Today, tomorrow or soon thereafter, Barry Bonds is going to catch, then pass, Babe Ruth.
Bonds’ quest is tangible: 714 home runs.
But the ghost of the Babe will live on long after Bonds hits No. 715 to claim second place on baseball’s all-time home run list.
“Anybody who loves baseball can close their eyes and see the Babe’s swing,” Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said. “You see those Yankee pinstripes and that No. 3 on his back. You think baseball, you think Babe Ruth.”
Yankees legend Reggie Jackson, 10th on the all-time list with 563 homers, put it this way: “Growing up, you thought of baseball, hot dogs, Coke and Babe Ruth.”
Why, nearly 71 years after his final game and almost 58 years after he died, does Ruth’s legend cast a shadow over Bonds, indeed over all of baseball?
The answers lie in Ruth’s greatness as a ballplayer, the era in which he played and the mythmakers who wrote about sports heroes of the 1920s. All that, mixed with Ruth’s robust, larger-than-life personality, created an American legend.
Despite his many foibles and indiscretions, the public saw Ruth as a likable scoundrel.
“The Babe loved people and people loved the Babe, it’s that simple,” said 97-year-old Bill Werber, who was with the Yankees’ famous 1927 team that featured the Murderers’ Row lineup. “Sure, the Babe was rough around the edges, but he was this big, affectionate man, and I don’t think anybody ever loved the game more than the Babe.”
The homers
Longtime broadcaster and Denver resident Joe Cullinane was 8 years old the first time he saw Ruth play the Chicago White Sox, in 1931 at Comiskey Park. Two years later, Cullinane’s father took him to see the first All-Star Game. Ruth obliged with the first homer in the game’s history. In the third inning, batting against lefty Bill Halla- han, Ruth hit a two-run shot just inside the right-field foul pole.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Cullinane said. “He was just majestic trotting around those bases. Majestic, that’s what he was.”
Ruth was the first player to hit 30, 40, 50 and 60 home runs in a season. He revolutionized the game.
“Ruth pretty much invented the home run,” said former Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville, whose new biography, “The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth,” was released this week. “Before he came along, the home run was almost a mistake. Before Ruth, the idea was not to hit the ball into the air, but keep it on the ground and squeak out runs.”
But Ruth’s big bat, and the frenzy he created, changed the game forever.
“Probably the greatest thing he did was in 1919 when he hit 29 home runs during the dead-ball era,” Montville said. “When Ruth hit one of those gigantic homers, it was like a miraculous event. Everybody talked about it and all the reporters typed it.”
In 1927, Ruth hit 60 homers, a record that stood for 34 years. In 1930, Werber was on base when Ruth hit one of his homers. Eager to show off his hustle, Werber sprinted home while Ruth cantered around the bases.
“The Babe tipped his hat to the crowd and then sat down beside me,” Werber recalled. “He said, ‘Kid – he called everybody Kid – you don’t have to run when the Babe hits one.”‘
Making the myth
Ruth and the Roaring ’20s were made for each other. As the country fought back from the horrors of World War I, Ruth rescued baseball from the Black Sox scandal of 1919. In 1920, he hit 54 homers, and the Yankees became the first team to draw more than 1 million fans. In an era of flappers, bathtub gin, flashy automobiles and buying stock on margin, Ruth became the life of the party.
His off-field issues and adventures – eating and drinking to excess, frequenting brothels, wrecking cars – were not completely ignored by newspapers of the day but were usually winked at, a stark contrast to today’s media saturation with Bonds.
Upon Ruth’s death in 1948, legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote: “The true story of Babe’s life will never be written – the story of wrecked cars along the highway – the story of the night he came near dropping (manager) Miller Huggins off a train – the story of the $100,000 or more he lost in Cuba one racing winter.”
During the 1920s, newspapers doubled the space devoted to sports. Writers Heywood Broun, Damon Runyon, Paul Gallico and Rice turned athletes such as boxer Jack Dempsey into heroic, even mythic figures.
None sold more papers than Ruth.
“There were 18 major newspapers in New York at the time and all of these great sportswriters,” Montville said. “Everybody was outdoing each other, trying to out-describe Ruth’s homers. It became like a theme contest.”
Hence the flood of nicknames: the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, Behemoth of Bust and Maharajah of Mash were just a few.
Considering the scrutiny Bonds faces today, the adoration Ruth received from the media seemed innocent, almost comical today.
“If Babe Ruth were alive today, the media would roast him, absolutely roast him,” Rockies reliever Mike DeJean said.
The love affair
In a 2002 article in The New York Times Magazine, Bonds said, “The last game I played was in college. Ever since then, it’s been a business.”
Therein lies a key reason Bonds, currently at 712 home runs, can hit 715 homers, or 730, or pass Hank Aaron at 755, and never escape Ruth’s shadow. Bonds, a sullen outcast, appears to take little joy from the game that helped make him rich and famous.
Ruth was all about joy.
“I can remember it was like it was yesterday,” Werber recalled. “Ruth and Lou Gehrig came out of Yankee Stadium. Gehrig, who was kind of a private, aloof guy, went straight through the crowd and straight to his car.
“But there was the Babe, with kids climbing all over him. He had on these white shoes and tan pants and the kids were messing him up. But he stood out there and signed autographs with this big grin on his face.”
For two days after his death Aug. 16, 1948, an estimated 200,000 people filed past Ruth’s casket at Yankee Stadium. The funeral was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In the pallbearers’ pew, former teammates Waite Hoyt and Joe Dugan sat in the sweltering heat.
“I’d give a hundred dollars for a cold beer,” Dugan whispered.
“So would the Babe,” Hoyt said.
Staff writer Troy E. Renck contributed to this report.
Staff writer Patrick Saunders can be reached at 303-820-5459 or psaunders@denverpost.com.
