All language subtitles for Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E04 (Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E04) (ENGLISH)

Baseball is a human enterprise.

Therefore, by definition, it's imperfect,
it's flawed, it doesn't embody perfectly

everything that's worthwhile about
our country or about our culture.

But it comes closer than
most things in American life.

And maybe this story, which is probably
apocryphal, gets to the heart of it.

An Englishman and an
American having an argument

about something that has
nothing to do with baseball.

It gets to the point where it's
irreconcilable, to the point of

exasperation, and the American says
to the Englishman, ah, screw the king.

And the Englishman is taken aback,
thinks for a minute and says, well,

screw Babe Ruth.

Now think about that.

The American thinks he can insult the
Englishman by casting aspersions upon a

person who has his position by
virtue of nothing except for birth.

Nothing to do with any personal
qualities, good, bad, or otherwise.

But who does the Englishman
think embodies America?

Some scruffy kid who came from the
humblest of beginnings, hung out as a

six-year-old behind his father's bar,
a big, badly flawed, swashbuckling

palooka, who strides with great spirit,
not just talent, but with a spirit of

possibility and enjoyment of
life across the American stage.

That's an American
to the Englishman.

You give me Babe Ruth
over any king who's ever sat

on the throne, and I'll
be happy with that trade.

Between 1920 and 1930,
Adolf Hitler was jailed

for trying to overthrow
the German government.

Mussolini's fascists marched
on Rome, Ireland was

partitioned, and James
Joyce published Ulysses.

In America, women
won the right to vote.

Prohibition was imposed.

The gates were closed to most
immigrants, and the Jazz Age began.

The stock market boomed, and Herbert
Hoover predicted that the United States

was nearer the final
triumph over poverty

than ever before in
the history of the land.

Wyatt Earp and Woodrow Wilson and Candy
Cummings, the inventor of the curveball,

died.

So did John Montgomery Warren,
the leader of the Players' Revolt of 1890.

And Cap Anson, who had
asked that his headstone

be inscribed, Here lies
a man who batted 300.

Roy Campanella and Yogi Berra,
and Bobby Thompson, were born.

During the 1920s, two of baseball's
greatest pitchers had one last moment of

glory, and the country mourned the
loss of one of its most beloved stars.

Summer afternoons
were spent watching the

Corsicana oil cities and
the Idaho Falls spuds.

The Pocomoke City salamanders
and the Henrietta hens.

The Pueblo steel makers
and the flint vehicles.

The Hollywood stars and
the Kalamazoo kazoos.

Outfielders still left their gloves
in the field while they went to bat.

No one could remember a time when
an opposing player tripped over one.

The 1920s was an
age of American heroes.

Charles Lindbergh, Rudolph
Valentino, and Jack Dempsey.

And baseball, too, saw
its share of great stars.

Some known to almost everyone.

Some whose deeds were
noted only by a comparative few.

But one man eclipsed them all.

For almost 20 years, through good times
and bad, he and baseball were synonymous.

Who is this Baby Ruth?

And what does she do?

George Bernard Shaw.

We play a whole game with
one ball if it stayed in the park.

Lopsided and black and full of
tobacco juice and licorice stains.

Pitchers used to have
it all their way then.

Spitballs and emery balls.

And whatnot.

Until 1921, they
had a dead ball.

The only way you could get a home run was
if the outfield had tripped and fell down.

The ball wasn't wrapped tight.

And lots of times it would
get mashed on one side.

Come bouncing out there
like a Mexican jumping bean.

They wouldn't throw it
out of the game, though.

Only used three or four
balls in a whole game.

Now they use 60 or 70.

During the first 20 years of the 20th
century, great pitchers ruled the game.

Christy Mathewson.

Cy Young.

Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Walter Johnson.

They had an advantage
unavailable to their successors.

The moment a new ball
was thrown onto the field,

part of every pitcher's
job was to dirty it up.

By turns, they smeared it
with mud, licorice, tobacco juice.

It was deliberately scuffed,
sandpapered, cut, even spiked.

The result was a
misshapen, earth-colored ball

that traveled through
the air erratically.

Tended to soften
in the later innings.

And as it came over the
plate, was very hard to see.

On August 16, 1920,
the inevitable happened.

The Indians were at New York.

On the mound was Carl Mays, a
submarine pitcher with a nasty reputation.

Crouching over the plate was the
Cleveland shortstop, Ray Chapman.

With the count one ball and one
strike, Mays threw high and inside.

The ball hit Chapman in the
temple, crushing the side of his skull.

He died the next morning.

Big League
baseball's first fatality.

Chapman crowded
out over the plate so far

that I don't think we
can blame Mays for it.

But Mays was a particularly
disagreeable man, and people

were quick to blame him
because they wanted to blame him.

You know, when the ball hit Chapman,
it bounced out so far that the fielders

feel that they thought
that it hit his bat.

Now, as soon as the
ball got dirty, the umpire

had orders to substitute
a spotless white new one.

And the ball itself had been made livelier
by winding more tightly the yarn within it.

Overnight, the balance shifted from
the pitcher's mound to the batter's box.

The era of the home run
hitter was about to begin.

He was a parade all by himself,
a burst of dazzle and jingle.

Santa Claus drinking his whiskey
straight and groaning with a bellyache.

Babe Ruth made the music that his joyous
years danced to in a continuous party.

What Babe Ruth is comes
down one generation,

handing it to the next
as a national heirloom.

Jimmy Cannon.

It is impossible to watch him at
bat without experiencing any motion.

I've seen hundreds of ballplayers at the
plate, and none of them managed to convey

the message of impending doom to the
pitcher that Babe Ruth did with the cock

of his head, the position of his legs,
and the little gentle waving of the bat

feathered in his two big paws.

New York Daily News.

There was only one like him.

Babe was... they threw away
the mold when they made him.

And he was a big,
good-natured guy.

And of course he
had a world of talent.

Nobody liked him.

You talk to the old-time players and you
mention Ruth, and their faces would just

sort of light up and they'd
look off and they'd start to smile.

A lot of people didn't like him.

They'd get mad at
him, things like that.

But he was entertaining.

He was fun.

He filled a room
when he came into it.

Loud.

Positive.

Just there all the time.

Wade Hoyt, thinking about him...

Wade Hoyt was an old
man, about 70 then, and

he said, God, we love
that big son of a bitch.

That's just the way it was.

I saw it all happen,
from beginning to end.

But sometimes I still
can't believe what I saw.

This 19-year-old kid, crude, poorly
educated, only slightly brushed by the

social veneer we call civilization,
gradually transformed into the idol of

American youth and the
symbol of baseball the world over.

A man loved by more people
and with an intensity of feeling

that perhaps has never
been equaled before or since.

I saw a man transform from a human
being into something pretty close to a god.

If somebody had predicted
that back on the Boston Red Sox

in 1914, he would have been
thrown into a lunatic asylum.

Harry Hooper.

He was born George Herman Ruth Jr. on the
Baltimore waterfront on February 6, 1895.

The first child of a hot-tempered saloon
kid, a shopkeeper and his wife Kate.

Of the seven siblings born after him,
only one, a sister, survived infancy.

A sad fact for which he
believed his parents blamed him.

I think my mother hated me,
Ruth once confided to a friend.

He learned to walk in the slippery sawdust
of his father's saloon and was stealing

from local shopkeepers and throwing
stones at delivery men by the age of five.

Nothing his father did could
keep the young boy in line.

Rough neighborhood.

And his father and mother were busy
running the saloon and he was a rough kid.

Totally energetic kid.

You couldn't control him.

Always doing things,
as he did all his life.

And he was just a heller.

I was a bad kid, he said.

I stole, he said.

I drank whiskey in the bar.

He'd steal it out.

Threw rocks at cops.

When he was seven years old, he was chewing
tobacco and refusing to go to school.

He just wouldn't go.

That's all.

And my father would
whip him unmerciful.

My mother would say, George, if you don't
stop that, you're gonna hurt that boy.

And he'd keep on whipping him.

But it didn't do any
good in the long run.

We had to put
him out St. Mary's.

We had to.

For him to get an education.

When savage beatings failed to make
him change his ways, his parents had him

declared incorrigible and sent him off
to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys,

a combined reformatory and orphanage where
he stayed off and on until the age of 19.

His family rarely
came to visit him.

I guess I'm just too
big and ugly for anyone

to come and see me,
he told a fellow inmate.

He seemed destined to become
a shirt maker, like the other

boys, who taunted him with
the nickname, Nigger Lips.

But Brother Matthias, a strapping
Irishman in charge of discipline at St.

Mary's, became
Ruth's surrogate father.

And his ease at hitting a baseball
inspired the boy to try his own hand.

He proved a natural,
good at every position.

So good, so soon, in fact, that at
eight, he was on the 12-year-old's team,

on the varsity at 12.

I remember when I was a
kid watching an old Irish priest

hitting baseballs, and
he hit it with a shinny stick.

And apparently Brother
Matthias could just belt these balls.

And Ruth said, I became a hitter when
I saw Brother Matthias hitting the ball.

He wanted to hit
it the same way.

And so he played ball
in the reform school.

At that time, in the
early years of the

century, baseball just
saturated the country.

You'd see lists of games
played over the weekend.

50, 100, 200 games played by teams,
neighborhood teams, every place.

Everybody played baseball.

So this industrial school
had leagues within the school.

Then they had a team, sort of all-stars,
who would play teams outside the school.

And Ruth was the star.

Ruth was the best amateur
pitcher in the city of Baltimore.

An imposing left-hander
with an overpowering fastball.

And he attracted considerable
attention from professional scouts.

When he was 19 years
old, the owner of the minor

league Baltimore Orioles
came to see him play.

And was impressed enough
to sign him to a contract.

He had only rarely been outside St. Mary's,
and everything was new and exciting.

When they let him out,
a teammate recalled, it

was like turning a wild
animal out of a cage.

He wanted to go every place and
see everything and do everything.

Babe Ruth joined us
in the middle of 1914.

A 19-year-old kid.

He was a left-handed
pitcher and a good one.

He had never been anywhere.

He didn't know anything about
manners or how to behave among people.

Just a big overgrown green pea.

Within months, the Orioles
sold their big rookie to the

Boston Red Sox, one of the best
teams in the American League.

Lord, he ate too much.

He stopped along the road when
we were traveling and ordered

half a dozen hot dogs and
as many bottles of soda pop.

Stuffed them in one
afternoon after another, give

a few belches and then
roar, OK, boys, let's go.

In 1916, he got his first chance
to pitch in the World Series.

And he made the most of it.

After giving up a run in the first,
he drove in the tying run himself.

Then held the Brooklyn
Dodgers scoreless for 11 more

innings until his teammates
could score the winning run.

In the clubhouse, he shouted, I told you I
could handle those National League bums.

In the Red Sox's greatest years,
he was their greatest pitcher,

setting a record of 29
and two-thirds scoreless

World Series innings
that stood for 43 years.

The interesting thing, among the many,
many, many endlessly interesting things

about Babe Ruth, certainly the most
stunning figure in baseball history,

is that he was nearly as great
a pitcher as he was a hitter.

In his coming up as a
raw boy from Baltimore, he

mowed down his opponents
in the American League.

He was the best
left-handed pitcher of the

1910s without question
in the American League.

It was only because of the prodigal
strength that resided in his bat,

that he moved off the mound.

A little pause...
and we are back.

Ruth liked to pitch,
but he loved to hit.

And he played outfield
on the days he wasn't

pitching so that he
could do it more often.

He is said to have modeled his swing
after the best power hitter in the game,

Shoeless Joe Jackson.

In 1919, the same year the Black Sox threw
the World Series, Ruth slammed 29 home

runs, more than any other player had ever
hit in a single season, rounding the bases

with what one observer
called tiny debutante ankles.

The fans loved it.

The way he looked, you didn't think he
would have been able to have done it.

See, he was the big up
here and little legs, but when

he swung that bat, he
was the prettiest thing there.

That you've ever seen.

Poetry in motion when
Babe Ruth swung a bat.

He was such a
strange looking man.

I've often thought of those books
that kids have that have three different,

the pages are divided into three and
you can flip over a page and get different

weird animals.

And it's that round head which
looked like a bartender's head.

And then the next strip would be
the huge, gigantic athlete's shoulders.

And the rest of it
came down like a vase.

It was so narrow,
the legs got down.

Dwindled down to these
little tiny ankles and tiny feet.

And he almost minced
as he ran around.

George was six foot two and
weighed 198 pounds, all of it muscle.

He had a slim waist, huge biceps, no
self-discipline, and not much education.

Not so very different from a lot of
other 19-year-olds, except for two things.

He could eat more than anyone
else, and he could hit a baseball farther.

Off the field, he was bigger, louder,
more excitable than his teammates.

He used other people's toothbrushes,
ran the elevator up and down, and got

married to Helen Woodford,
a 16-year-old coffee shop

waitress he met on his
very first day in Boston.

Everybody called him Baby.

Then just The Babe.

Somebody asked me
if my club was for sale.

What a ridiculous question.

Of course it is for sale.

So is my hat and my
overcoat and my watch.

Anyone who wants them
can have them at a price.

I will dispose of my holdings and
the Red Sox at any time for my price.

H.

Harrison Frazee.

In 1960, a high-living
theatrical producer named

Harry Frazee bought
the Red Sox for $576,000.

He liked baseball, but
Broadway was his first love.

And whenever he needed cash for a new
show, he would sell off one of his stars.

Babe Ruth's turn came in 1920.

Colonel Jacob Rupert, owner of the New
York Yankees, bought him for $125,000,

plus the promise of a
$300,000 personal loan with

which Frazee could
finance still another show.

As security for the loan,
Frazee put up Fenway Park itself.

Harry Frazee became the owner
of the Red Sox and then before

long he sold off all our best
players and ruined the team.

Sold them all to the Yankees.

Ernie Shore, Duffy Lewis, Dutch
Leonard, Carl Mays, Babe Ruth.

I was disgusted.

The Yankee dynasty of the 20s was three
quarters the Red Sox of a few years before.

Frazee was short of cash
and he sold the whole team

down the river to keep his
dirty nose above the water.

What a way to end
a wonderful ball club.

Harry Hooper.

Frazee eventually bought himself
a Broadway hit, No No Nanette.

But Ruth's sale proved the most
short-sighted in baseball history.

Ruth hit 54 home runs
for New York in 1920.

25 more than he had
hit just one year earlier.

More than all but one team
managed to hit that year.

And his slugging average, a new statistic
that measured the power of a hitter,

was 847.

In all the years since, no one else
has ever come close to matching it.

If you can make a hit in a ball game You
can make a hit with me But the man who can

hit in a ball game Can be my
affinity I'm simply baseball wild

Oh how I yell Slam out a
home run hit I'll yell like whoo!

If you can make a hit in a ball
game You can make a hit with me

If you can make a hit in a ball
game You can make a hit with me

Babe Ruth
revolutionized baseball.

He changed it.

Judge Landis came in and
gave baseball its integrity.

Ruth began hitting home runs
and gave baseball its excitement.

They changed everything from the
ball itself, the construction of the bats,

the philosophy of hitting,
the philosophy of pitching.

Babe Ruth changed it.

We don't realize it today,
but the game of baseball has

never been the same since
Babe Ruth began to hit home runs.

Now, at other times in
the history, something so

disruptive of tradition would
have been held in check.

The morals of the game
would have changed the rules.

They'd done it 20 times before.

But in the wake of the Black
Sox scandal and the public

fascination with Ruth,
they simply let it happen.

Before Ruth, pitchers
had been taught to pace

themselves, only bearing down
when someone was on base.

Now, there was a danger of a
run being scored at any moment.

They had to bear down
from the first pitch to the last.

Between 1910 and 1920, eight
pitchers won 30 or more games a season.

In the 70-odd years since the advent
of Babe Ruth, there had been just three.

When people get into discussions about
who's the greatest ballplayer in history,

and they say, well, there was Ruth,
but there was also DiMaggio, and Cobb,

and Mays, and Aaron,
and the other claimants, to

me, it seems like an
utterly wasted discussion.

Let us say that Ruth was not as
good an offensive player as Willie Mays,

but he was also one of
the greatest pitchers ever.

It is as if imagining
that Beethoven and

Cezanne were one person
producing the same work.

It just can't be compared
to anything else.

In 1920, the Yankees invade Ruth
through more than a million fans.

The first time that
had ever happened.

And to the fury of John McGraw,
manager of the Giants, it was his park,

the Polo Grounds, that Ruth and
the Yankees filled all season long.

The Red Sox never recovered.

They had won five of
the first 15 World Series.

They would not even
play in another World

Series for more than
a quarter of a century.

The Sporting News.

It matters not what branch of mankind
the player sprang from with the fan,

if he can deliver the goods.

The Mick, the Sheeny, the Wop,
the Dutch and the Chink, the Cuban,

the Indian, the Jap, or
the so-called Anglo-Saxon.

His nationality is never
a matter of moment.

If he can pitch,
or hit, or field.

In organized baseball, there has
been no distinction raised, except tacit

understanding that a player of
Ethiopian descent is ineligible.

The wisdom of which we will not
discuss except to say, by such a rule,

some of the greatest
players the game has

ever known have been
denied their opportunity.

In 1919, the bloodiest race riots since
the Civil War broke out in more than 25

northern cities as black communities
became the focus of white rage.

The worst was in Chicago.

Before it was
over, 38 were dead.

537 injured.

Whole neighborhoods
burned and looted.

The violence was a
devastating blow to the millions of

southern blacks who had
moved north, fleeing segregation.

But out of the riots grew a new
assertiveness among African Americans.

The black nationalist
leader, Marcus Garvey,

urged his people to
look to themselves.

No more fear, no
more cringing, he said.

No more begging and pleading.

Now, black culture
flourished as never before.

A Harlem Renaissance began, and black
businesses thrived in all the big cities.

In riot-torn Chicago, Andrew
Rube Foster created one of the

most successful black enterprises,
the Negro National League.

When the big games shall have become
history, there will stalk across the pages

of the record a massive figure,
and its name will be Andrew Foster.

The master of the show, who moves
the figures on his checkerboard at will.

The smooth-toned counselor of
infinite wisdom and sober thought.

Cold in refusal,
warm in a sense.

Known to everybody,
knows everybody.

That's Rube.

Foster had been the finest black
pitcher of his time, credited with teaching

Christy Mathewson how to throw
his celebrated fadeaway pitch.

Now, he became black
baseball's first great empresario.

There were to be eight
teams in his new league.

The Chicago Giants.

Foster's own Chicago
American Giants.

The Dayton Marcos.

Detroit Stars.

St. Louis Giants.

Cuban Giants.

The Kansas City Monarchs.

And the Indianapolis ABCs.

It was his object, he said, to
provide the North's growing

black population with
professional baseball of their own.

To do something concrete
for the loyalty of the race.

And to eventually
challenge the major leagues.

We are the ship, Foster
said of his new organization.

All else, the sea.

We're one of the greatest
baseball minds that's ever been.

Where I've got to admire Rube for,
he saw he couldn't get in, he didn't quit.

Formed a league of his own.

Formed the Black League, which
was a very successful operation.

Actually, probably the third biggest
business, black business in the world.

Foster was a big,
outwardly genial Texan, who

called friends and
strangers alike darlin'.

But he was tough with the white owners
of the big city stadiums where his teams

played when the big leaguers
were safely out of town.

And he was tough
on his players, too.

Insisting on the same
kind of aggressive,

fast-moving baseball
preached by John McGraw.

Finding any member of his team five
dollars if he were tagged out standing up.

You're supposed
to slide, he said.

No one unable consistently to bunt a
ball into a cap could play for Rube Foster.

And white managers regularly
attended his games to study his tactics.

If you play the best clubs
in the land, white clubs,

as you say, it will be a case
of Greek meeting Greek.

I fear nobody.

Rube Foster.

By 1923, 400,000 black fans were
turning out to see Foster's teams play.

He believed that if blacks maintained a
high level of play, then when whites were

ready to open the door, blacks
would be ready to walk through.

But now, white businessmen
saw that there were

big profits to be made
from segregated baseball.

And they formed a rival organization, the
Eastern Colored League, which included

the Baltimore Black
Sox, the Harlem Lincoln

Giants, and the
Hilldales of Philadelphia.

Many of Foster's stars were lured away to
the new league with offers of better pay.

But Foster held on.

In 1924, the two leagues staged the first
Negro World Series between the Kansas City

Monarchs of Foster's League
and the Philadelphia Hilldales.

It took 10 games,
but the Monarchs won.

Spearheaded by the superb pitching of Jose
Mendez, a dark-skinned Cuban, John McGraw

said he would happily have paid
$50,000 for if only Mendez had been white.

What more interesting
kind of organization could

black people create than
leagues and baseball?

It was a sport that
defined America.

And so black people adopting this sport
and showing we, too, can have leagues and

we, too, can play this game and play it
very well, in some way, black people were

showing white Americans,
yes, we're American,

yes, we can do, we
can play this game.

And this game means
something to us, too, and it

means something in our
history and in our heritage.

But the strain of trying
to keep his fledgling

league alive was
beginning to take its toll.

Foster grew increasingly paranoid, took
to carrying a revolver everywhere he went.

In 1926, worn out and suffering from
the delusion that he was about to receive a

call to pitch in the White World series,
he finally had to be institutionalized.

He died four years later.

At his funeral, 3,000
mourners stood in an icy rain.

His coffin was
closed, one newspaper

reported, at the usual
hour a ball game ends.

Eventually, the rival Eastern
Colored League collapsed.

But Foster's Negro League and organized
black baseball managed to stay alive.

I got a letter the other day asking why
I didn't write about baseball no more.

As I used to write about
nothing else, you might say.

Well, friends, I may as well admit that I
have kind of lost interest in the old game.

A couple of years ago, a ball player named
Babe Ruth that was a pitcher by birth was

made into an outfielder on
account of how he could bust them.

And the masterminds that control baseball
says to themselves, that if it is home

runs that the public wants to see,
why leave us, give them home runs.

Ring Lardner.

New heroes like Babe Ruth
called for a new kind of reporting.

And sports writing
reached its gaudy pinnacle

in the 1920s,
producing its own stars.

Fred Lieb started
as a player for his

Philadelphia church
team, the Princes of Peace.

Moved to New York and covered
baseball for more than 60 years.

Ford Frick of the New York Journal
hammered out complete stories in eight

minutes, which gave him the time he
needed to act as Babe Ruth's ghostwriter.

John Kieran of the New York Times
liked to write up a game before it began,

then edit his account to fit the
sometimes inconvenient facts.

Damon Runyon of the New York American,
who changed the carnation in his lapel

three times a day, wrote
his accounts of games

as they happened and
rarely changed a word.

And Shirley Povich, whose first name once
got him included in Who's Who in American

Women, would write
eloquently about baseball for

more than half a century
for the Washington Post.

There you were in your trains and
your private cars, and from Boston to St.

Louis it was
something like 20 hours.

And you had to write
your stuff on the train

and at every stop give
it to Western Union.

But you were there with the ballplayers,
you got to know them, you got to be

friendly with those you
wanted to be friendly about, and

you learned which ballplayers
didn't like baseball writers.

There were a great many.

In those days there were afternoon
newspapers and all sorts of editions,

early editions, late editions.

We'd run to the newsstand on the
corner and on the front page is a score.

Four and a half innings.

They sent Louis
Browns leading the Sox.

Sox at bat, bottom of the fifth.

On the front page,
the scores were there.

What's going to happen?

Later on, another edition.

Sox scored three runs,
bottom of the seventh.

But nothing like that today.

I'll tell you a wonderful thing they
did on the Major League games.

The front of the town newspaper
had a huge baseball diamond on it.

And it operated
electronically somehow.

So that you saw the ball sail out,
you saw the runners move and all that.

And a crowd of at least a
thousand people would gather

in front of that thing to
watch a Major League game.

They were receiving it
by radio and doing the

thing on this two-story
diamond on the wall.

But there was a
lot of excitement.

The same kind of roar of the
crowd when something happened.

Even though it had happened
five minutes ago, I guess.

At World Series time, one reporter said,
the huge crowds that gathered to watch the

animated scoreboards made Times Square look
like New Year's Eve on a summer afternoon.

It was the first time they'd
ever seen something like that.

Given the proper physical equipment,
which consists solely in the strength to

knock a ball 40 feet farther
than the average man

can do it, anybody can
play big league ball today.

In other words, science
is out the window.

Ty Cobb.

Ty Cobb, now managing as well as playing
for the Tigers, and with his own skills

beginning to wane, hated
the brash young newcomer

and the impact he was
having on the game.

He demeaned Ruth's
talent whenever he got the

chance, and from the
dugout called him nigger.

But when the two stars, whom sportswriters
called the supermen of baseball,

met in what was billed as a grudge
series in 1921, Ruth homered in every game,

Cobb in only one.

The New York Times reported, that
Ruth has stolen all of Cobb's thunder.

Yankee manager Miller Huggins admitted
that real students of the game might

prefer Ty Cobb's
classic brand of baseball.

But Babe Ruth
appealed to everybody.

They all flock to him, he
said, because nowadays, the

American fan likes the
fellow who carries the wallop.

In 1921, Ruth outdid
himself, hitting an

astounding 59 home runs,
with 171 runs batted in.

He had already hit more
home runs than any other

man in history, and he
was only 26 years old.

Babe Ruth erupted into
baseball like an Everest in Kansas.

There was no one like him
before, no one remotely like him.

In his third year as a full-time player,
that is his third year not as a pitcher,

just three years, he held the
career record for home runs.

He went on to break
his own record 577 times.

And when he retired, with 714 home runs,
the man in second place in career home

runs, then Lou Gehrig, had fewer
than half the number Ruth had.

There's never been a
disparity like that, a talent

so disproportionate to
what had come before.

No star had ever so dominated a
game Yankee attendance soared.

Sports writers competed
to come up with new titles

with which to decorate the
headlines Ruth made daily.

He was the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat,
the Wally of Wallop, the Wazir of Quam,

the Maharaja of Mash, the Raja of Rap,
the Caliph of Clout, the Behemoth of Bust.

Don't tell me about Ruth.

I've seen what he did to people.

I've seen them.

Fans driving miles in open wagons through
the prairies of Oklahoma to see him in

exhibition games as we
headed north in spring.

I've seen kids, men, women, with a dirty
piece of paper, or hoping for a grunt of

recognition when they said,
He never let them down, not once.

He was the greatest
crowd pleaser of them all.

Children everywhere adored him.

When I was a kid, going to camp,
I got a letter from a friend of mine

saying, we went up to Quirk's, which
was the candy store, and Teddy

Schultz got number 58, George
Herman Babe Ruth, in a baseball card.

That was big enough news
to write me a letter about it.

I remember watching him strike out when
I was a child, just swinging around and

looking right back up
in the stands, right at

me, and I'm thinking,
Babe Ruth's looking at me.

It was that thrilling.

I would write from Cuba to them,
and those were privileged days.

They would reply
back and send you a

glossy 8x10 picture
with their signature.

signed by the players
I liked very much.

And one of them
was Babe Ruth.

from my country that I miss a lot.

that said to Manuel from Babe Ruth?

I wish I had it.

The big fellow wasn't perfect.

I was that.

But that guy had a heart.

He really did.

A heart as big
as a watermelon.

And made out of pure gold.

Jimmy Austin.

Ballplayers called him Jidge,
or Jidgey, short for George.

the names of even his closest friends.

He called everybody kid.

He didn't know their names.

He'd call you, if he knew you
for ten years, he'd call you kid.

Hey, kid.

Having married Helen Woodford and
adopted a daughter, Dorothy, he tucked

them away in an old farmhouse
in rural Sudbury, Massachusetts.

in the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway.

Bought himself a 12-cylinder Packard
and set about indulging himself.

He didn't live too long,
but he lived well, he did.

In an age of conspicuous
consumption, he was

the most conspicuous
consumer of them all.

Ruth made more money than any
other player and spent every penny of it.

Like it was going out of style,
a teammate remembered,

and he often gave it
away to perfect strangers.

He drank bourbon and ginger ale before
breakfast, changed silk shirts six and

seven times a day,
and became a favorite

customer in whorehouses
all across the country.

The boy who sorted through his mail
had orders to throw away everything,

except checks and
letters from broads.

Sports writers never wrote about
Ruth's successes off the field.

He was simply too popular.

You can't boo a home
run, one reporter noted.

He was a special case.

Everybody knew what contributions he
was making to the game, and what would have

been exposed in this later day of baseball
writing was simply ignored in those times.

The publicity Ruth
garnered for the Yankees

continued to enrage Giants
manager John McGraw.

In 1921, the two teams met in a spectacular
World Series at the Polo Ground.

Home to both teams.

And superb pitching
dominated throughout.

The Giants' come-from-behind
victory was especially sweet for McGraw.

His pitchers managed to hold Ruth in
check by throwing him mostly slow stuff.

We pitched only nine
curves and three fastballs

to Ruth during the entire
series, McGraw said.

And of those 12, 11
set him on his backside.

Ye shall not round
the corners of thy head,

neither shalt thou mar
the corners of thy beard.

Leviticus chapter 19, verse 27.

In 1903, an Ohio
farmer named Benjamin

Purnell awakened from
an extraordinary dream.

A white dove had perched on his shoulder,
he said, and proclaimed him the sixth son

of the House of David,
empowered to unite the

lost tribes of Israel in
advance of Judgment Day.

Purnell soon gathered
a group of disciples who

turned over to him
all their worldly goods.

And he established the House of
David colony at Benton Harbor, Michigan,

and laid down strict rules.

No sex, no smoking,
no drinking, no shaving.

Before long, there were
500 bearded colonists.

And tourists were driving out from
Chicago and Kalamazoo to see them.

To make a profit off his visitors,
Purnell built himself an amusement park.

And in 1910, began
staging baseball games.

The happily ever after.

For more than three decades, the House
of David was a sensation in small towns all

across the country,
taking on semi pro clubs,

industrial leagues, and
barn stores everywhere.

We would listen to the Cardinal games
Sometimes at night and sometimes I would

turn on the radio on these hot summer
nights and I'd go out in the front yard

and lie down on the grass with my dog
and I'd have my baseball glove for a pillow

and I would listen to these fabulous
sounds from the old sportsman's park in

St. Louis or sometimes from Scheib Park
or Wrigley Field in the afternoons or the

polo grounds and living in a small town
so isolated then before television I had

these images of the of the fabulous great
cities of the north almost as Thomas Wolfe

did and I thought my entree into the
great cities of the north was going to be

through my baseball playing on
August 5th 1921 radio station KDKA in...

in Pittsburgh broadcast a baseball
game between the Pirates and the Phillies.

A newspaper reporter at Forbes
Field relaying every ball and strike to a

Westinghouse foreman in the studio who
in turn shouted them into the microphone.

For the first time, fans
who lived miles from the

ballpark could instantaneously
follow the action.

Baseball on the radio is part of
the background music of America.

That's basic in a small town
in a barbershop on a Saturday.

There's a ball game
in the background.

It goes without saying.

You may be having a discussion if
somebody's heard a cattle or some

professor talking where I grew up about
the exam he's going to give and the barber

telling vaguely dirty jokes.

But in the background of
all that, there's a ball game.

That's basic.

Of course.

I think one of the most
appealing things about

baseball is that it
highlights the individual.

Like no other game does.

Each individual has his
specific place on the field.

Each individual
has his turn at bat.

In other sports, you can go
continually to your best guy.

Babe Ruth still batted
only once every nine times.

So it's the individual within
the context of the group.

And the individual
is highlighted.

But in the end, his
performance means nothing

outside the group,
outside the community.

It's the individual.

Ignored as a boy by his
own parents, Babe Ruth

now commanded the
attention of a whole country.

In 1922, it all seemed
to go to his head.

When the commissioner of baseball,
Kennesaw Mountain Landis, forbade him to

barnstorm between
seasons, he paid no attention.

Who does that big monkey
think he is, Landis asked.

In this office, he's
just another player.

And suspended him for 39 days.

In May, Ruth threw
dirt in an umpire's eyes.

Stormed into the stands
to chase a heckler.

And when the home crowd
booed him, stood on the dugout

roof, shaking his fist and
shouting, you're all yellow.

Man Johnson, president of the
American League, suspended him this time.

In June, Johnson
suspended him again for using

vulgar and vicious
language to an umpire.

Your conduct was
reprehensible to a great degree.

Shocking to every American mother
who permits her boy to go to a game.

A man of your stamp bodes
no good in the profession.

It seems the period has
arrived, and the time has come.

When you should allow
some intelligence to

creep into a mind that
has plainly been warped.

Ban Johnson.

Ruth sat out nearly a
third of the 1922 season.

And hit only 25 home runs.

Attendance fell off.

The Yankees managed to make it to the
World Series, but lost to the Giants again.

Ruth hit a dismal 118.

John McGraw was gleeful.

Once again, he had the big
monkey's number, he said.

Just pitch him low curves and slow
stuff, and he falls all over himself.

Now, sportswriters
turned en route.

This has been a
tough epoch for Kings.

But not even those harassed crown heads
of Europe ever ran into greater grief than

the once reigning monarch of
the Mace fell heir to this week.

He hit the ball out of the
infield just three times.

And during the remainder of the
engagement, he spent most of his

afternoons tapping dinky
blows to the pitcher or first.

In his last 12 times at bat, the once
mighty Bambino from Blueyland failed to

hit the ball hard enough to
dent the cuticle of a custard pie.

Grantland writes...

That winter, at a baseball writer's
dinner, state senator Jimmy Walker,

whose own private life
would not have borne close

scrutiny, lectured Ruth
on the wages of dissipation.

The babe was letting down the
little dirty-faced kids, Walker said.

Ruth began to cry.

He would do better, he promised.

Get back in shape.

Concentrate on the game again.

I've had my last drink until
next October, he told reporters.

I'm going to my farm.

I'm going to work my head off.

And maybe part of my stomach.

And then you watch me
break that home run record.

BABY ROOTS

In 1922, an event occurred far from the
field, which had almost as momentous an

impact on the game as
the coming of Babe Ruth.

The seven-year-old suit by the Oklahoma
State Reds, ...owners of the now defunct

Federal League charging that the big
leagues were a monopoly and in violation

of the anti-trust laws and finally
reached the Supreme Court.

The court unanimously
upheld the big leagues.

Baseball was indeed a business,
wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,

but putting on baseball
games for profit was not trade

or commerce in the commonly
accepted use of those words.

In essence, baseball
could govern itself.

The players would have
no recourse in Federal court.

The government would not intervene
in their disputes with management.

Although anti-trust laws
applied to other sports,

they somehow did not
apply to the national pastime.

The court's decision
still stands to this day.

So now we're over
with a bunch of the boys

that are limbering up
before the game starts.

There he was, incomparable.

That big pirouette swing
and a snap with the wrist.

There it goes.

And the gusto with which
he even struck out sometimes.

Oh!

The balls that he had
spoke for themselves.

Let me recall to you
one time when I asked

Walter Johnson, who
hit the ball the farthest?

And Johnson says, well, I rightly
can't say who hit the ball the farthest.

But those balls that Ruth hit got
smaller quicker than anybody else's.

I thought that
settled the issue.

A brand new stadium
is being built on the

10-acre site of an old
lumberyard in the Bronx.

The largest baseball
park in the country to

hold all the fans who
wanted to see Babe Ruth.

April 18, 1923 was opening day.

The Yankees were
playing the Boston Red Sox.

Governor Al Smith threw out the first
ball as more than 74,000 fans cheered.

It is reported on good authority that when
the Babe first walked out to his position

and looked about him, he was
silent for almost a minute while

he tried to find adequate
words to express his emotions.

Finally, he emerged from his creative
coma and remarked, Some boyard.

Babe Ruth.

Only one more thing was in
demand and Babe Ruth supplied that.

The big slugger is a keen
student of the dramatic

in addition to being the
greatest home run hitter.

He was playing a
new role yesterday.

Not the accustomed one of a renowned
slugger, but that of a penitent trying to

come back after a poor
season and a poor World Series.

Before the game he said that
he would give a year of his life

if he could hit a home run in
his first game in the new stadium.

The Babe was on trial and he
knew it better than anyone else.

The ball came in slowly
but it went out quite rapidly.

And as Ruth circled
the bases, he received

probably the greatest
ovation of his career.

The biggest crowd
rose to its feet and let

loose the biggest
shout in baseball history.

Ruth, jogging over the
home plate, grinned broadly,

lifted his cap and
waved it to the multitude.

New York Times.

Babe Ruth was back.

The Yankees beat the
Red Sox that day 4 to 1.

Sports writers began calling Yankee
Stadium the house that Ruth built.

Ruth hit 40 more
homers that year.

And 46 home runs.

The Yankees lost the next.

He has not only slugged his way to fame,
but he has got everyone else doing it.

The home run
fever is in the air.

It is infectious.

Baseball Magazine.

It was a decade of hitters.

Tris Speaker.

George Sisler.

Tony Lazeri.

Harry Heilman.

Goose Gosling.

Paul Wehner.

And Pac Wilson.

From 1922 to 1925, there was at
least one 400-hitter every season.

The inside game of bunts, steals,
and hit-and-run plays, so beloved by Ty

Cobb, was elbowed
aside by the power game

of home runs, home
runs, and more home runs.

One of the greatest hitters of them
all was Rogers Hornsby, the Rajah,

second baseman for
the St. Louis Cardinals.

Mr. Rogers Hornsby is the greatest
right-handed hitter in baseball.

His consistency is a jewel, and
Mr. Hornsby is a whole rope of pearls.

He has led the National League hitters for
so many years that the name of the man he

succeeded was lost to the
memory of the oldest inhabitant.

Joe Williams, New
York World-Telegram.

Between 1921 and 1925,
he averaged better than 400.

His mark of 424, set in 1924,
remains the highest in the 20th century.

And his lifetime average of
.358 is second only to Ty Cobb.

But Hornsby was too
single-minded, too colorless,

to seize the public
imagination the way Ruth did.

He would not even go to the
movies for fear of damaging his eyes.

When his mother died during the World
Series, he postponed her funeral until the

series was over, then
led his team to victory.

Baseball, he once said,
is the only thing I know.

From the mound, Hornsby
was a fearsome sight.

You might not have liked what was
on his mind, one pitcher remembered.

But you always knew
damned well what it was.

For his part, he never
disliked pitchers, Hornsby said.

He just felt sorry for them.

Rogers Hornsby was at bat.

And Bill Clem, magisterial
umpire, was behind the plate.

And there was a rookie
pitcher on the mound,

and the rookie was
quite reasonably petrified.

And he threw three pitches
that just missed the plate.

And Clem said,
ball one, ball two.

Ball three.

The rookie got flustered
and shouted at him.

He said, umpire,
those were strikes.

Clem took his mask off, looked out at
the young man and said, young man,

when you throw a strike,
Mr. Hornsby will let you know.

On April 15, 1924, an undemonstrative
President Calvin Coolidge threw out the

first ball in Griffith Stadium to the
Senators' aging pitcher, Walter Johnson.

Neither Johnson nor
Washington's fans knew what

glories lay ahead at
the end of the season.

The phrase on the Senators
for years was, Washington, first

in war, first in peace, and
last in the American League.

This was at a time when Clark
Griffith owned the Senators.

They didn't have much
money and less talent.

And he said one day, the
fans like home runs, and we

have assembled a pitching
staff to please our fans.

The Yankees were on their way
to a fourth consecutive pennant

in 1924 when they were stopped
cold by one man, Walter Johnson.

His name is in the record book
more times than any other pitcher.

There are more
different categories.

And he was a lovable person in the sense
that the whole nation knew that Walter

Johnson was doomed to play
with the Washington Senators.

It was so hard for him to get into a
World Series, which he finally did.

He was 36 years old and
had been pitching since 1907.

It may have been a new game, a
hitter's game, but he was a player.

He was still capable
of leading the league in

strikeouts, shutouts,
and earned run average.

Now he propelled his
team to the pennant with 13

consecutive wins, edging
out the Yankees by two games.

They would now face the
Giants in the World Series.

Johnson proved the disappointment in
the series, losing both games he started.

But Washington
managed to hold on.

The series went to seven games.

And in the top of the ninth inning,
with the score tied 3-3, and the Senators'

starter in trouble, Walter
Johnson was called in

on just one day's rest
to see what he could do.

He retired the side,
but the Senators were

unable to get a run in
the bottom of the ninth.

Now Johnson's fastball kept the Giants
from scoring in the tenth, the eleventh,

the twelfth.

Finally, in the bottom
of the twelfth, the

Senators' catcher Muddy
Rule reached second.

A weary Walter Johnson
made it to first on an error.

And watched as his teammate Earl McNeely
hit a ball that bounced off a pebble and

bounded over the Giants'
third baseman's head.

Muddy Rule lumbered
home for the winning run.

As he walked off the field, there
were tears in Walter Johnson's eyes.

Muddy Rule was renowned maybe
as the slowest man in baseball.

And Clark Griffith, the owner, said, I
never thought he'd ever get to home plate.

And when he did,
there was a sudden

explosion and the
fans piled onto the field.

And as I remember it, they didn't
leave that field until after dark.

Thirty thousand people celebrated on
the spot, refusing to vacate the premises.

The

next day, Walter Johnson
led the victory parade

up Pennsylvania Avenue
to the White House.

A close observer, wrote Grantland
Bryce, reports that the vocal cords of Mr.

Coolidge twitched.

Washington had never won a championship
before and would never win another.

Baseball is like joining
an enormous family with

ancestors and forebears and
famous stories and histories.

And it's a privilege.

It means a lot.

And the people who tell
me they hate baseball,

they're out of baseball,
they sound bitter about it.

But I think that they
sense what they're missing.

I think that they feel
that there's something

that they're not in on,
which is a terrible loss.

And I'm sorry for them.

It is doubtful that Ruth again will be the
superstar he was from 1919 through 1922.

Next year, Ruth will be 32.

And at 32, the Babe will be older
than Eddie Collins, Walter Johnson,

and Ty Cobb at that age.

Babe has lived a much
more strenuous life.

Fred Lieb.

Babe Ruth's promises to reform did not
last beyond the end of the 1924 season.

And by the time he got to spring
training in 1925, he was a wreck.

30 pounds overweight.

Feverish.

Often drunk.

Torn between his wife Helen, who had
grown desperate over his womanizing,

and a pretty artist's model
named Claire Hodgson.

On April 7th, he collapsed in North
Carolina with an intestinal illness so

mysterious that some sports
writers speculated privately

that Ruth might be suffering
from venereal disease.

London newspapers
reported that he had died.

His illness was so severe
that major abdominal surgery

was followed by seven
weeks of absolute hospital rest.

Newspapers reported
that he had merely eaten

too many hot dogs and
drunk too many sodas.

It was, wrote one, the
bellyache heard round the world.

On opening day 1925, the New York Yankees
started the new season without Babe Ruth

for the first time in five years, and
lost to Walter Johnson's Senators 5-2.

June 1st, 1925 was Babe Ruth's
first day back with the Yankees.

That same afternoon, first baseman Wally
Pipp was hit in the head during batting

practice, and a
broad-shouldered 22-year-old

rookie was asked
to take his place.

The young player's name was Lou Gehrig,
and he was already on his way to the

longest string of consecutive
games played in baseball history.

He was born Ludwig Heinrich
Gehrig in Manhattan, the

shy, soft-spoken, cherished
son of German immigrants.

He was so good at hitting a baseball that
Major League scouts tried to recruit him

while he was still starring
for his high school team.

And the Yankees offered him so much
money in his sophomore year at Columbia

University that he finally
abandoned his parents'

dream of a college
education to play baseball.

But he was reluctant
always to stay away for too

long from the mother who
was the center of his life.

When he traveled with the Yankees,
he made sure she came along.

He was the most valuable player the
Yankees ever had, because he was the prime

source of their greatest asset, an
implicit confidence in themselves.

Despite the arrival of the hard-hitting
rookie, the Yankees fell to seventh place,

and Ruth seemed
unable to help much.

He continued to drink and
carouse and to disobey the

instructions of his diminutive
manager, Miller Huggins.

Finally, when he stayed
out all night, two nights

running, Huggins fined him
$5,000 and suspended him.

Ruth would not be able to
come back until he admitted

the error of his ways
and personally apologized.

Ruth refused, saying he would
never play for the Yankees again.

Then came word that his wife, Helen,
had suffered a nervous breakdown,

anguished over his infidelity.

When Ruth went to see her, cameramen
followed him right into her hospital room.

They were Catholic, so
there was no possibility

of divorce, but they
agreed to separate.

Ruth's suspension
lasted only nine days.

He could not bear to be
away from baseball any longer.

And when Huggins demanded
that he not only apologize,

but do so in front of the
whole team, he meekly agreed.

Ruth had his worst
season in ten years.

It seemed that his
best years were over.

Why should God wish to take a
thoroughbred like Mattie so soon?

And leave some others down
here, that could well be spared.

Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

Christy Mathewson, the Christian gentleman
of baseball, had never recovered from the

after-effects of the poison gas he had
inhaled in France during World War I.

He had tried to return to the game
he loved after the war, first collecting

evidence that helped
uncover the Black Sox

scandal, then as president
of the Boston Braves.

But he could not get enough air.

Coughed up blood.

Now Jane, he told his
wife at the end, I suppose

you will have to go out
and have a good cry.

Don't make it a long one.

This can't be helped.

Christy Mathewson
died on October 7, 1925.

The next day, at the second game of
the World Series between the Pittsburgh

Pirates and the Washington
Senators, the flags flew at half-staff.

And all the players
wore mourning armbands.

John McGraw, his old manager,
tried in vain to blink back tears.

I was watching the electronic scoreboard
covering the 1925 World Series between the

Pirates and the
Senators, and the Senator

manager, Bucky Harris,
sends up a rookie to bat.

Buddy Meyer.

And the kid next to me
says, Bet you a nickel.

He gets a hit.

A rookie at bat, first
time, even money bet.

I take the bet.

Buddy Meyer gets a hit.

Only later do I discover the kid lived
two buildings away from the scoreboard.

Heard it on the
radio in those days.

Few radios.

He had it five minutes
before I did, the little swindler.

That's it.

The Young

A new baseball and every man now thinks
that He could manage the baseball team.

I was fortunate enough that
my father played baseball.

And I would go around the
little places where they played.

And I was fortunate enough to have seen,
living in Sarasota, I saw John McGraw.

I saw Connie Mack.

I saw Bob Williams.

I saw the great
ballplayers of that era.

By the late 1920s, a growing number
of Negro League teams, like their white

counterparts, were traveling throughout
the country, staging exhibition games and

inspiring a whole new
generation of players.

They would play Thursdays,
which was Maid's Day off.

See, Thursdays and Sundays,
they would play baseball.

So I got a chance to see Ruse.

I got a chance to
see Oscar Charleston.

The great baseball
players of that era.

I hadn't thought in terms of
black and white, but all the

baseball players I saw, the pro
baseball players, they were white.

Now I'm going to see the
professionals that were black.

This is the first time that's
meant so much to me.

I said, I'm going to
be a baseball player.

In 1938, Buck O'Neill would join one
of the best teams in the Negro Leagues,

the Kansas City Monarchs.

Starting the Cardinal farm system
was no sudden stroke of genius.

It was a case of necessity
being the mother of invention.

We lived a precarious existence.

Other clubs would out-vid us.

They had the money and
the superior scouting system.

We had to take the
leavings or nothing at all.

Branch Rickey.

Faced with a weak team, St. Louis
Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey

resolved that rather than try to
pay for stars, he would grow his own.

The result was the farm system.

Minor league teams linked together and run
purely to produce stars for the big time.

Branch Rickey could spot talent
better than anyone in the game.

You go to a ball game
and you see the pitcher.

You see what the hitter does
and you notice the catcher.

You're interested in only one of those
boys and that's the only one you'll see.

Rickey would see
all three of them.

He'd see how the pitcher
finished up, what the hitter

did and the position that
the catcher caught the ball.

The farm system was
a spectacular success.

Soon, Rickey had 800 players
under contract on 32 teams

and every other major league
club had followed his lead.

Between 1926 and 1942, the Cardinals
would win six pennants and four world

championships and always
remain near the top of the standings.

There is quality, Branch
Rickey said, in quantity.

The farm system
made Rickey a rich man.

He personally got 10 cents on
the dollar for every player he sold.

In negotiating salaries, one player
remembered, Mr. Rickey came to kill you.

If he could get a player to sign for
five cents less than the player wanted,

he felt he had
accomplished something.

Nobody, a friend said,
knew how to put a dollar

sign on the muscle
better than Branch Rickey.

Baseball is repetitive.

Its rhythms are comforting
because they're so familiar.

Yet there is always the prospect of
something startling, something glorious.

And you watch, hoping for, waiting for,
and in the end knowing that it will come.

The last of the great pitchers of an
earlier era, Grover Cleveland Alexander,

was only a shadow of
what he once had been.

Nearly 40 and almost
deaf, subject to seizures,

tortured by memories
of the Western Front.

Sodden with drink.

In the middle of the 1926 season,
Joe McCarthy, the Chicago Cubs'

unsentimental new
manager, let Alexander go.

The Cubs had finished last
in 1925, McCarthy explained.

And if they finish last again,
I'd rather it was without him.

But Branch Rickey had seen
something in the old man.

He was sure Alexander had it in
him to be a hero one more time.

And hired him for St. Louis.

The Cardinals won
the National League

pennant and faced the
Yankees in the series.

Few gave the Cardinals
much of a chance.

But Alexander pulled himself together to
win the second and then the sixth game.

He celebrated that night.

And during the seventh game, sat
quietly in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium,

nursing his hangover.

In the seventh inning, the Cardinals were
leading 3-2, and two Yankees were out.

But St. Louis was in trouble.

New York had loaded the bases.

Next up was Tony Lazeri,
a hard-hitting rookie of

Italian descent, best
known for batting in runs.

Rogers Hornsby, now the Cardinal
manager, motioned to the bullpen.

He wanted Alexander.

Hangover or no hangover.

Alexander took his time,
walking out to the mound.

I can see him yet.

Walking in from the left field
bullpen through the gray mist.

The Yankee fans recognized
him right off, of course.

But you didn't hear a sound
from anywhere in that stadium.

They just sat there and
watched him walk in.

And he took his time.

He just came straggling along, a
lean old Nebraskan, wearing a Cardinal

sweater, his face
wrinkled, that cap sitting

on top of his head,
and tilted to one side.

That's the way
he liked to wear it.

Les Bell.

Hornsby met him on the mound.

When Alexander told him he
planned to pitch Lazeri fast in the inside,

Hornsby was appalled.

You can't do that, he said.

Lazeri was sure to
hit it out of the park.

Alexander was unconcerned.

If he swings at it, he'll
most likely hit it foul.

Then I'm going to come
outside with my breaking pitch.

Hornsby backed off.

Who am I, he said, to
tell you how to pitch?

Lazeri was waiting.

Alexander's first offering was
a low curve, a perfect pitch.

Strike one.

Alexander threw another, a pitch
Hornsby feared, hard and inside.

Lazeri hit a soaring line drive that went
foul, just as Alexander had predicted.

Strike two.

Now he threw another curve
across the outside corner of the plate.

Lazeri swung...

and missed.

The Yankees were retired.

Alexander dominated
the next two innings.

The last up in the ninth was
Babe Ruth, who walked, and then

was thrown out when he
inexplicably tried to steal second.

The series was over.

The Yankee fans were stunned.

St. Louis went wild.

Alexander remained
as taciturn as ever.

It felt good to win, he
said, but the real excitement

came when Judge Landis
mailed out the winner's checks.

My father, because baseball is dynastic,
always said that his saddest moment in

life was that famous 1926 last game of
the World Series when a drunk and much

superannuated Grover Cleveland Alexander
was brought in with the bases loaded,

and Tony Lazeri almost hit a home run that
went foul by a couple feet and then struck

out, thereby winning,
ultimately, two innings later.

The game for the Cardinals, my father was
listening to that by radio, said that he

was sure that he would never
be happy again afterwards.

But two days later, he was fine,
and in 1927, Ruth hit 60 home runs,

and the Yankees won the World
Series in four over the Pirates.

So again, there is recompense, and there
is eventual pleasure, even after tragedy.

And now, boys, we will
take up our arithmetic lesson.

No.

Six times two is 12.

Six times three is 18.

Six times four is 24.

Six times five is 30.

Six times six is 36.

Six times seven is 42.

Six times eight is 48.

Six times nine is... Stop!

What do you mean, keeping these boys in
there when there's baseball to be played?

Why, uh...

Why arithmetic.

Arithmetic.

Four times four is 16.

Yeah.

Three strikes, you're out.

That's our arithmetic.

Come on, boys, let's go.

What do you say?

Made it two home
runs on Thursday.

The Yankees
hoping to wrap up this

sensational season
with just one more victory.

Gary Beyondek hit her.

James Thurber, I guess, he was the one
who said that 95% of American males put

themselves to sleep at night striking out
the batting order of the New York Yankees.

Much easier to do
now than it was then.

When we got to the ballpark,
we knew we were gonna win.

That's all there was to it.

We weren't cocky.

I wouldn't call it
confidence, either.

We just knew.

Like when you go to sleep, you know
the sun is gonna come up in the morning.

George Pipgrass.

The 1927 Yankees may have been
the greatest team in baseball history.

Babe Ruth, dismissed
as a has-been two years

before, was back
again with a vengeance.

And there was no pennant race
in the American League that year.

The Yankees hammered
out 110 victories.

Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics
finished a distant second, 19 games out.

The Yankees were in first place from
opening day to the end of the season,

a feat that would be
unequaled for 57 years.

They did everything well.

Yankee pitching was masterful.

Waite Hoyt.

Herb Pennock.

Urban Shocker.

Dutch Ruther.

Daily Shots.

Wilsi Moore.

George Pipgrass.

Putting back, they had no equal.

They were called
Murderers' Road.

Babe Ruth, Earl Comes, Bob
Musil, Tony Lazeri, and Lou Gehrig.

He was now one of the
best hitters in the game.

But he was always in the
shadow of his close friend and rival.

He batted after Ruth.

His home runs didn't
soar the same way.

He didn't swagger.

And when the Yankee front office suggested
he make his own headlines by diving for

catches he knew he couldn't make, or
pretending easy catches had been hard,

he gently refused.

I'm not a headline guy, he said.

One day he came to me and
said, Jimmy, let's go and raise Cain.

I said, what do you mean?

He said, we're going to
have a beer for dinner tonight.

That was the extent
of his activities.

The combination of Ruth and Gehrig
was not only wonderful in baseball terms,

but it was aesthetically pleasing because
they were so different in character.

Lou Gehrig was a good man, a family
man, a steady fellow, the exact opposite of

Babe Ruth, who was
out of control all the time.

Both batted left-handed, but Ruth's
swing was nothing like Gehrig's swing.

But think of pitchers in those days who
had to face Babe Ruth, then Lou Gehrig.

For most of the 1927 season, Lou Gehrig
matched Babe Ruth home run for home run.

And it was, in part, to distance himself
from his rival that the Babe resolved to

do something that would have
been unimaginable a few years earlier.

Break his own record and hit
60 home runs in a single season.

The public eagerly kept score as the
weeks passed and the runs mounted up.

Ruth did too, notching
his bat every time he

hit a home run, until
it split after the 21st.

On July 8th, he hit his 27th,
an inside-the-park home run.

By September, Ruth
was carrying his new bat

around the bases to
thwart souvenir seekers.

When he hit number 56
and an over-eager boy ran out

to grab it, he dragged
the bat and the boy along.

Behind him as he
crossed home plate.

On September 30th, the next-to-last day of
the season, and needing just one more home

run, he faced Tom Zachary
of the Washington Senators.

The first Zachary offering was a fast
one which sailed over for a called strike.

The next was high.

The Babe took a vicious swing at the third
pitch ball, and the bat connected with a

crash that was audible
in all parts of his fans.

While the crowd cheered and the
Yankee players roared their greeting,

the Babe made his triumphant,
almost regal, tour of the paths.

And when he embedded his spikes in
the rubber disc to officially Homer 60,

hats were tossed in the air,
papers were torn up and tossed

liberally, and the spirit of
celebration permeated the place.

60!

60!

60!

Ruth shouted in the locker room.

Let's see some other
son of a bitch match that.

It was generally agreed that
no son of a bitch ever would.

The Yankees took the series from the
Pirates in four straight games in 1927,

and then did the same to the
Cardinals the following year.

The Yankees and Babe
Ruth seemed invincible.

Between 1926 and 1931,
Babe Ruth put on one of the

finest displays of hitting
the game has ever seen.

It was the golden
age of sports heroes.

Red Grange in football.

Bill Tilden in tennis.

Bobby Jones in golf.

But no one compared to Ruth.

And the public couldn't
get enough of him.

Neither could the dozens of companies
that now tried to cash in on his image.

Keep your sunny side up, up.

Hide the side that gets blue.

If you have nine sons in a row,
baseball teams make money you know.

Keep your funny side up, up.

Let your hitting
come through, too.

Keep your sunny side up.

What's the idea of the boxers?

I think it's a good game,
before we get to the table.

Big boys!

That's not right.

Ha ha ha!

Now, Yardy?

Yeah?

You wanna do me a favor?

Love to, but go away
from here or let me sleep.

All right.

That goes for you,
camera fellas, too.

Keep your winning side up, up.

Help the team to
come through, too.

Then your name they'll
choose for the sporting news.

Keep your sunny side.

Give the ball the right.

Keep your sunny side up.

Hey, will you hit some for us?

Yeah.

Well, who's going
to do the pitching?

I'm the pitcher.

Alright, you do the pitching
and I'll do the hitting.

You guys get
out in the outfield.

Okay.

6 times 6 is 36.

6 times 7 is 42.

6 times 8 is 48.

Quiet.

It will be a long time before the
game develops a second cop.

And then it will be
just that, a second cop.

You've seen the first and only, Joe
Williams, New York World Telegram.

By the end of the 1928 season,
Ty Cobb had had enough.

At 42, his legs had finally given
out, though his daring was undimmed.

In one of his last games, he
managed for the 35th time to

perform base running's most
demanding trick, stealing home.

Ty Cobb concluded early on
that baseball is not unlike a war.

And nothing in his long
career ever changed his mind.

His records were his
trophies of that war.

3,035 games.

4,191 hits.

2,245 runs scored.

891 bases stolen.

1,937 runs batted in.

And only 357 strikeouts
in 11,434 times at bat.

A lifetime batting average.

The average batting
average of 367.

The highest in history.

On the night of January 11th, 1929,
the home of a Watertown, Massachusetts,

dentist named Edward
Kinder caught fire.

Dr. Kinder was away at the time,
but the woman everyone called Mrs.

Kinder was not,
and died in the blaze.

It took the police several days to
discover that the dead woman had really

been Helen Ruth, the
babe's estranged wife.

Three months later, Ruth married
his longtime mistress, Claire Hodgson.

She cared for his daughter, put him on an
allowance, and imposed a stern regimen.

No hard liquor
during the season.

No hot dogs and
soda before a game.

In bed by 10 p.m.

And to ensure that he kept to it, she
traveled with him aboard the Yankee train.

Claire Ruth acted very like the
mother the babe never really had.

And he thrived on it.

In 1929, Colonel Rupert
decreed that numbers be added to

the Yankees uniforms in the
order in which they came to bat.

So the fans could pick out Ruth
and their other heroes more easily.

That same year, Miller Huggins, who had
managed New York since 1918, died suddenly.

And the invincible Yankees ended the season
18 games behind Connie Mack's athletics.

On October 8th, Mack came to Chicago
to take on the Cubs in the World Series.

The first game of the series was
played before President Herbert Hoover.

There was one big question as Mack and
Chicago manager Joe McCarthy shook hands.

Who would be
Connie's starting pitcher?

He chose Howard
Emke, a has-been.

The fans were amazed,
but Emke struck out 13

Chicago hitters, a new
World Series record.

If ever there were a source for rueful
memories, at least for me, it's baseball.

A World Series game I
could have seen and missed.

It was a memorable one.

1929.

My friend Jimmy O'Hare says, let's go, it's
the Cubs playing against the Athletics.

The Athletics have Lefty Grove.

That fireball pitcher was
going to face Hornsby

and Kyler and Stevenson
and Charlie Grimm.

Gabby Hartnett.

The Sluggers.

Speedball against the Sluggers.

Connie Mack puts in a guy
who didn't use all season.

An old guy named Howard Emke
with a ball that's slower than slow.

Howard Emke strikes out 13 Cubs.

They broke their backs
swinging at a snowball.

I missed that game.

Jimmy saw it.

A rueful memory of loss.

On October 14, 1929,
Connie Mack's Athletics

won the World Championship
four games to one.

Two weeks later, the
stock market crashed.

The Great Depression that would
hit the country would hit baseball, too.

And for the next ten
years, the nation and the

national pastime would
struggle to survive.

Happy Mary Ann McCann,
a crazy baseball fan.