The 6-foot-2, pound Ruth revolutionized the game, changing it from a pitcher-dominated, scratch-out-a-run contest to a homer-hitting, dialing-long-distance event. Babe was the first to reach 30 homers, 40, 50, Twelve times he led the American League in homers, 11 times he hit more than 40, four times more than From , he slugged homers, an average of From , from ages 31 to 36 when he was supposedly past his prime after a subpar , he averaged 50 homers, RBI, runs and a.
How would you have liked to have him on your Rotisserie League team? With Ruth it's often difficult to separate truth from legend. Part of it is that we don't really seem to care. We want to believe that Ruth pointed towards the centerfield bleachers before homering in the World Series or that his "bellyache heard 'round the world," which caused him to undergo abdominal surgery in , was the result of his eating too many hot dogs. We want to believe that he promised a sick kid in the hospital that he would belt a homer for him the next day and then he hit three.
He was born George Herman Ruth on Feb. He was not an orphan, as legend has it his mother died when he was 16, his father when he was a major leaguer.
Growing up wild on the streets, he stole, skipped school, chewed tobacco and drank whiskey. In , his parents placed him in St. Aside from Michael Jordan , there might not be a name more synonymous with the sport an athlete played than Babe Ruth. Even though his career began over a century ago when sports were not the readily available event that they are today, Ruth rose to superstardom during the s and continues to be a widely-known star athlete decades after his career and death. Babe Ruth did not come up in the same type of environment where athletes make their rise today.
When Ruth was coming up, the path to major league baseball was still varied. Some went to college and played in high school. Ruth discovered his talent at St.
Ruth was one of eight children born to the couple, and one of only two that survived infancy. At the age of 7, the trouble-making Ruth became too much of a handful for his busy parents. Routinely caught wandering the dockyards, drinking, chewing tobacco and taunting local police officers, his parents finally decided he needed more discipline than they could give him.
Ruth's family sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a Catholic orphanage and reformatory that became Ruth's home for the next 12 years. Ruth particularly looked up to a monk named Brother Matthias, who became a father figure to the young boy.
Mathias, along with several other monks of the order, introduced Ruth to baseball, a game at which the boy excelled. By the time he was 15, Ruth showed exceptional skill both as a strong hitter and pitcher. It was his pitching that initially caught the attention of Jack Dunn, the owner of the minor league Baltimore Orioles. At the time, the Orioles groomed players for the major league team known as the Boston Red Sox, and Dunn saw promise in Ruth's athletic performance.
Only 19, the law at the time stated that Ruth had to have a legal guardian sign his baseball contract in order for him to play professionally. As a result, Dunn became Ruth's legal guardian, leading teammates to jokingly call Ruth "Dunn's new babe.
Ruth was only with the club for a short time before he was called up to the majors in Boston. The left-handed pitcher proved immediately to be a valuable member of the team. Over the next five years, Ruth led the Red Sox to three championships, including the title which saw him pitch a still-record 13 scoreless innings in one game.
With its titles and "the Babe," Boston was clearly the class act of the major leagues. All that would change in , however, with a single stroke of a pen. His massive popularity helped to cement his legacy as a baseball legend, writes Cliff Corcoran for Sports Illustrated , but it helped that he was genuinely an excellent player.
Some of the records that he set continue to stand even today. Before he came along, home runs were relatively unusual in baseball. His skill combined with his popularity as a cultural figure meant that people asked what his secret was. Baseball was always a sport attractive to scientists: Baseball had stats as early as the s, and the rules of the game are fairly simple.
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