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of the HBO Sports documentary series...

♪ ♪

Donald Honig: If Babe Ruth had not existed,

it would've been impossible to invent him.

He was the 4th of July, a brass band,

and New Year's Eve all rolled into one.

Studs Terkel: He was bigger in his dissipations,

bigger in his volatility,

bigger in his unpredictability.

He was eccentricity and total excellence

wrapped up in one person.

Robert Creamer: He made the world more fun to be in,

and everybody who was in his orbit felt more alive because of Ruth.

Julia Ruth Stevens: He's my father. He was the only father I ever knew.

He was such a lot of fun.

I enjoyed every minute of it.

Terkel: He was celebrated for being the mythical figure he was,

who, at the same time, was flesh and blood.

And because he was flesh and blood,

he gave us that feeling

of something larger than life

of which we are a part.

(crowd cheering) ♪ ♪

Jean Shepherd: He would get up to the plate,

he would kick the dirt a little bit,

take his stance...

and then smile down at the pitcher.

He'd take the bat, and he'd point it out like that.

Ben Bentley: And you saw people standing up, just applauding.

He hasn't done anything yet, but there he is. They're applauding.

Creamer: He swung and missed once,

you know, that tremendous swing,

he swung around, he's looking up into the stands,

and he was looking right at me, as far as I was concerned.

"Just look, there's Babe Ruth looking at me. Wow."

Bill Mazer: And what are you waiting to see?

"Hit a home run, Babe."

Waiting for the pitch, there was a sense

of a great coiled spring,

and when he swung...

-Bam! -Boom!

-Boom! -Bam! There it went.

It was so frightening. They all ducked.

All of a sudden, you see that ball go.

Up, up, up, up, up.

150 feet high as it passed first base.

and it just floated, floated, floated and went forever.

Like a homing pigeon, it would choose direction and leave town.

That ball had to travel at least 600 feet on the fly.

Over the fence, the parking lot, the restaurant next door,

and four blocks down the street.

And then, very suddenly,

from this moment of immense power and the ball flying out...

Terkel: He ran with little mincing steps--

thin legs, these delicate ankles--

and he minced his way, as though he were a dancer.

Gleason: Doffing his cap left and right,

bowing and waving to everybody.

♪ ♪

And disappeared into the dugout.

(bell tolling)

Liev Schreiber narrating: At Babe Ruth's massive funeral in 1948,

a puzzled drama critic asked a sports writer

"What did this man Ruth do,

"what did he have to merit this?"

History tells us that Babe Ruth was the greatest player

in an era when baseball stood alone as a national pastime.

His talents were beyond unique,

first, as a brilliant pitcher with the Boston Red Sox,

then a thunderous slugger with the New York Yankees.

But was it just Ruth's astounding ability

that allowed him to sit among the gods?

How did the Babe's life pass from that of an ordinary human being...

to star, to legend,

and finally into myth?

♪ ♪

Ruth was far from perfect.

He could be loud, and abrasive, and impossibly immature.

He was a perfect fit for the times.

A man of mighty appetites and unrestrained desires,

the Babe was a metaphor for the big, broadening shoulders of America.

(cheering) (bat cracks)

Schreiber: Ruth himself once said,

"I like to live as big as I can."

In an era when our country was burgeoning with power,

no one hit the ball farther and louder

than Babe Ruth.

Honig: No novelist or Hollywood screenwriter,

at the furthest extremes of their imagination

would have dared invent somebody like this.

(crowd cheering)

This was science fiction.

It's another dimension. Exponential is the word.

The leap is wild and crazy,

something Einsteinian.

(chattering) Wagenheim: You had scientists

coming and examining Ruth,

and all kinds of strange, bizarre articles

in the press about Ruth having superhuman vision

or superhuman coordination.

It was as though someone had come from another planet.

(crowd cheering) Schreiber: The Babe's mammoth swing

transformed baseball. He practically invented the home run.

In 1920, he hit 54.

a total no other team in the league could match.

And he did it with an exhilarating presence and unmatched muscle

that had never been seen before.

John Kennelly: John McGraw may have been

the best inside baseball manager

that ever came over the Pike.

This guy was the Baltimore chop,

the bunt, move the runner along,

work for one run at a time.

Ruth came along and started breaking up ball games with one swing.

Game announcer: There it goes!

McGraw hated him!

Here he'd been, 30 years, managing and working for one run.

This guy wrecked the whole afternoon with one swipe.

Shepherd: Pitchers were afraid of him.

They'd lie at night,

knowing that the next day they're facing Ruth,

and they would toss in their sleep.

Bill Werber: I was on first base, and Ruth hit a home run.

I ran around second, hitting a pretty good clip,

Art Fletcher was at third base, saying, "Whoa! Whoa!"

'Cause the ball was way up in the right-field stands.

I kept on going, you know, and I came and sat down.

And when he came into the dugout,

he reached over, patted me on top of the head and said,

"You don't need to run like that, son,

when the Babe hits one."

Honig: He was doing it with such joy and simplicity,

almost as if he didn't know what he was doing.

He just went up and did it.

Creamer: His hitting was just unprecedented.

No one had ever done that before,

and that thrilled people. It excited people.

It gave you a vicarious sense of accomplishment

to see Ruth hit home runs.

It became an exciting thing.

Schreiber: For baseball, the timing of Ruth's accomplishments

was perfect.

At the beginning of the decade, a dark cloud of deceit

had threatened the game.

Accused of throwing the 1919 World Series,

several Chicago White Sox players were tossed out of baseball.

Disenchanted fans stayed away,

until they were lured back

by the game's two new powers.

Newsreel announcer: In move to clean up game,

team owners in 1920 made Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis

high commissioner of national pastime,

and he brought baseball back.

But Babe Ruth, too, was a big help

to the commissioner with his spindle legs,

beaming face, and booming bat.

Even when the Bambino hit a single,

thousands cheered, and thousands more fought to see him play the game.

Honig: The home team is in seventh place, going nowhere.

On a weekday afternoon, we'd draw maybe 2,000 or 3,000 people.

The Yankees came into town.

The crowds suddenly were getting larger.

(chattering)

Honig: Every seat was full on a hot Wednesday afternoon,

and there was only one reason for that.

Bentley: "Hey, the Babe is playing.

"Hey, this is somebody big, somebody we can root for."

Honig: Their beloved game was embodied in this man,

and they would sell out the house.

People wanted to see this guy.

♪ ♪

Schreiber: In 1923, the Yankees took advantage of Ruth's popularity

by building a brand-new $2.5 million stadium.

It held 65,000 fans,

and because so many of them were there to see the Babe,

it was quickly christened the House that Ruth built.

Hayward Hale Broun: His existence enlarges us

just by looking at him, thinking about him.

It was because you saw perfection,

and it's so glorious that it's almost painful.

And when you were at the ballpark

and Babe took that big swing,

and the ball didn't fall down at the end--

it whacked against a seat in the bleachers--

you thought, "I saw this. I was here.

"I was in the presence of greatness."

And to be in the presence of greatness means

that some tiny fleck of it

is attached to you.

Honig: The most exciting thing in baseball

was watching Babe Ruth hit a home run.

And the second most exciting thing

was watching Babe Ruth strike out.

One of the few quotable lines from Lou Gehrig--

he said, "I batted after him, and it never mattered what I did,

"'cause they were always talking about what he had just done,"

even if he had done nothing.

(piano music playing)

Schreiber: More than any other athlete during sports' golden age,

Babe Ruth's appeal ranged far beyond

the man-made limits of the great ballparks he played in.

(chattering) By the mid-'20s,

Ruth was everywhere.

Pushed along by the explosion of tabloid journalism,

he would eventually become an inescapable part

of popular American culture.

In the eyes of the press, the Babe was a dream subject.

He was made for them--

just as Al Capone was made for them

or Charles Lindbergh was made for them--

because of the way he looked and because of what he did.

Bentley: When he would come to Chicago,

one of the Chicago papers just had

"Ruth in Chicago!" with an exclamation point.

"Ruth Home Run Wins Game."

That kind of stuff got into every paper across the country.

Every man had it with his breakfast coffee.

♪ ♪

"'Ruth Home Run.' Jeez, he hit another one?"

Hamill: The sports writers played a crucial part of it,

and the photographers,

'cause he was enough of a ham.

He'd lend himself to publicity stunts.

♪ ♪

Honig: Put a beard on him, pose him with a monkey--

he was a photographer's dream.

Hamill: He was a quote machine. He was not some remote guy.

He sat, talked, and drank beer with them,

and they cherished him for that.

He made their job easier.

Shepherd: So the media really built Babe Ruth.

Every reporter who covered Ruth

had the illusion that he was a great friend of Ruth, personally.

And so, the minute he started to write about Ruth,

he was always writing about what he considered his friend.

♪ ♪

And you can't forget that face.

He had the face of a happy catcher's mitt.

He had a face that looked like a horse had stepped on it.

That helped.

Broun: He was as easy to recognize

as the King of Siam's white elephant.

Honig: The face seemed to fit Babe Ruth.

I can't imagine a handsome Babe Ruth.

Bill Gleason: Who has ever looked like him

since Babe Ruth?

Try to think of somebody who has looked like him.

It's like he was created for this role that he was given,

and he played it to the hilt.

Creamer: The name helped, "Babe Ruth."

I mean, gee, if his name was Harold Thompson,

I don't think he would've had the same impact.

But "Babe Ruth"? (cheering)

Many Italian immigrants in New York,

instead of saying, "How'd the Babe do?"

They'd say, "How'd the Bambino do yesterday?"

And so, "Bambino" became his name.

and the "Bam!" sound fitted in there.

"Bam! Hits one." Everything fit.

You didn't forget him. He was indelible.

♪ ♪

And everybody who saw him had a story about him.

remembered something about him. Everyplace he went,

he sort of left a trail.

Schreiber: As baseball's biggest draw,

Ruth made a fortune criss-crossing the country.

No town was too small or too far away.

If the Babe's fans couldn't get to a game,

he would get to them.

Major league baseball ended at the Mississippi River,

where the St. Louis Cardinals were.

Babe Ruth went on barnstorming tours

after the season.

He was spreading baseball across the country.

(train whistle blares)

Honig: People would be standing along the tracks or out in the meadows,

because they had heard that Babe Ruth was on that train.

They were hoping to get a half-second glimpse of him.

He would wave at them. He would show them his cards,

saying, "I've got a great hand."

Gleason: And the Babe being on the back platform,

and kids running from all over the place

and jumping up on the train to get his autograph,

to touch him, to look at him.

(people cheering) (kids shouting)

Honig: You read about them and you heard about them,

but suddenly to see these big-league ballplayers

on your local sandlots-- and you're talking about the best players,

like Gehrig, Lefty Grove.

There, in the middle of it all, was Babe Ruth.

Moby Dick in a goldfish bowl.

Did you ever see one of his movies?

(piano music playing) Schreiber: At the top of his chosen game,

the Babe even tried acting,

although his flair for the dramatic didn't come through on-screen.

Ruth's movies were far from an artistic or financial hit,

but that didn't seem to hurt his popularity.

♪ ♪

Hamill: More people knew about Ruth than knew about the president

in this country, and a lot more cared.

Broun: He transcended sport in the sense that

people who didn't care about sport knew who he was.

He went outside the limits of sport culture.

♪ ♪

(chattering)

Moe Berg shared a suite with Babe.

Babe was in the bedroom with-- What shall I call it?

--multiple feminine companionship,

and the phone rang. Moe thought it was for Babe,

he didn't pick it up, and Babe came in

in some deshabille-- with his pants down-- and said,

(whispering) "You're Babe Ruth.

"He's Father Flanagan.

"Tell him you'll be right down."

Moe-- "Hello, Father.

"This is Babe. I'll be right down."

Later he said to Babe, "Why couldn't you have said that?"

And Babe said, "Me, with what I was doing,

"talk to a priest? Never."

Honig: Ruth was a complex mix.

He was crude, and rough, uncultured.

Werber: I was under the shower,

and I had my face to the wall

and the warm water coming down on me,

and I was lathering my face, and my chest,

and under my arms with soap.

And all of a sudden, I felt something

a little hotter

than the water from the shower.

And I turned around, and here was Ruth

standing outside the shower,

using the middle of my back for a urinal.

And he laughed, guffawed.

He thought that was real funny, you know?

Honig: But at the same time, he was a very good man.

He loved children. He loved making people happy.

He loved doing things for them,

far beyond what you would expect from a man of his stature.

When we went on road trips, he always made certain

that I got to mass on a Sunday morning.

(bell ringing) So we pray...

Kelly: If nobody else got to mass,

He made sure that I got to mass with him.

Perfect gentleman, like a father to me.

♪ ♪ Schreiber: Babe Ruth could be

both crude and kind.

His personality was a paradox,

shaped by two compelling and conflicting forces.

Early in his childhood, George Herman Ruth learned the way of the streets,

growing up an incorrigible kid in a tough neighborhood

along Baltimore's seedy waterfront.

The son of a saloon keeper,

wherever Ruth went, trouble followed.

Creamer: When he was a little kid,

he would drink things in the bar.

He used to throw things at the cops and at the truckers.

He stole. A real pain-in-the-neck little kid.

the kind you could admire, maybe if you weren't in charge of him,

but he was a real nuisance to his parents.

Schreiber: When he was eight,

Ruth's parents had him committed to St. Mary's,

a reform school for boys.

Showered with tough love,

he experienced kindness and compassion

for the first time.

The resulting inner struggle between right and wrong

provided an interesting contradiction

which would define Ruth's behavior

throughout his personal and professional life.

Thomas Foley: He had grown up a bad boy,

and he didn't want any of us to go through what he went through,

and he used to lecture us along those lines.

"Do what your mother tells you to do,

"and do what your father tells you to do."

He'd hear a kid swearing, and he'd yell out,

"God damn it! Stop that goddamn swearing over there!"

♪ ♪

Kennelly: He had trouble managing a family,

didn't seem to much give a damn about that.

He was a paradox.

Schreiber: Ruth had become a major leaguer at 19.

Just months after he joined the Red Sox,

Babe married his first wife, Helen,

herself a babe-- barely 16.

♪ ♪ (chattering)

It was typically impulsive,

and Ruth quickly tired of the commitment.

Even after adopting a child--

rumor had him fathering by way of a maid--

the Babe abandoned his family,

apparently uncaring of his actions.

For a man of Ruth's background,

the temptations that fame and fortune brought

were too great to ignore.

Broun: If you've been a poor kid, and he had been a poor kid,

what you want more than anything

is more to eat, more to drink,

more to enjoy

than you ever had in those times when your pleasures were

in the dribs and drabs of an extra piece of bread

or a bed next to the wall.

Here's a kid who grew up in an orphanage

and probably had more animal appetites than 14 animals.

He devoured food. He devoured sex.

He devoured fun.

He was always reaching out

for something of enjoyment.

Babe Ruth is the only guy

that ever lived up to his reputation.

He was a monster off the ball field.

Charles Devens: We left the Back Bay Station

here in Boston,

went down to New York,

and he got off at 125th Street,

and in that time...

I saw him drink

a quart of scotch.

He was perfectly okay, wasn't drunk or anything.

When he got off the train, he was just very genial.

♪ ♪

Heinrich: White Sox got a great idea.

They were gonna take the Babe out.

They were gonna make a night of it.

They took him out.

(chattering)

He gets up there, "Here we go!"

(mumbles) Told the bartender,

"Charlie, mix me up one of those things."

(mimics mixing)

Poured the thing in there, the Babe lifted that up...

(mimics drinking)

He went all the way,

ice cubes included.

For Pete's sakes, that guy's got a throat

like a trombone.

Three minutes before the ballgame, here comes the Babe.

(cheering) Miller Huggins looks and says, "Look at him.

"He ain't even been in bed all night."

He says, "That guy's gonna play today."

Okay, he played.

He butchered the White Sox, okay?

♪ ♪

The game is over, Babe hurries up the steps

to get to the White Sox before they disappear.

"Hey, where we going tonight?"

(laughs)

Broun: Then of course, he ate

god knows how many hot dogs.

He had drawn me back into the dressing room during a game,

to get a couple of hot dogs and a bottle of soda pop.

I'd go back two, three, four times during a ballgame.

Hot mustard, relish, sauerkraut--

he had the works.

Creamer: Oh good lord. Oh my.

(chuckles) Yes, he ate. He was hungry,

and he had an appetite for everything.

He wanted to taste everything. He chased women.

♪ ♪

He used to go out with the kind of women

everybody would like to go out with if they could--

the chorus girls, Broadway cuties,

Kennelly: What Ruth liked more than anything else

was lying on his stomach

and having a geisha walk on his spine

from top to bottom and back again.

Ruth thought that was beyond belief.

I do believe the geisha was naked at the time.

(chuckles) I don't know about Ruth.

(cheering) Werber: Women looked for him,

and he used to like to have his visitations

in the morning before ballgames.

He was exhausted

and didn't really have room in his schedule,

he still would allow one into his bedroom

and do his duty.

Devens: Called me up one day

and said, "Devens, could I use your room?"

I said, "Who's this?" "Babe," he said.

"Why yes, sir," I said.

♪ ♪ Shepherd: This guy was the king of the world.

Imagine being Babe Ruth.

That'd be a ball, wouldn't it?

Schreiber: There were times when even Ruth

took excess to the extreme.

He missed two months of the '25 season

with a mysterious illness

the writers called "the bellyache heard round the world,"

although others hinted that syphilis was the more likely cause.

♪ ♪

There was even one time his insatiable appetite for women

nearly led to his demise.

Werber: He had this Latin girl

in Ybor City in Tampa.

He told her that the relationship had to end,

because he was going into spring training.

In reality, he had found something that he liked somewhat better.

And this Latin girl came in the front entrance to the dining room,

she looked around the dining room

and saw Ruth and this other woman over there.

And as she was coming toward him,

she reached into her pocketbook,

and she pulled out this revolver

and kept on coming. This woman fired...

(gunshot) And Lazzeri said, "Did she hit you?"

He said, "Yeah. It didn't amount to nothing."

He says, "There it is, right there."

And he showed the calf of his leg where

the bullet had gone right through,

and the scar was there,

They laughed about it and talked about it.

He did everything to excess--

the bad things and all of the good things, too.

Schreiber: The two sides of Ruth's personality

were markedly different,

yet equally compelling.

At times egotistical and selfish,

the Babe could also be thoughtful and considerate.

He was extremely generous with his time and money,

especially with kids.

♪ ♪

Ruth reveled in the smile of a child.

In their eyes he saw himself.

He enjoyed the innocence and spontaneity

of adolescence. (shouting)

Forsaken by his parents,

the Babe wanted kids to experience the love and affection

he felt he never really had.

Honig: Ruth's relationship with children was remarkable.

It was genuine.

He made children feel comfortable,

He made them feel happy.

(laughs)

You see these pictures, he's surrounded by hundreds of kids.

There's always a smiling, relaxed face,

so happily in his element.

And there is Ruth with this big, happy smile,

spreading his joy,

and doing it with a naturalness.

It was so genuine, that it just flowed into them.

♪ ♪

Foley: Almost every weekend,

Babe Ruth would come in and help us bagging peanuts.

He'd work for a couple of hours with us

then he'd throw a $10 or a $20 bill on the table

where we were working. "Take care of the kids."

He'd walk out.

Mary Smith Macklin: Had to have an operation.

My father, who worked at Yankee Stadium

almost all his life, was a very hard-working man,

but they didn't have that kind of money.

Dr. Smith, he was the head of the hospital,

said because my name was Mary Smith,

said we had to be related, and I wouldn't have to pay.

But I was told later from another doctor that wasn't true.

It was paid for by the Babe,

and they told me he was a friend of my father's.

I just kept looking at his face,

because he had such a beautiful smile.

♪ ♪ Ardith Rutland: We had a little orange juice stand.

It was right near the golf course. He was playing golf.

He said to me his name was Babe Ruth,

and I said, "Well, where's your candy bars?"

'Cause that's all I knew, was Babe Ruth was a candy bar.

Well, they laughed. They thought this was

real funny. And I put my head down

and sorta started to cry, I guess.

He patted me on the head and said, "Are you going to be here tomorrow?"

And I said, "Yes."

And so he came back the next day,

gave us a whole big box of Baby Ruth candy bars.

He just said, "Now, little girl,

"don't you forget who I am."

He had such beautiful blue eyes.

They sparkled.

(piano music playing)

Schreiber: In the roaring, raucous '20s,

when America celebrated consumption and excess,

no other public figure was worshiped like the Babe.

Thanks to his friends in the press,

Ruth's repulsive behavior was never reported,

his vulgar side rarely seen.

To his adoring fans,

Ruth's indiscretions were harmless.

He was a humble everyman,

a kindred spirit.

Gleason: He was loved because people who had flaws--

men and women, even children who had flaws in their character,

knew he had flaws.

He was one of them.

He was not above them.

He was a spiritual force.

Creamer: They loved him.

They liked the feeling about him.

He was a joy to be around.

He lifted things up. He was alive.

♪ ♪ (people chattering)

Bud Greenspan: I saw him a couple of times with Jack Dempsey,

when Jack Dempsey had the restaurant

on Broadway and 48th Street.

They used to sit in the window together and talk,

and you'd have crowds, hundreds of them looking in the window.

"There's Babe Ruth! There's Jack Dempsey!"

(people chattering)

He relished the whole idea of being part of the scene,

as opposed to others who could come in and come out,

and no one would even know they were there.

When he came into a room, he was loud, and positive,

and where he was was the place to be.

Broun: A professional barbershop quartet

was singing as part of the entertainment,

and suddenly a husky and uncertain voice joined them.

♪ Strike two ♪ And even though he was a lousy singer,

everybody was very happy that he did it.

(bat cracks) ♪ It's a home run ♪

Mazer: You know how an aura exudes?

There was a quality about Ruth

that just invited you in. In.

(bat cracks) Hey, Red.

Henrich: They didn't care a whole lot about exhibition games.

By and large, you played half a game and that's it.

but the guys are complaining,

saying, "Jesus Christ, let's get out of here."

The Babe said, "You wanna get out of here?"

He says, "I'll stop the game next inning."

Next inning, some young kid ran out

for his autograph...

and the Babe...

he signs for him. Well, another kid comes out,

and first thing you know, center field was filled up with kids.

(chattering) That's the end of the ballgame.

Will you sign my autograph? Why sure.

Werber: He'd stand there for an hour and sign those autographs.

Now Gehrig, by contrast,

and Grove, by contrast,

they didn't want to be bothered with people or bothered with kids,

and they'd come out under the same circumstances,

and they'd wade through 'em.

♪ ♪

Honig: The instrument they used was a fountain pen,

and fountain pens had a tendency to leak and squirt.

Splashed with ink on his suit or on his face,

he never minded. He never complained.

They would ask him, "Why did you sit

"for so many hours, Babe, just signing autographs?"

And he said, "I like to make everybody happy."

♪ ♪

He happened to see me over there in the corner,

and he came over and says, "What's your kid's name?"

He said, "Let me get you a ball for your kid."

And I said, "Well, I don't have any kids.

"In fact, I'm not even married."

He said, "Well, we can fix that."

So he took a ball, and he wrote something on it.

And when I looked at it, he had on there,

"Hello to be. From Babe Ruth."

He says, "When your kid comes along,

"tell him Babe Ruth had something for him."

So this now is a very treasured possession of my daughter.

Mazer: But if you took Ruth for more than what he was,

you were kidding yourself. ♪ ♪

You wouldn't walk up to Ruth and say to him, "Babe,

"what do you think of Einstein?"

He'd probably say, "What's he hitting?"

♪ ♪

Tommy Heinrich: A friend of Ruth's sees him

at the station, and they get off the train.

"Hey, Babe, did you hear about Waite? Waite Hoyt?"

"No, what about him?"

He says, "He's got a case of amnesia."

And Babe says, "He has?

"You tell him to save me one of those bottles."

Werber: He came out to the dugout

and complained to Doc Painter, who was the trainer.

He said, "Doc, my eyes feel a little cloudy today.

"My vision's not too good anymore."

Doc Payter said, "Well, why don't you go down and get some of that...

"Visine-- that Eyelo."

And Babe gave his eyes a good washing with that Eyelo,

and I think he got two for four or three for four that day,

and he attributed it to the Eyelo.

So the next day when he came out, his eyes were all right,

but he used the Eyelo again.

Lazzeri, a day or two later, sneaked out there,

and he took the Eyelo bottle,

and poured all the Eyelo out

and filled it with water,

and put it back in the medicine case.

Ruth came out and started to use the Eyelo,

then Lazzeri yanked it out of his hands

and says, "Let me have some of that stuff."

And when he got the Eyelo from out of Babe's hands,

he drank it all.

Babe is slapping his big ol' thighs

and says, "Look at the dago,

"drinking the Baby's Eyelo."

And Lazzeri got two or three hits.

So then, Ruth, following that,

started bathing his eyes and drinking it, too.

(moos) ♪ ♪

He could never remember anybody's name,

and the people he played with, played side by side.

He called everybody "keed." "There's my keed."

Keed. K-double E-D. "Hey, keed."

"Hiya, keed." He'd say that to a guy who was 92 years old.

Werber: Lazzeri said, "I'm gonna have a little fun with the Babe."

So he called Myles Thomas, who was some distance away.

Now Myles was a relief pitcher on the Yankees

and had been with the Yankees for some three or four years.

He called Myles over, and he said to Babe,

"I want to introduce Charlie Devens,

"who's just showed up from Harvard and gonna be with us a while."

Ruth stuck out that great, big meat hand

and said, "Nice to see you, keed.

"Welcome to the Yankees."

And Thomas had been on the ball club for three or four years.

(laughs) Ruth didn't appear to know that,

but he was glad to see him nonetheless.

♪ ♪

Broun: He did what he wanted to do.

If it got him in trouble, he was always startled.

Who's the heavyweight champion? Man: Max Schmeling.

Hey, what's the idea?

(laughter)

He was totally spontaneous.

I was the captain of the high school golf team.

So, Babe liked to play golf,

so he said, "Would you like to play golf with Babe Ruth?"

Now any kid would love something like that.

And I helped him on several holes,

'cause we were partners. He won maybe $50 to $100.

Next day at the high school,

I was in class, about 12:30 to 1:00.

"Babe Ruth down the hallway, looking for you

"to go play golf for the day."

I said, "What?" I couldn't believe it.

I was the most surprised kid you ever seen when he walked into that classroom,

and the principal was right with him.

"Babe's here to take you to the golf course. It's okay to go."

So I jumped up and went with him.

♪ ♪

Werber: He never had any serious thoughts in his head, really.

But you'd have liked him. (laughs)

He wasn't a bad fella.

(chattering)

Creamer: Everybody has a story on Ruth,

and stories piled on stories become legends.

And of course, the classic one is...

The 1932 World Series

and the so-called called shot.

Some extremely bad feelings

had arisen between the two contending teams,

the Yankees and the Chicago Cubs.

And they're yelling at him from the Cub dugout

the most obscene things,

and he's yelling back.

Creamer: He was riding the Chicago bench from the batters box.

Honig: And the pitcher, Charley Root,

throws across strike one, throws across strike two,

and here comes baseball's fabled moment.

He suddenly stopped...

Kelly: And I vividly heard him yell out to Charley Root,

"It only takes one!"

And then he elevated his arm...

"This one's going out!"

Pointing to the center-field bleachers.

And by god, the next ball,

he hit right where he had pointed.

I don't think he could've done it in a million other times,

but he did do it, and I saw it.

Kelly: I asked him. I said, "You called that shot, didn't you, Babe?"

"Why? Don't you think I did?

"That's where I pointed. and that's where it went."

Schreiber: Others, however, weren't so sure.

In home movies of the at-bat,

Ruth appears to be gesturing at something,

but at what remains inconclusive.

(cheering)

The next day in the papers,

there was barely a mention of Ruth's declaration,

just straightforward reporting of the home run.

But as time passed, the notion caught on,

and soon took a life of its own.

Newsreel accounts unashamedly showed

Ruth's gesture as fact,

and Hollywood later took the myth to epic proportions.

Don't forget Johnny!

(crowd roars)

Radio announcer: He pointed to the flagpole in the center-field bleachers,

plainly indicating that's where he means

to park that next pitch.

(crowd roars)

Shepherd: It's a harmless little myth.

Hell, a lot of people believe in Santa Claus.

Nothing wrong with it. (chuckles)

Terkel: Babe was part of that old American folklore

of the braggarts, the big ones--

Mike Fink, Pecos Pete, Paul Bunyan and the blue ox.

Broun: It doesn't matter whether it is based in reality,

because a thing is what it is

because we wish it to be.

Napoleon said once that history is the myth that men choose to believe.

Honig: Whether he actually called it, it's irrelevant,

because reality evaporates,

and the myth becomes the truth.

I want you all to remember what I said about smoking--

it'll stunt your growth!

Look what it did to him.

(kids laughing)

Schreiber: A great deal of the Ruth legend is just...

well, legend,

half-truths that became myth.

Ruth frequently visited hospitals,

so his home-run promise to a dying kid might have been true.

But he couldn't possibly have taken a dog to the hospital

in uniform before a game.

Could he? Where's your operating room?

Why over there, but you can't go in there.

Get your best doctors in there in a hurry. I've got a sick dog.

Creamer: I think he's a tremendous mythic figure,

but I think the history is as big or bigger than the myth.

The myth diminishes what he really was.

and establishes a sort of false Ruth.

It's big, but it's not the truth,

and I think the truth is bigger than the myth.

Schreiber: The true Ruth started out as a pitcher.

maybe the best left-hander in Boston Red Sox history.

In just five seasons,

the Babe won close to 90 games

and helped the Sox win the World Series

in 1916 and again in 1918

by throwing 29 consecutive scoreless innings.

He was on his way to the hall of fame as a pitcher

until he picked up his bat and rewrote the record book.

Creamer: For the last six weeks of the 1918 season,

he pitched one day,

then played the outfield the next three days,

then pitched again, then played the outfield for the rest of the season.

So here's a man pitching and playing the outfield,

playing every day and hitting at the same time.

It's one of the most extraordinary things in baseball history.

♪ ♪

Schreiber: Ruth's trade from Boston to the New York Yankees in 1920

was the catalyst for sports' most renowned dynasty.

For the next nine seasons,

the Yanks played in six World Series,

winning three, including 1927,

with Ruth the cornerstone of one of history's greatest teams.

Announcer: The Yankee's hard-hitting quartet--

Lou Gehrig, Combs, Lazzeri and Babe Ruth.

Creamer: He was a fabulous, beautifully- coordinated athlete.

They all look at him, and they call him fat.

He stole home!

He was fast, he had a good arm.

There was nothing about baseball he couldn't do.

(cheering)

Mazer: You know about his year in 1921?

.378, hit 59 home runs,

scored 178 runs,

drove in 171 runs,

got over 40 doubles, 16 triples,

stole 16 bases.

That was Babe Ruth.

Announcer: Babe Ruth batting.

Wow! There goes one into right field.

He had six of the most extraordinary seasons,

from 1926 to 1932,

that any ballplayer has ever had.

He averaged over 50 home runs a year for six years.

It's so hard to imagine. He was so far ahead,

and hit twice as many as the others.

56 homers, 58 homers,

60 homers.

♪ ♪

Henrich: Slugging average is .690.

You believe that? Most of the Hall-of-Famers,

they're very happy with .500.

He's .690.

(mutters)

People swim faster than Johnny Weissmuller,

people run faster than Paavo Nurmi,

but to hit 60 home runs and bat .340?

The things that he did are still remarkable.

Kennelly: Nobody's ever come close to what he's done on the field.

Name me one other guy

who had as many records

that could be broken? He set them all!

Lifetime average over .340,

714 home runs.

There was a lot of myth...

but there was a hell of a lot of mister, too.

♪ ♪

Stevens: Daddy loved The Lone Ranger,

and I loved to listen to that with him.

We'd always cheer him on.

We always had a wonderful time.

He was a marvelous dancer,

had perfect timing, and he taught me how to dance.

And I loved dancing with Daddy.

Schreiber: Julia Ruth became Babe's daughter

after Ruth married her mother, Claire, in 1929,

the year the stock market crashed.

By most accounts, Babe handled marriage the second time around

much better than the first.

But just when his family life seemed settled,

his baseball life started to come apart.

♪ ♪

(shouting)

At first, the crash of '29 and the resulting depression

had little effect on Ruth or the money he was paid.

His enormous checks, which were often 10 times greater

than any of his contemporaries,

had reached $80,000 in 1931.

But at the same time the country began to sink deeper into economic despair,

Ruth's skills began to erode...

♪ ♪

giving Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert

good reason to cut his salary and eventually cut him.

After 20 productive major league seasons,

the Yanks no longer needed Ruth.

The team that had been his for so long

now centered around Lou Gehrig.

Werber: Ruth was playing his last year with the Yankees in Boston.

The ball went between his legs and went to the wall.

The fans in Boston booed him unmercifully,

and it made me sick.

♪ ♪

Honig: Even Ruth in his decline, it was monumental.

Players would stop during pre-game workout

and watch him struggling in the field, running after a fly ball.

trying to bend over and pick up a ground ball.

They couldn't believe what they were seeing.

The great statue beginning to crack

and topple.

The god turning human.

Stevens: Colonel Ruppert sent him a contract for a dollar a year.

and gave him his unconditional release.

Ruth: I can't go on forever,

but you can bet your sweet life

that I won't play until I drop,

but I'll play until I damn near drop.

(laughter) Thank you.

Schreiber: In 1935, Ruth took his diminishing skills

to the Boston Braves.

Ever the showman, he defiantly hit three homers

in one of his final games.

But at age 40, the Babe retired as a player

and spent three years away from the game.

Feels good to be back in this uniform.

That "Dodgers" looks pretty good on the front of you, don't it, boy?

(crowd cheering)

Schreiber: In 1938, Ruth happily returned to New York

as a coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Oh!

Schreiber: The Babe had been led to believe

the Dodgers would one day let him manage.

In reality, the struggling franchise had signed Ruth as a gate attraction.

Fans did come to see Ruth,

but the novelty soon wore off.

The Babe was let go, and the promise never kept.

♪ ♪

Stevens: They never had any intentions

of making him a manager.

They just wanted him for his name.

It was almost like they lied to him.

He'd come home and he'd ask mother,

"Anybody call today?"

Of course, nobody ever did.

And all he wanted to do was just be in baseball.

He wanted to be a part of baseball,

because it was a part of him.

He was so disappointed.

He almost went into a depression.

Ray Robinson: They used to say about him,

"How could he ever manage a team

"when he never learned to manage himself?"

So, in his post-baseball years,

whenever he went to Yankee Stadium,

it was always my impression, when I sat close enough to look at him,

that he was very morose and sad.

He would sit there, hunched over,

staring at the action.

You got the feeling about him

that he had been involuntarily removed from his real environment.

♪ ♪

Schreiber: The Yankees never came calling either,

so Ruth went on doing what he did best--

playing the role of the Babe.

(cheers, applause)

Occasionally, he would return to the stage he once dominated,

happy to display his old form.

Although the significance of his homers had now greatly diminished,

Ruth still managed to thrill his fans.

Stevens: Even after he'd been out of baseball

for eight or 10 years,

he still attracted crowds.

He'd go over to the training camp and talk with the fellows.

(people chattering)

People still asked him for his autograph.

They were still showing their love and appreciation for him,

even though he wasn't playing baseball anymore.

(chattering)

♪ ♪ Schreiber: But by 1946,

it was becoming increasingly clear

there was something seriously wrong with the Babe.

(birds chirping)

Stevens: I was in New Hampshire,

and there was a picture of him in the paper.

I called Mother, I said, "Mother,

"what on earth is the matter with Daddy?"

I said, "He looks terrible."

"I really don't know," she said.

"He has these terrible headaches."

♪ ♪

Schreiber: That winter, Ruth had a throat operation,

and the prognosis was grim.

Although he wasn't told of his condition,

the Babe had cancer.

Creamer: They kept the fact that he had terminal cancer

away from him, 'cause they thought he would jump out a window.

Stevens: He couldn't eat. He couldn't swallow.

Of course he was losing weight like crazy.

He just didn't look like Daddy.

He would sit in the chair,

by the hour, and look out over the Hudson River.

His spirits were very good.

He felt that he was gonna beat this thing,

but the fact that he had the scar tissue up around his neck

made it very difficult for him to talk.

Schreiber: On April 27th, 1947,

baseball celebrated Ruth's accomplishments

with a day in his name at every major league ballpark.

Ruth himself attended the ceremony at Yankee Stadium.

♪ ♪

I knew how sick he was,

and I guess that's the reason I didn't go in.

And I just stood outside.

♪ ♪ (cheering)

He started to speak...

(hoarsely) Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

You know how bad my voice sounds.

Well, it feels just as bad.

You know this baseball game of ours...

Macklin: They turned up that loudspeaker

so everybody outside,

blocks around, could hear him.

The train up on the platform,

people-- they just stopped in their tracks,

listening to this great man.

And after you're 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. (cheering)

♪ ♪

Stevens: Even when he was so sick,

he still wanted to be part of baseball.

He took a job at the Ford Motor Company,

traveling for the American Legion.

He made personal appearances.

the first year, '47, he made 15 appearances.

When I saw him get off the airplane,

I was shocked. He came out puffing...

(exhales sharply) breathing hard.

His color didn't look good.

There he was with this white cap

and the white and black wingtip shoes.

Then we went back to the ballpark.

There was like 15,000 people there,

most of them kids. It was a different man that appeared.

Here he was, smiling.

Don Cameron: I think he was happier at the ballpark

than he was anywhere else.

He didn't feel that good, but the strength

of being around those young people

that he was working with and imparting knowledge to them,

I really think gave him strength.

Benish: He just seemed to gather strength from it.

He really was crazy about kids, and you could see it.

As sick as he was and as weak as he was,

he wanted to be with those kids.

♪ ♪

Thomas Hartley Jr.: Babe was a very sick man.

We had a child in town

that was dying of cancer.

Who comes out in the yard, but the Babe,

and he spends time talking to all of us.

"I got something for you.

"Here. You look like you can catch.

"There's a ball." His attitude,

knowing that he was close to death,

and us knowing that our friend was dying

and not understanding--

it was just so wonderful.

Man: How you doing, Babe? Pretty good.

♪ ♪

Schreiber: His health failing,

his glory days behind,

Ruth continued to make public appearances.

(cheering) On June 13th, 1948,

he helped celebrate the 25th anniversary

of Yankee Stadium,

and wore his uniform for the final time.

Broun: I was there when he made

his last appearance in Yankee Stadium.

Even though by that time he was wasted away,

somehow on that day,

he filled the uniform,

to be, once more, for some last gasp,

a heroic figure. You had just this moment,

which you tried to hold and keep.

♪ ♪

Nat Fein: I worked for the Herald Tribune,

and I did mostly human interest pictures.

I think it was terrible to know that all of this ovation

comes to him and he knows, down deep in his heart,

that he isn't long for this world.

They lined 'em up there in the front--

all the photographers were in the front.

I went around the back.

The thing that steered me was the #3 being retired.

#3 is out. The Babe bows out.

I said, "It's unnatural."

(camera flash pops) I knew I had something there.

♪ ♪

(chattering)

Schreiber: Later that summer,

Ruth's health took a serious turn for the worse.

♪ ♪ In July, he entered the hospital once more,

and this time he was made aware of what he was facing.

Stevens: When he went into the Sloan Kettering,

he saw that it was for cancer and allied diseases,

and he said, "Have I got cancer?"

They never told him.

If anything could've saved him,

believe me, the prayers would have.

They'd stand outside the hospital.

Once in a while, he'd go to the window,

look out, and wave.

He knew that he had all their best wishes

and that they were pulling for him.

Warren Eberhart: Here was somebody who had been through

an awful lot of pain, discomfort

for over a two-year period.

He'd had enough of it. "I'm tired of all this now."

He was very quiet. He awaited the end in a dignified way,

but it was just a terrible thing for him to realize

what had happened to his joy of living.

Radio announcer: We interrupt this program

to bring you a special bulletin.

New York. Babe Ruth, the all-time baseball great,

just died in Memorial Hospital of cancer.

♪ ♪

Schreiber: Ruth's casket was brought to Yankee Stadium,

a spectacle in death as in life.

The Babe had come to rest where his legend had begun.

Stevens: The people who came to get their last look at him,

just absolutely was staggering.

It amazed me.

Hamill: We went up to the Bronx on the subway,

and there were people from every race, every neighborhood.

The line moved very quickly,

and looking down at his face, he looked exhausted.

♪ ♪

And out past where he was lying

was the field. You could smell the odor of it--

the sort of loamy, hot earth of August in New York.

Cameron: I walked in there to see his memorial,

and the hair just stood up on the back on my neck

and stood up on my arms,

because I had finally gotten to see where Babe hit 'em all.

Chuck Doehler: I remember being ushered up to the casket.

Imagine. There was Babe Ruth.

I was handed a ball. I had looked at the ball,

and some sensitive person had written on this ball

"Safe at home."

I put the ball right next to his hand,

and I thought, "Wow.

"Here he is. He's home. He's where he belongs."

♪ ♪

Honig: His passing was an event

in the lives of many people, because he represented so much

and he took so much with him.

There never was a character like that,

and there never was gonna be one again.

But in many ways,

he's never left the game.

The standards that he set, the legends that he created,

are still very much with us.

Gleason: Babe Ruth will never be gone.

He's still here.

He's always here.

He was a living man

who became a mythic god,

and nothing can change that.

Creamer: He will be a symbol of baseball

as long as baseball is played.

♪ ♪

Hamill: To me, the Babe's still alive.

He truly is like Shakespeare.

He'll never die.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Announcer: This has been a presentation of...