Creators Podcast
Babe Ruth (The Legend Comes to Life)
Episode #39
3.26.26
I just finished reading another book on Babe Ruth. The title is Babe, The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer. This is the complete biography of Babe Ruth published back in 1974. What I loved about this book, there’s a bunch of stories in this book that I’d never heard before.
The Legend of Babe Ruth
And that’s always the case when I read these old baseball books. I’m realizing now there’s almost endless amazing stories about the old baseball legends. So I’m going to get into some of my favorite Babe Ruth stories from this book by Robert Creamer in a few minutes.
But I also read the Babe Ruth autobiography and I like that book too because it’s in his own words. The babe tells his entire story. So I’m using both of these books that I read for this episode, the one by Robert Kramer from 1974 and then the other one published by Babe Ruth just before he passed away in 1947. And I want to get a good understanding of Babe Ruth.
It’s so hard to use one phrase to define Babe Ruth. It’s almost impossible as we’re going to find out.
In my other episodes, I used this phrase, a profound human spirit to push boundaries. So that was a main theme in my other episodes that I’ve done. But now after I read this book by Robert Creamer for the first time this past week, there’s a big turning point in the career of Babe Ruth. I kind of missed it in my other episodes, but there’s a lull in babe’s career. I guess you could call it that it’s 1925. There’s trouble for the babe.
It starts off with a mystery illness during spring training. Babe collapses and he has to have surgery and he has surgery and everybody knows that he did because they can see a scar on his stomach. But otherwise this is sort of a mystery at the time, but they’re lucky to just get him back on the field.
Babe Ruth Struggles
So he gets underway in the season and then he ends up getting fined by his manager, Miller Huggins. They fine him five grand, and they say it was for misconduct off the field. The babe was feuding with his manager Miller Huggins for most of the season. And then to make matters even worse now, he’s not hitting at the plate. He only hit 25 home runs that season and just a 290 batting average.
Then the Yankees finished next to last place that year. So things are looking pretty grim for the big fella right now. And I’m reading all about this time in babe’s career. It really jumped out at me because I was kind of dozing off as I’m reading the book. While I’m reading all about this, it’s kind of putting me to sleep and I notice Babe was having a lull in his career and I was kind of having a lull while I’m reading this book.
But Babe snaps right out of it. And it’s one of the big turning points in his amazing career. Just like an all time legend would, he bounces back and he’d go on to absolutely tear it up for years to come.
So this is really cool. This is what caught my attention in the book. This is what snapped me out of my lull as I’m sitting there reading it. And at the end of one of these chapters, right in the middle of Robert Creamer’s book, he ends with this paragraph. And this tells you everything you need to know about how dominating Babe Ruth was.
He was at the top of his game for a lot of years in the early 20s. He redefined everything imaginable on the ball field and then…
Even if it was all finished for the babe in 1925, he still would have gone down as a legend. He had already had a huge career up to this point. But some people out there thought it was all over for the babe during this 1925 season. And this is something new that I learned while reading this book.
Here’s how Robert Kramer said it in the book. This is the last paragraph in one of these chapters right here. He says,
“To the critics who said he was through, and to Fred Lieb, who thought that from now on he might be nothing more than a good steady hitter. Babe could have smiled and said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” From 1926 through 1931, as he aged from 32 to 37, Ruth put on one of the finest sustained displays of hitting that baseball has ever seen. During those six seasons, he averaged 50 home runs a year, 155 runs batted in and 147 runs scored. He batted 354.
He hit his 300th home run the day after Huggins reinstated him, but there were more than 400 yet to come. He had been a dominant figure in six World Series, but the best of his World Series were still ahead of him too.
From the ashes in 1925, Babe Ruth rose like a rocket.”
– Robert Creamer, author of, ‘Babe: The Legend Comes to Life’
So there you go. Ruth rose like a rocket from the ashes of 1925 and I rose out of my slumber, as I’m reading this book and I sat back up in my chair because as I’m reading these chapters on babe struggling for a bit, I just didn’t know that that actually happened. I just didn’t know all the details of that struggle.
And then I read that paragraph and a rocket is a good way to describe it. So I finished the book and then I’m thinking about this time in babes career. And so here’s another phrase that I like.
“There are levels.”
I that phrase. It’s a great phrase to describe certain people. Some people have a few extra gears. Whatever they’re trying to do, this is Babe Ruth right here. There are levels. People thought he was through. He was definitely not through.
So we’re going to get into this a little bit more with some amazing Babe Ruth stories that you probably never heard. But before that, to set this thing up, first I want to go back to my other favorite phrase about the babe, the one I said earlier.
He was a profound human spirit to push boundaries. So we got to look at that first. So leading up to this bad year that he had in 1925, we got to go back and we got to look at this profound human spirit. So turn back a couple of years.
The Profound Human Spirit
Babe has just broke the record for most home runs in a single season in 1920. He broke his own record from the season before and young George Ruth, he’s now the babe. The legend has been created.
And the babe no longer feels like he needs to travel with the team anymore on the train to the next city because the babe now has his own hot rod. He’s got a red Packard roadster, a sports car.
Let’s just hear the story from the babe himself. This is from his book that he wrote. Here’s how he lays it out. He says,
“And travel with the Yanks on short hops. Nothing doing. I had long since forgotten the day when I bought a bicycle with my first paycheck from the Orioles, and rode it around as proudly as any Indian prince ever wrote a jewel studded elephant.
But now with the Yanks, I had a long, low Packard roadster painted a fire engine red.
And there wasn’t any greater thrill in life for me than stepping on that baby’s gas. During the 1921 season, I nearly killed myself and four others in that car. We had played the final game of a series with Washington and I had had a good day. didn’t like the idea, but I told him I’d drive my car to Philadelphia for the next day’s game and get there before the train. I had Helen along with me, our coach, Charlie O’Leary, and a couple of players just outside Kennet Square PA.
I hit a turn too fast and we started to skid. Finally we turned over and rolled like a ball, with bodies flying out of the car in every direction. For some reason I can never understand if I lived to be 100. None of us was hurt. The car was completely wrecked. I just left it there and bought a new one. Incidentally, I hit a home run against the athletics the next day, despite the fact that one newspaper had come out with a big headline story announcing my death.”
-Babe Ruth
End of story right there. That’s how babe rolls in 1920. Just another day in the life of the biggest superstar athlete maybe to ever live. Babe is not going to sit on a damn train when he owns a red Packard Roadster. Probably the fastest thing ever built at that time.
And the babe has the need for speed.
But everyone walks away from this wreckage and of course he hits a home run the next day. That’s just what happens with the babe. Now that excerpt is from the book, The Babe Ruth Story. I did an episode a while back and it was all about the early years of Babe Ruth leading right up to the day that he was traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees.
Humble Beginnings
I wanted to tell the story of how this Babe Ruth character was created because in those early years way back when Ruth was still in the minor leagues that’s when he picked up the nickname Babe and then his childhood was also fascinating to read about. He was from an orphanage in Baltimore that’s where he grew up, and it was what they did every day at this boys school. They played baseball. And that’s where the babe developed into this great athlete. And then there was brother Mathias, one of the workers at this orphanage. This guy, brother Mathias worked on baseball with young George Ruth and became a mentor and an idol of Ruth’s growing up. And in this book, in Babe Ruth’s book, he calls brother Mathias. He says he was the greatest man I’ve ever known.
Babe Ruth is discovered out of this boys school and he quickly moves through the ranks of the minor leagues. Then has this nickname that sticks to him, Babe Ruth. And he’s still known as a pitcher at this point. Now he’s playing for the Boston Red Sox and he’s just tearing it up as a pitcher. Then after watching him hit in batting practice, the Red Sox manager, they’re just like, I gotta get Babe in the lineup as a hitter on the days he’s not pitching. It’s crazy to have this guy sitting on the bench when he’s not pitching. Look at him hitting batting practice.
Superstardom
So Bay becomes a hitter with the Red Sox and he’s launching home runs further than anyone had ever seen before. He sets the all-time home run record for a single season with 29 home runs playing for the Boston Red Sox in 1919. And now a star is born. He’s 23 years old and one might think he’s on top of the world. He’s already been a dominant pitcher for several years. He switches over to hitting. He breaks the home run record. He’s making $10,000 a year. One of the highest paid players at the time.
But this is just the start. In 1919, nobody would have any idea what would happen to his career and to baseball in the 1920s and 1930s. Baseball would boom in popularity and Babe Ruth was the force of nature driving this entire thing. Because in the early 1920s, Babe Ruth is traded to the New York Yankees in a blockbuster trade deal. And now he’s part of a team that’s on the upswing. The Yankees had a good club, but they couldn’t crack through and win the World Series. And now, well, that’s all gonna change, of course.
He lands at the Yankees’ spring training before the 1920 season. He’s coming off a season where he broke the all-time home run record with 29 the year before with the Red Sox. And now he’s with the Yankees. So the season gets rolling. And by the halfway point of the season, he already has 29 home runs. To match his total with the Red Sox the year before, and to tie his own all-time record. And it’s only halfway through the season.
So the babe creates this home run craze throughout baseball immediately after joining the Yankees. And now there’s the entire second half of the 1920 season where every home run he hits is breaking his own record from the year before. So the fans are going crazy and every day there’s a new home run and it’s just like, how many is this guy going to hit?
Babe Ruth and the Home Run Craze
It’s uncharted territory and this goes on for months. So the babe ends the season with 54 home runs. He totally smashes his own record from the year before. And the home run, the long ball, it’s now part of baseball in a way that was never before experienced. All of these home runs, nobody knew it was possible to hit all these home runs. And everyone was seeing how exciting it was to have a big slugger, smashing home runs in every city he played in and setting records.
The babe says it in his book, he says, “People were astonished to see 54 home runs in one season. He said it was like if a player hit 200 in today’s game.” He’s saying this in 1947 when he’s writing this book. So home runs over time started to be more common, but he’s saying you have to understand how big of a number that was in 1920. 54 home runs was just totally unbelievable – until I did it!
And so that’s what he’s saying in his book. Now, hardcore baseball fans, you’re going to know there was a dead ball era leading right up to this season in 1920. And then the live ball era started right here. That’s what they called it. It was the dead ball and then the live ball. And that’s where these balls were wound a little tighter. They were just made a little bit differently. So they traveled further. And that’s not really disputed anymore. know this.
This is right at that same time that marks the live ball era. So we’ve talked about that a lot in my other episodes on Ty Cobb that I did. Cobb liked to point out that if he was in his prime during the dead ball era, and if he would have been able to hit those juiced up baseballs, Cobb says who knows how many home runs he would have hit. He liked to talk about how he had to deal with that dead ball.
Even Honus Wagner brings it up in the episode I did on Honus Wagner. Same thing. He liked to talk about how he was hitting that mush ball in the dead ball era. So this is a known part of baseball. But one thing to think about right here. Babe Ruth led the league in home runs in 1918 and 1919 with the Red Sox. And he was still pitching and hitting back then.
Dead Ball – Live Ball Debate
But think about this. In 1920, the Babe crushed his own record with 54 home runs. The next closest player was George Sisler, who hit 19 home runs. They’re all using the same ball. If it’s juiced or not, everybody’s hitting the same ball that season. The Babe had almost triple as many home runs as the second highest total.
In 1921, the very next year, Babe hit more than double as many home runs as the second highest player. So the next season of course would be bigger than the last. And that’s a common theme with Babe Ruth. If it’s his home runs or his late night parties, his quotes in the paper or his annual salary, everything was bigger than the year before. And that’s why all I can think of is this quote.
When I think of Babe Ruth, this quote fits perfectly.
He was a profound human spirit to push boundaries.
That’s the babe. Larger than life.
And it’s only just begun here in 1920. Here’s what he says in his book. He goes, “I don’t think I’m bragging when I say I made the country home run conscious.” And that’s exactly how it went. He set the single season home run record in 1919 that nobody could believe. Then he breaks that record halfway through the next season in 1920.
Finishes with 54, a totally ridiculous number of home runs up to that point. It was unheard of. The Yankees also crushed their attendance record with over 1.2 million fans attending games in 1920 at the Polo grounds.
Not only was Babe Ruth’s home runs breaking the Yankees attendance records, but fans from all over the country were traveling to whatever city Babe was playing in next. And those stadiums were also filling up. He says in his book,
After a game in St. Louis, he was introduced to three cowboys who rode their horses for three days all the way across Wyoming just to catch a train to get to St. Louis so they could see the Babe smash home runs. He said in his book, they were real cowboys with chaps and cowboy hats and spurs on their boots, all just to catch a glimpse of the Babe smashing home runs. Anyways, like I was saying, the fans are in total disbelief at the Babes 54 home runs in 1920.
But of course, they’re also thinking there’s no way anyone will ever come close to that number ever again. Not even the Babe himself. It’s impossible. So what does the Babe do the next season in 1921? He hits 59 home runs. Not only that, but the Yankees finally win their first pennant in the American League. So if you see what’s happening here for several years in a row, Babe Ruth is just redefining what anyone thought was possible with all these home runs.
Smashing Records
And this is great right here. I love these little details in these old baseball books that I stumble across. The babe says, “yeah, I got hot in the spring in 1921 and I never cooled off.” And he says, half of my 59 home runs I hit were off bad balls. He said he was swinging at anything close to the plate because no pitcher would ever throw him a strike, which is totally understandable. Why would you throw Babe Ruth a strike?
It reminds me of Barry Bonds back in the early 2000s.
He broke the record for walks and intentional walks. Nobody would throw him a strike. And one of my favorite Barry Bonds crazy stats is back in 2004, he had more hits that season than swings and misses. He had 135 hits and he swung and missed 92 times the entire season.
That’s nuts.
Anyways, same thing going on here with Babe Ruth and he still manages to launch 59 home runs.
There’s one more little detail that I like that Babe brings up in his book. He says, this was all before the ballparks were adjusted to be more home run friendly. Meaning later on the team owner saw how good it was for business to have home runs at their stadiums. So they began to move in the outfield fences closer and to make it easier for home runs. And Babe mentions that he says, yeah, all my records were before any of that. The fences were all the way out, way out.
And I still broke records that still stand to this day. At the time that he was writing his book. Anyway, another thing I love is when Ty Cobb’s name comes up in these old books, the babe was telling a story about some old pitcher who could never get him out. Some tiger’s pitcher. His name was George something. And he says, he says,
“George sure was my cousin. I drove him nuts.
No matter where he’d pitch the ball, high, low, inside or outside, I was able to belt it. Long hits off him always gave me a lot of fun. Ty Cobb was the manager of the Tigers by that time, and every long hit I made was a personal insult to him. He’d run in from centerfield to tell the pitcher what to throw me, but that would only make me more determined to slug the ball.”
-Babe Ruth
So we got Ty Cobb out there in in center field as a player manager and he’s just going crazy trying to get Babe Ruth out. He’s telling the pitcher not to throw him anything good to hit. And then of course, Babe’s just crushing this pitcher, George, whatever his name is.
So now with the Yankees winning their first pennant in the American league, the town in New York is going crazy. It’s baseball fever and the New York Giants win the pennant in the national league. And back then, the Giants were the powerhouse team in New York. It was the Yankees who were the second fiddle. That’s how the babe says it. But this is a big deal for the Yankees. Even to make it to the World Series, this is the first time they ever made it this far.
So I’ll just spoil the suspense. The New York Giants would win the World Series in 1921, and then they would beat the Yankees again in 1922. So it’s two straight years of getting really close and then losing to the Giants.
Earning Respect with the Fans
But one thing Babe likes to point out, he says, the Yankees were earning their respect and they were drawing more fans to their games than the rival giants across town. So now the Babe is the biggest thing anywhere, pushing boundaries and captivating the fans around the country. He’s offers to appear in movies, endorsement deals, everyone wants to get close to the Babe. He’s got to sneak through the janitor’s entrance just to get into his own apartment, because of the crazy amount of attention that he’s drawing.
The babe’s making a lot of money now, and he says he was as good at spending his money as he was at making it. In his book, he called himself “the boy spender.” When the Yankees traveled, the team stayed at the $3 a night hotel. The babe went to a separate hotel, and he stayed at the $100 a night suite.
He had his own red Packard roadster like we already talked about and he drive to the next city instead of taking the train with the team. He did whatever the hell he wanted to do. And that’s a lot of the attraction with Babe Ruth. How was he able to do whatever he wanted? Say whatever he wanted. And he was still the most popular athlete in the world. He was just larger than life.
He would drink too much, stay out all night, get into confrontations with his coach, with other players, crash his car, everyone goes flying out, but nobody gets hurt. He’s almost like this untouchable force. Nothing can stop him.
But then there’s also this humility that comes out when you’re reading these books about Babe Ruth. This is one of the times in his book he talks about how he might have been hanging out with the wrong crowd or just staying out a little bit too late. There’s a lot of stories about the babe probably not acting like the greatest role model for the kids.
And the Babe talks about that too. And you can tell he has a little bit of regret. And so the humility comes out too. And it just makes him all that much more likable.
After that monster season in 1921, he starts off the next season suspended. He was barnstorming the year before in the off season. So the commissioner of baseball, this guy, Judge Landis, he suspends the most popular player of all time to start the next season because he was off making money playing these barnstorming exhibition games.
‘The Boy Spender’
The Babe loved to do those barnstorming tours and he would do that through his entire career. But anyway, so he’s suspended to start the year and he ends up only hitting 35 home runs that next season and they lose to the Giants in the World Series.
But the Babe signs a new contract that year for $250,000 over the next five years and that makes him the highest paid player in baseball. He put it like this in his book. He goes, he says to the Yankee team,
of 1922. says, “We played to the hilt, but we had more than our share of night riders. We kept a couple of Jersey beer barons rich.” So he’s larger than life on the field and off the field. He’s buying a lot of beer from the Jersey beer barons. But in 1923, he comes storming back and he leads the league with 41 home runs. He calls this one of his greatest honors right here.
He wins the American League MVP award with 64 out of 64 possible votes. A unanimous decision for MVP. And that was only the second time a player had gotten all 64 votes for the MVP. That only other time was when Ty Cobb did it in 1911. And of course, the Yankees now would finally beat the Giants in the World Series. Their first ever championship finally dethroning the Giants after all those years.
Not only are the Yankees world champions, but there’s a young guy that Babe meets for the first time in 1923. Lou Gehrig was invited to join the team just for a few weeks. And the Babe has a lot of nice things to say about Gehrig in his book. You gotta check out my Lou Gehrig episode I did a while back. But this would become the greatest hitting duo in baseball history right here, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But it’s not just Lou Gehrig.
Babe and Ty Cobb
There’s a lot of other baseball legends the babe is running into through his entire career. And all those stories are in these books. And one thing I noticed after reading a bunch of these books on the old baseball legends, when these stories intersect with Ty Cobb, there’s going to be fireworks. It’s like the same perspective every time when we’re talking about Cobb. Here we go. I’ll give you one example.
The Yankees are playing the Tigers and Ty Cobb is player manager in center field for the Tigers. And Babe tips off his Yankee teammate, Bob Musel, that they’re going to bean him. He sees Cobb call for the bean ball from center field. And sure enough, Musel takes a fastball right in the back and immediately throws his bat at the pitcher and charges the mound and all hell breaks loose. Cobb tears in from center field into the melee. Babe tries to take him out.
Everyone’s throwing punches. Cobb and Babe are going at it. Then the crowd storms the field. Thousands of fans pour onto the field to join the brawl. They’re fighting police, the players, other fans. In his book, the Babe says, here’s what he says about the crazy scene. He goes, he goes, the fans, “Even ripped seats out of the grandstand and threw them into the general fight.”
So this game is canceled.
They can’t clear the field and they just cancel the entire game. What a wild scene that must have been.
But this was the days when the game was just rougher. There’s no doubt when you read these old books. But why am I not surprised that Ty Cobb is right in the middle of this pandemonium? Just go back and listen to my Ty Cobb episode if you want to get an idea of what this guy Cobb was all about. I can say this right here.
I did an episode on Ted Williams, and he had a special blend of intensity that made him one of the greatest hitters to ever live.
Well, Ty Cobb was beyond intense.
Anyway, the babe says after this game with the brawl, he says the fans packed the stadium the next day, totally sold out because he goes, “The fans were hoping for a repetition of the battle royal, but all was peace and quiet.” That just gives you a taste of the passion and the popularity and the craziness that baseball’s going through right now.
The Insane Popularity of Baseball
The game is becoming so popular and the babe is the king of this entire scene. Going back to Robert Creamer’s book now, when I look back, things were so big for Babe Ruth. It’s like, it’s gotta cool off a little bit. It would just be crazy to keep up this pace all the way through his entire career. So just like I’m saying earlier, the 1925, there were some people that thought maybe that was the end of this monster career for babe.
Now I already read that passage from Robert Creamer’s book. 1925 was a down year. We know this. But then he rose from the ashes and he took off like a rocket. So we got to look at some of these stories now from Creamer’s book. And that was my favorite thing about this book. All the way through, there’s these little stories. What made the babe so unique and different and memorable? The profound human spirit, not just to push boundaries, which he did in every sense, but he was just straight up a profound spirit all day long, everywhere he went.
Here’s a great one. There’s a story about a little girl. She’s about 10 years old who tracks down the babe in the dugout before an exhibition game. I’ll just read the story from Creamer’s book right here. It says,
“Alice Doubleday Rhodes recalled the time when Ruth played an exhibition in her small town when she was about 10.
For some reason, she accepted a dare to get Ruth’s autograph, and well before the game, she sneaked onto the field and walked to the Yankees bench. She had to ask, which one is Babe Ruth? And this to her confusion made everyone laugh. He was pointed out, and when she walked over to him, he said pleasantly enough, you want to see me, sister? She handed him her school notebook and a pen, a brand new pen that had just been given to her for her birthday. Here, she said, he signed his name in a beautiful even hand and gave her back her school book and pen.
“There you are sister,” he said. “Now don’t go home and sell it.” But she had promised to get autographs for her schoolmates too.
She handed the book and pen back to him and said, “write some more, write on all the lines.”
The other players broke up laughing. Ruth shrugged and slowly wrote his name on line after line until the page was filled. “That okay now?” he said, not smiling.
He handed her the book and looking out at the field, absentmindedly put the pen in his own pocket. Her marvelous birthday pen. She did not know what to do. Ruth looked at her coldly.
“Something else on your mind, little girl?” He asked. She shook her head and said, no, sir, and left. grinned and nodded a little afraid. It took her some time to get up the courage to tell her father what had happened. And she was totally unable to understand his hilarity when she did tell him.
“Babe Ruth swiped your pen,” he howled.
It’s just the babe right there. He’s just signing autographs in the dugout before the game for a 10 year old girl who then tells him to fill the entire page up with his name on every line so she can get an autograph for every one of her classmates. She tells babe to write on all the lines. And of course he does it.
Babe Being Babe
Here’s another great story that I’d never heard before, but it turns out that babe wasn’t the toughest guy, when it came to pain tolerance.
In 1931, he’s going for a fly ball in the outfield and he crashes into a chicken wire screen in the outfield fence. Babe cuts his finger on a piece of this wire fence and it tears part of his fingernail, so it’s bleeding. Now a trainer runs out and Babe leaves the game with the trainer, who’s holding onto his bloody finger as they’re walking off the field. And so Babe’s face is wrinkled in pain and he’s limping – all the way to the dugout from the outfield with this trainer.
His legs were not hurt by the fence, but he’s limping all the way in and his teammates notice how he’s limping.
So he’s now he’s in the trainer’s room and they say, babe, we’re going to cut away the torn fingernail. And he goes, “not without gas.” He says, “nobody’s going to cut me unless I have gas.” He wanted to be put under and knocked out so they could cut away his fingernail.
He couldn’t take the pain. He didn’t want to take the pain. “Gas me!”
So his teammates would never let him forget that day when he limped off the field with a hurt fingernail.
And then he insisted on the gas to have it cut away. And so these are all just littered through this book. These little stories that I thought were hilarious.
There’s also a lot of stories about his appetite, which was enormous.
And that’s not a secret. We’ve heard about that before, but I like this one because Ty Cobb is in there chiming in on the babe and his appetite. Here’s what it says in the book.
“His appetite was enormous, although accounts of it were often exaggerated. A report of one dinner says he had an entire coupon, potatoes, spinach, corn, peas, beans, bread, butter, pie, ice cream, and three or four cups of coffee.
He was known to have eaten a huge omelet made of 18 eggs and three big slices of ham, plus half a dozen slices of buttered toast and several cups of coffee. Ty Cobb, no stickler for accuracy in his memoirs of baseball life said, I’ve seen him at midnight, propped up in bed, ordered six club sandwiches, a platter of pig’s knuckles and a pitcher of beer. He downed all that while smoking a big black cigar. Next day, if he hit a homer, he trot around the bases complaining about gas pains and a bellyache.”
Babe Ruth Stories for Days
I’m reading this from Robert Creamer’s book and it’s pretty clear Babe Ruth was a machine.
Maybe he had low pain tolerance, like calling for the gas for a torn fingernail, but he was an absolute machine. And the babe had to get creative to keep this machine running. Imagine it, check this out.
Listen to these unorthodox remedies that the babe had on file. This is what you get with the babe. This is in the book.
“Introduced before a game to a man he had never seen before, said, you sound like you have a cold. The man admitted he did. Ruth reached into the hip pocket of his uniform and pulled out a big onion. Here, gnaw on this, he said. Raw onions are cold killers.”
And then now here’s another one.
“During a blistering heat wave, Ruth brought a cabbage into the dugout and put it in the team’s old-fashioned water cooler. And each inning before he went onto the field, he took a fresh cabbage leaf and put it under his cap to keep himself cool.”
So these are some of the things that the babe did to stay cool in the summer and to fight off colds. He’d carry around a big onion in his uniform just in case he ran into a stranger who might need it.
This is the babe being the babe. And the way people describe him in Robert Creamer’s book, they just had trouble describing this guy. Like using all the descriptive words in the dictionary to try to describe Babe Ruth.
And this is when I realized you really can’t describe Babe Ruth. Unless you write an entire book like Robert Creamer, you’re not going to bottom line Babe Ruth with a couple of words. But of course people try to do it.
Here’s an example from the book. This is how they tried to explain him.
“He was so alive, so attractive, like an animal or a child, ingenuous, unselfconscious, appealing. Frank Graham said he was a very simple man, in some ways a primitive man. He had little education and little need for what he had. Taumini said he had the supreme self-confidence of the naive.”
“On a stifling hot day at the Washington ballpark, he said to President Harding, hot as hell, ain’t it, Prez? He met Marshall Falk when that renowned French hero of World War I was making a tour of the United States. Early in the 1920s, he said politely, I suppose you were in the war?”
I love these simple descriptive words for Babe Ruth. They’re just all over the board. They really are. Self-confident, primitive.
There’s so many different ways people tried to describe the babe in this book by Robert Creamer. They said childlike, young and innocent, uninhibited and joyful, profane, outspoken, a constant source of joy, so alive, so attractive. This is all in the book. People trying to describe what the babe was like. They would say he was primitive and childlike, but that’s not all. He was sharp. He was smart, witty and funny.
Think about dealing with an entire team of smart-ass ballplayers back in the 1920s. I can remember those days just as a college player. I can remember how nasty it could get in the dugout, running around with the whole crew of athletes, all just constantly taking shots at each other non-stop. But the babe could dish it out better than anyone. He was fast on his feet, and quick with a comeback like nobody else.
And then there’s his opponents. The babe was a joy to be around unless you got him mad. Then look the hell out. In the book, there’s a story about an exchange that the babe had with an opposing pitcher. This guy Sherdell, who was yapping at the babe during a game. Well, that’s not going to go very well for anyone. And it didn’t go very well for this guy Sherdell. Here’s what it says in the book.
“A year and a half later, Ruth was asked by a reporter what he and Shertle had said to each other in the moments after the quick pitch and before the home run.
I said, the National League is a hell of a league, Ruth replied.
What did he say?
He said it sure was or something like that.
And what did you say?
I said, put one right here and I’ll knock it out of the park for you.
What happened?
Ruth grinned. He did and I did.”
So like I was saying, maybe they called the babe childlike or primitive, but he was quick, man. He was sharp. There’s an interview in the book. It goes on for pages and he’s just firing off one liners back to these reporters line after line on and on. It’s just rapid fire, quick witted answers. It’s incredible. And so he’s dealing with this pitcher on the mound who quick pitched him.
He didn’t give him enough time in the batter’s box. So they started talking trash. The babe didn’t appreciate it. And he just says, put one right here, whatever your name is, I’ll knock it out of the park. And the reporter is just like, so well, what happened? And the babe just says, well, “he did and I did.” That’s great.
So then now babe is going to beat his own home run record of 59. He hits 60 home runs in 1927.
And this was a big deal for the babe. Here’s what it says in Creamer’s book.
Breaking His Own Record, Number 60!
“The 60th homer meant a great deal to Ruth. In the early years, he had bettered his home run total each season. 11, 29, then 54, then 59 in 1921. But he had been trying futilely since to break the record again. Now at last he had done it. And he had demonstrated to young Gehrig, who deservedly won the most valuable player award, that Ruth was still king.”
So 1927, Garrag and Ruth were kind of in this home run race together for a while. And then Ruth pulls ahead at the end of the year and he hits 60 to break the all time home run record. This is crazy, 60 home runs. So the book goes into this a little bit more when he hit the 60 home runs, it was pretty amazing, absolute craziness as he’s approaching 60 at the end of the year.
So let me read this from the book. Says,
“When he hit his 50th, he talked of breaking his record, but it seemed all but impossible. There were only 17 games left to play. He hit three in the next eight games, which is very close to a 60 homer pace, but that was not fast enough. At 53 homers, he still needed seven more and there were only nine games left. He hit three in the next three games.
On number 56, he carried his bat around the bases with him to frustrate souvenir seekers. As he passed third base, a boy came out of the stands, pounded him joyfully on the back and grabbed the bat. Babe dragged boy and bat all the way across home plate.”
It’s crazy. There’s pandemonium. The kids are chasing the babe around the bases trying to grab his bat.
Babes carrying his bat all the way around the bases with him. And of course he ends up hitting number 60 to break his own record of 59. He hits number 60 in the second to the last game of the season in the eighth inning. Like I just read out a Robert Creamer’s book. It meant a great deal to Babe to break his own record of 59 home runs. He was so pumped after the game when he did it. After his 60th home run.
Here’s what his comments were on his record. In the clubhouse after the game, he says,
“60, count’em, 60! Let’s see some other son of a bitch match that!”
That’s what he was heard yelling in the clubhouse after his 60th home run after that game. That’s incredible. So now with Lou Gehrig hitting right behind the babe in the lineup, the Yankees are on their way to forming one of the greatest, if not the greatest teams of all time, the 1927 World Champions.
They swept the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the World Series and they dominated right from the very start. There’s a cool story in Babe’s book about that 1927 World Series. The Babe said that they won that series the day before it started. And what he meant by it is that they arrived early to Pittsburgh for game one.
Back to Back World Series Sweeps
And as the Yankees are taking batting practice, the Pittsburgh players decided to try to get a look at their opponents. This was the first time that many of the Pirates players had seen the Yankees play. And the way that Bay describes it, they were putting on an absolute display in batting practice where almost every single pitch was just crushed into the stands with the Pirate players sitting there watching.
And so as the story goes, these Pirate players are just kind of slumping into their seats watching the Yankees just crushed balls all over their ballpark and they just kind of squirmed away shaking their heads like they knew they had no chance and they didn’t they got swept in four games so the babe in this book he talks about the 1927 yankee team he says it was the greatest ball club that ever stepped onto the field.
The next season not too bad either another world series victory for the yankees and another four game sweep. So it’s back to back four game sweeps in the World Series for the Yankees, 1927 and then 1928.
Babe hit three home runs in game four of the World Series, his second time hitting three home runs in a World Series game. And then by the way, he says, the train ride back from St. Louis after the Yankees second World Series in a row, he says,
“I doubt if there ever was another train ride to match our wild ride out of St. Louis, on the night of our great triumph.”
-Babe Ruth
So that’s amazing. Knowing what we know now. Can you imagine that train ride? These guys knew how to celebrate is one takeaway from all of these books.
So as Babe Ruth gets older now and his playing days are up, but he wants to stay in the game as a manager. But the Yankees are not interested at all. Babe was really disappointed that he couldn’t get hired as the manager of the Yankees.
The team owners would just tell him, look, you could barely manage yourself over all those years. How can we trust you now to lead our entire ball club? Like they just saw this guy run wild for a decade. How could they take him seriously as a manager? And the babe would say like, well, look, I’ve been through it all. So now I know all the ups and downs. Now I’m able to relate to the younger players and I can now help guide them to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes I did.
And the Yankee owners were just like, no, forget it. It’s not going to happen. And this really hurt babe in the thirties as he’s trying to line something up for after his playing days are over. So at the end of his book, he says it like this. says,
“I felt completely lost at first. I thought I’d wake up and find it was a bad dream. And when it became apparent that it wasn’t a dream, I felt certain that the phone would ring and it would be the Yankees or some other big league team in search of me, telling me it was all a mistake, but the phone didn’t ring.”
So this is another common theme in all of my baseball legend stories that I’ve done so far. The owners, they want to move on. They want to find the next Babe Ruth. They’re not looking at anyone’s legacy. They were thinking ahead. Who’s the next big star that they can find? They need to pack the seats and win ballgames now. They’re not worried about what happened in the past.
They’re moving on.
So this same thing happens with all the baseball legends that I’ve read about. And they really struggle with this reality. Hannes Wagner did it. He went through it. Ty Cobb went through it. Ted Williams tried to stick around as a manager for a short time. It didn’t really work out for him very well. Mickey Mantle struggled with life after baseball. So that’s one of the big takeaways from all of these books that I’ve read.
Even the most legendary baseball superstars.
End of the Road
All that work to be the greatest. To get on top and to stay on top. To fight to get paid what you’re worth. The whole way through, they’re dealing with the media and the crazy fans. They’re trying not to go crazy from it all. And then it wasn’t without the pain and disappointment and the frustration at the end once everything’s over. So these are not fairy tale stories, I guess, is one of my biggest takeaways so far. Even for Babe Ruth, he’s pushed out at the end of his career.
He was fired.
The babe was a guy who pushed the limits his whole life. Like I said, in the beginning, he had a profound human spirit to push boundaries, doing whatever the hell he wanted to do. And he’d have everyone in the world recognize him. And then now it’s over. But can you imagine those first few years with the Yankees breaking his own home run record year after year, just melting people’s minds, double and triple the home runs of anyone else.
The profound human spirit to push boundaries day after day. And after reading all about the babe now, I can start to get a better picture in my head about just how big he really was back then. And out of all the different ways people tried to describe the babe, and there’s so many different words in this book by Robert Creamer, mythological, supremely confident, carefree.
One of his teammates said, “He wasn’t human. He dropped out of a tree.”
Nobody knew how to describe Babe Ruth. It’s so funny. And here’s one that you hear a lot when every when all else fails, people will just say the babe was larger than life, but larger than life that doesn’t even seem to describe it.
I had one of my own favorite phrases for trying to describe Babe Ruth. Earlier, I was talking about how I like to just say there are levels. You can just use that phrase in so many different ways, but superstar athletes, there are levels.
Describing Babe Ruth
In the 1920s, you could almost see Babe Ruth using that phrase for himself, launching home runs, trash talking the pitcher as he rounded the bases. can almost picture him explaining to the pitcher, “there are levels to this shit!” As he’s trotting around third base. That’s a perfect phrase for babe. Just like a lot of other ones.
Here’s one more phrase that I like, and you’ll hear this a lot today.
And I’m not sure who started this, but it turned into like sort of a catchphrase, sort of like a proverb in the tech industry, in the tech scene. And just over the last few years, you’ll hear it a lot, but they’ll say, “You can just do things.”
This is like a mantra and it’s about having high agency. You hear people say it like there’s no barriers to how much success you can have. It’s, it’s only what self-imposed that’s going to stop you. You can just do things.
Like it’s all the unwritten social rules that just don’t exist. So don’t overthink it. You can just do things. That’s, that’s something that people will just say now.
So I was curious about this and I searched the origin of that phrase in Gemini. I punched it in and the AI machine traced back the origin of that phrase. A whopping five years. And it credited Sam Altman actually, which is pretty hilarious, as starting the catchphrase, “you can just do things.” And it was from some ex tweet that he had posted.
That’s what Gemini was telling me made this phrase so popular.
But that phrase might fit Babe Ruth better than anyone.
I actually ended one of my episodes on Babe like over a year ago and I said it at the end of my episode. At the end, I just said, you can just do things. And that’s just what popped into my head.
That’s the only way I could describe Babe Ruth.
Well, then I just read the book by Robert Creamer this week. And you’ll never guess what I found in the book.
Out of all the words and phrases to try to describe the legend of the babe, I guess this is still my number one pick.
But it turns out this phrase is not new. Sam Altman didn’t start the mantra. It’s not a product of Silicon Valley over the last five years, like Gemini told me.
What I’m telling you right now is that Babe Ruth was the original definition of the motto, “You can just do things.”
And I have proof right here out of the book that I just read. I’ll just read it from Robert Kramer’s book, published in 1974. Here’s what it says.
“As a grown man, Ruth was usually meticulously honest in money matters, but otherwise that carefree attitude towards moral and social codes remained. His excesses occasionally brought him to his knees, figuratively, if not literally, but in the words of sports writer John Drebbinger, “He was the most uninhibited human being I’ve ever known. He just did things.”
