach it out of them the way
12:06they
12:06would have had he been a young hitter ruth the pitcher only appeared in 17 games in 1919 winning nine
12:15but his 29 homers caught the collective eye of the yankee brass
12:21harry frizzy the owner of the red sox was in some financial pickle and needed money and he started
12:29casting around looking for money and suddenly uh down in new york they came up with the cash and said
12:35we'll give you the money if you'll give us babe ruth the money was there and he grabbed the money
12:40and
12:40sent the babe south i don't think boston has recovered ever since
12:51babe ruth would never have been babe ruth if he had played out his career in boston he would not
12:58have
12:58been the american cultural figure he was were he not playing on this stage in new york
13:06in the spring of 1920 babes slipped into a yankees uniform just as a seminal decade in american
13:12history began neither the country nor the game would ever be the same
13:19so
13:44i don't care if i ever get back
13:56he came along in the 1920s the war was over the jazz age was upon us the art of public
14:04relations and
14:05the valley of creating public excitement had come along with radio larger than life in his gargantuan
14:13appetites his prodigious performance on the field and equally prodigious off the field favorite symbol
14:20of the 1920s this was a man who wanted it all this was a man breaking the bonds of this
14:27sterile childhood
14:29of this orphanage upbringing and he was bringing america along with us
14:38the 20s is the decade that gave us celebrity this was the new york of jimmy walker it was
14:46the new york of um rudolph valentino it was the new york of lynnburn it was a time of larger
14:53than white
14:53figures and there was no one who was larger on that magnificent stage than babe ruth
15:01there was something about this convergence of babe ruth and the communications revolution of the
15:071920s that really changed american lives and changed our entire culture we had no television so no one
15:15actually saw babe ruth unless you went out to the ballpark so all kinds of things were were sort of
15:21concocted in the press some members of the press realized that they had a sort of a treasure he was
15:28an
15:28instrument that they could use to tell wonderful stories just as he was a player that the yankees
15:33could use to win ball games the golden age that we think of in the 1920s of runyon and galico
15:41and bryce
15:42was in fact an age of myth making they were in the business of creating legends they were like medieval
15:48troubadours singing the saga of the joust they were the only storytellers and therefore the whole of what
15:57you knew about sport came from these people ruth offered something for every one of them for damon
16:03runyon he was the broadway figure for paul galico at the daily news he was the new york wise guy
16:11standing
16:12up to management and particularly for grantlin rice he was the homeric figure on the field whose exploits
16:21lent themselves to these flights of fancy that made rice's reputation and fashioned the personality
16:28of ruth on the sports pages
16:36this symbiosis between ruth and the sports writing fraternity extended outside the lines where the babe
16:43played freely without fear of public exposure but today he played a lot harder
16:52off the baseball field than he did on it is sometimes while digging out the writers in the 20s and
17:0130s
17:02covered up and so ruth's peccadillo's were widely known to the writers but they never wrote about them
17:08they protected the babe i've heard a story that the babe was chasing this naked woman through the
17:13through the pullman and the writers are playing cards they don't even pay attention
17:17it was a time of excess in a city of excess
17:22babe ruth was welcome and wanted in every restaurant in every speakeasy at every party in new york
17:30you talk about excess talk about consumption and he was babe ruth as his absolute example he's free
17:39he's making more money than he ever dreamed of so you can just imagine a young man with the normal
17:45amount of testosterone with money in his pocket he was just having a ball the babe tells the cabbies
17:52that stop here wait about 10 or 15 minutes i'll be right back he goes up has a little uh
17:57session with
17:58one of his girlfriends and the cab's waiting he comes back gets and goes to the ballpark
18:03in tokyo he would ignite five or six of us up to his suite after the game and they all
18:11drank these
18:12little girls that were serving could have been more than 15 years of age when they walked by his bed
18:19and he was sitting dropped up there like a maharaja he'd grab one of the girls when they walked by
18:24him
18:24grab him by the robe and pick them up and bounce him on the stomach and put him down ruth
18:29did represent
18:30a hedonistic ethic and you might even say he represented a a consumer ethic i can't remember the name of
18:38the writer who once described ruth's appetite and said uh babe ruth will eat anything that doesn't eat him
18:52babe's gargantuan appetites went unchecked despite his ill-fated marriage to helen woodford
18:59they were very young when they were married ruth was 20 and she was 16 and as joe dugan said
19:04she was
19:04just a kid and ruth got bigger than the president helen probably was just a victim of uh circumstance
19:11the baby's on the road running around and she was a poor girl from new england his star was on
19:19the
19:19rise and he just left her behind he wasn't malicious he wasn't mean to her he just didn't pay attention
19:25to her when he was with her he would buy her things he could buy her jewelry and then he
19:28was off again
19:29and she was lonesome she was a neglected wife that marriage resulted in one child but as events would
19:37later come out that that child was not the child of their union but the child of one of babe's
19:45flings
19:45with another girl my mother told me that my grandfather went to california for an exhibition
19:51game and he met a woman named juanita jennings and that woman turned out to be my grandmother
19:57when juanita came to new york to have the child babe literally took the baby from juanita
20:04and gave it to helen to raise juanita jennings she was always in my mother's life
20:10and she kept it a secret until 1980 when she told mom on her deathbed that she was her mother
20:25the baby's behavior was sometimes even outrageous to his teammates
20:31after the ball game the showers are often the main part of the clubhouse where you dress
20:37and i was in there and i was facing the shower head lathered up with soap and all of a
20:44sudden in
20:45the middle of my back i felt a degree of hot water that was different than the shower water and
20:54he
20:54was urinating in the middle of my back joe dugan who was his teammate on the 27 yankees said that
21:01four or five of the guys would go out on a little bit of a bender one night and dugan
21:05the next
21:06afternoon would be sitting in the dugout nursing this terrible hangover and ruth would just get up
21:11and hit a home run ruth made his own rules and he did think that he was bigger than baseball
21:16and no
21:17one could stop him from doing what he was doing just as ruth needed to be controlled by the brothers
21:22of
21:23saint mary's he also needed and got a serious reality check from yankees manager miller huggins
21:30huggins didn't like ruth and ruth didn't like huggins but ruth was out of an orphanage with a minimal
21:37education huggins was just a well-read man well-educated man so the two were bound to clash
21:44after repeated infractions by the babe the inevitable clash came on august 29 1925
21:51but ruth arrived late for batting practice following a night in the town miller huggins
21:57confronted him in the clubhouse in st louis and told about to put his uniform on you were suspended
22:02ruth raised help huggins said you're going back to new york you're suspended until you apologize
22:06to the rest of the team publicly ruth stormed out of the clubhouse and he's going to go to see
22:11commissioner landis and he stormed to new york to see jake rupert huggins had the support of the
22:15yankees and the yankees backed him all the way and so ruth either had to do what huggins wanted or
22:23he was going to be barred from playing baseball you had a reserve clause he either played for the
22:27yankees or he didn't play at all so ruth finally came down from his temper tantrum and he went to
22:32huggins and tried to apologize and huggins said we'll see and huggins still let him hang and hang
22:40and hang until ruth finally realized what an apology was and after that he was no trouble huggins made
22:49ruth understand that he was part of the team and that the team would not be run by baybrook
22:55when the dust settled the yanks proceeded to win three straight pennants and two world series
23:00they had the murder the murderers row they had ruth gary combs lazari meanwhile a somewhat chastened
23:08ruth was altering the game with his back having hit 54 homers in 1920 and 59 the following season
23:16the babe reached his zenith in 1927 with 60 more than any other american league team
23:24how many home are you going to make this year i don't know
23:26try i'm going to try and be the best we can i hope we beat last year's record for gary
23:29you'll
23:30follow right up now or we'll get right after but the good times were running down soon the heady
23:37bash that had been the golden age of the 1920s put in as wall street stocks plummeted and baseball's
23:43lovable man child played out his finest seasons him off the field as effectively as miller huggins had on the
23:52feeling mother absolutely lived for daddy no one but no one could ever say one word against him she
24:03wouldn't stand for that from anybody with her loyalty to her famous husband unquestioned claire had a
24:09second side of her nature and sometimes pushed the babe to the edges of his patience my mother often
24:16said how claire was very controlling and she would pretty much dictate what babe should wear what
24:22babe should wear he had to sneak around and do what he wanted to do i'm very happy to be
24:29the wife of one
24:30of the greatest ball players that ever lived and he is one of the greatest ball players that ever lived
24:35because he follows his director's instructions by his exercises and a proper diet claire was not
24:42this unsophisticated young girl like the first wife she was a much more sophisticated urban woman
24:48she'd already been married and had one child of her own and she was probably the exact opposite
24:55of babe's first wife helen claire added a lot of structure and discipline to babe's life
25:05beyond harnessing her husband's spending fair created a home environment that was less than warm
25:13claire would often play favorites julia was pushed in the foreground my mother pushed in the back
25:19my mother would tell me they had like a 3 000 square foot apartment and she was on the other
25:24end from the other bedrooms disconnected from the family my mom spent so much time in her room she said
25:29she counted the flowers she knew how many flowers were on the wall it didn't make for a happy home
25:34life
25:35from the mom i understand this is your birthday yes my first day all right i'm getting pretty old 37
25:41today is that so well you don't look anywhere near that well no the wife doesn't hear the same
25:47thing but i'm going down same feet now to try to get in the film for a good season
25:59wrigley field game three of the 1932 world series
26:04harry was in his 19th major league season he'd already hit 650 home runs he was at the end of
26:09the
26:09rope the yankers beat the cubs twice in new york now they go to chicago bruce in the outfield he
26:14messes up the play lets the cubs tie the game so he comes to the back and the crowd is
26:20now all over
26:21the cops were you know wagging him mercilessly from the dugout and he hurt
26:27after each pitch the roof put up one finger and then two fingers with two strikes on him he pointed
26:34to deep center field supposedly saying that's where he's going to hit the next pitch well i did see that
26:41but i think that the reason he put up his finger and it happened to point in the picture was
26:48because
26:49he still had another strike billy jurgis went to his grave believing that the babe called the shot and
26:55from his perspective playing shortstop he believed that he saw the babe gesture towards the centerfield
27:01flagpole the most remarkable part of that was that with all the the shouting and the bantering and
27:07uh the yelling going on back and forth ruth was able to step in and concentrate and hit that next
27:14pitch
27:23but when he did hit it out there in a spot that nobody else could get so far everybody believed
27:30immediately that there was a direct connection it just stunned the crowd that in this furor and
27:36fighting he kicked the ball so hard no one's ever hit a ball that far before the fact that he
27:42pointed
27:42it didn't point doesn't matter damn he was challenged by the cubs and he stuck it to him
27:48isn't it wonderful to wonder whether or not he did it isn't it so much better than having a
27:55replayed from 16 different angles and have had 150 writers asking about it after the game we wanted
28:00to believe it because it was babe ruth if there's any other hitter it would have been dismissed suddenly
28:06we have this herculean myth to wrap him in and so we're not going to let it go when your
28:13whole life is
28:15a series of majestic events when you do one more everybody is going to believe it
28:21by 1933 ruth was aware that his greatness was draining out of him
28:30i came for one forever but you can bet your sweet life but i won't play until i drop but
28:37i'll play until
28:37i damn near drops he had gotten heavy uh couldn't run the way he did the aches and pains were
28:46there
28:47he would swing and miss a little more often you know i think it's a good idea for everybody to
28:53train when they're really young don't wait until they get my age but just keep on training year after
28:58year and you'll find out that when you get to be an old man like myself you can still go
29:02a little way
29:04by 1934 ruth had played out his welcome on the yankees after several steep salary cuts had reduced his
29:10annual take from an all-time high of 80 000 to 35 000 a dispirited root pursued a dream he
29:17had for
29:18years he wanted to manage the yankees he didn't get along with joe mccarthy the new manager he wanted
29:24to be the yankee manager himself uh and it was never going to happen it's possible they remembered back
29:30to the difficult times that they had not only with salaries but with other types of disputes and maybe just
29:36simply wanted to cut their ties with him spurned by the yankees they've accepted an offer by the
29:51boston braves in the hope that it would lead to bigger things he will participate in everything
29:57that is of the braves both as assistant manager as an official of the club and he will be one
30:03of us
30:04in a brave uniform ruth began the 1935 season with ancient legs and a child's hope he knew that his
30:23career as a player was nearing an end but i guess he was desperately reaching out to keep some connection
30:30with the game ruth always harbored the hope that by signing on with boston the braves as a player
30:37this could mean a transition to becoming a manager he thought he was going to have some administrative
30:43or managerial role and what they really wanted him for was almost a carnival character i mean he
30:48was a drawing card but that's all he was on may 25th ruth provided a final flash of his old
30:55self
30:55by hitting three homers against pittsburgh he retired a week later ruth wanted to stay in baseball
31:03that was his life i can't question whether ruth would make a great manager or not i have no knowledge
31:08of that oh my own sense of it is that he would be a lousy manager as a player he
31:16had no peer his 714 home
31:19runs and 342 lifetime batting average more than qualified to be among the first five players
31:26inducted into the hall of fame of the five all but ruth had the opportunity to manage in the big
31:32leagues
31:33the owners had no love for him because among other things you know he really skewed the salary scale
31:40babe ruth had no impulse control he couldn't be a manager
31:46babe ruth had a good sense of his own worth he knew he was a great athlete he knew that
31:52he was
31:52bringing in fans from the turnstiles so there was no reason why he shouldn't be paid for it he was
31:58a
31:58pioneer i have always believed that they thought that he would raise the salaries of ball players and that
32:07he would give the ball players a lot more than they were getting his early carefree irresponsible days
32:18i think kind of you know stained his reputation to the fact where they saw the babe how could he
32:24manage a team he couldn't manage himself i don't think anybody wanted to take a chance on him all those
32:31stories that were referred to that the sports writers did not write in the 20s or 30s the baseball
32:38establishment knew they knew the stories babe ruth was just too big and i think that uh what owner
32:49would want to be eclipsed by a manager he couldn't control
32:54in 1938 ruth signed as a coach with the brooklyn dodgers on the hope that he might one day get
33:01his
33:01chance to manage that day never came all of his life he had been in the game and the idea
33:08that you
33:09can't manage you can't remain in baseball what else is this man going to do he had no other real
33:15interests he loved the game he loved the limelight he loved the excitement of it and suddenly you're being
33:21told you can't do this any longer a lot of people ask me if i'd rather be back in baseball
33:27i say i
33:28really do i enjoy the game and it was my life's blood to play baseball i think his last few
33:36years
33:36of life were probably very sad ones for him he was very frustrated he tried playing golf he would go
33:43to
33:43charity events it was like the wind was taken out of his sail somehow when he just looked sort of
33:49deflated
33:51in a letter to yankees gm larry mcphail at the end of the 1946 season ruth simply and touchingly made
33:59his case i feel it would be a fitting and happy climax to my baseball career to manage the club
34:05i
34:05was so successful with as a player when the news came back mom said he just put his head in
34:11his hands
34:12and just cried because everything was gone and that's when the depression started and maybe he
34:19drank a little more than he should have been she got a call one day from a friend that said
34:25you better
34:25get over to the apartment because um babe won't come out of his room he was trying to jump and
34:31my
34:31mother's banging on the door of course pleading with him not to do this and he did finally open the
34:36door
34:37but i know that stuck with mom forever
34:47coming up next america bids farewell to the mighty babe
34:55in the paper and he looked terrible i called mother and i said mother what on earth is the
35:04matter with daddy and she said we have no idea he's going to doctors and they haven't been able
35:11to find anything but he has slipping horrendous headaches they didn't tell him uh that it was
35:21cancer he didn't know what was the matter with him he was deluged with cards and letters crowds of kids
35:30would stand in the street down below the window of his room and they'd stand there by the hour he
35:37would
35:37sign his name and he'd tell a nurse to give those to the kids that were standing outside and a
35:45little
35:46later when connie mack came to the hospital to visit him the last time ruth said the termites have got
35:51me mr mack he knew he was dying in the spring of 1947 ruth was given a day at yankee
35:59stadium
36:18a little more than a year later a frail babe would have a second and final opportunity to say goodbye
36:26when he helped celebrate the 25th birthday the ballpark his homers built i covered him only once
36:34and that was his last day in the yankee uniform with the help of a male nurse who was with
36:40him ruth
36:40with difficulty got undressed and got into his uniform for the last time and they said well let's go out
36:48you know it's time to go he walked out through the tunnel very slowly he was coming up the stairs
36:55he was shaky and eddie robinson our first baseman grabbed the bat give it to babe to use to steady
37:03himself as he walked to home plate and finally well alan said and now
37:15and i wrote that he walked out into that tunnel noise with which he must have been more familiar
37:23than any other living man it was really so sad to hear him talk and um
37:35i knew he was in such pain that he could hardly stand to be out there
37:42then he went back into the dugout and the male nurse helped him back into the clubhouse and he sat
37:46there and joe dugan came back and said uh can i get your drink judge and that's when ruth said
37:54i'm gone joe i'm gone and dugan told me he started crying and ruth did too and that was the
38:02end of his life
38:10it was a sad day in this country i lost a great man he was really a
38:18an idol for the children there was just such a tremendous sense of loss he was so young i mean
38:2953
38:29years old it was probably the greatest farewell the biggest wake any sports figure in our time
38:41had no one the fact that baby could die the fact that he was mortal was an extremely sobering thing
38:49and
38:49i think made a lot of people particularly baseball fans uh introspective for a time he died in 1948
38:59after the war after an awful lot of death in this country after america had begun to realize that
39:07the heroes that they had always clung to were as frail and as mortal as anyone
39:14babe ruth was a part of the american family
39:20wait hoyt and joe dugan came out of the cathedral together terribly hot day and dugan said i sure
39:26could use a beer and hoyt said so could the babe so could the babe
39:35baby's life is not a failure it's as dramatic a success story as any you could find in america
39:42there were an awful lot of kids who grew up fatherless who grew up with the same sort of
39:48background and not a single one of them turned into baby birth it was a time when heroes were created
39:55from common man ruth seemed to embrace it vigorously and to shake every ounce of life out of the 24
40:05hours in
40:05a day was far from common if you could say that
40:14he was he was from a common background but there has to be something in here
40:23he understood that people came to the ballpark to be entertaining that may be his legacy he was
40:30the first guy i figured it all out it was a stage it was an act this was broadway this
40:34was the theater
40:36i think that's why we're talking about roots now in a new millennium his legacy is that he is baseball
40:44he is the human symbol of baseball and i think that's no small legacy
40:56let's publicize legacy not in baseball lore but in the annals of medicine he was among the first
41:03patients to undergo an experimental treatment for his cancer at first ruth showed dramatic improvement
41:09putting back much of the 80 parents he lost his progress was so encouraging that his case was
41:14read at an international cancer congress meeting in st louis but within months the cancer reclaimed him
41:21and on august 16th 1948 the babe was gone 3sbn classics sports century i'm chris fowler
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