Tough Man, But Loved By A Nation

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 121, 24 May 1941, Page 5 (Supplement)

Tough Man, But Loved By A Nation

One of the great characters of my time was George Herman (Babe) Ruth, the baseball player. His legs went back on him (it is the legs that go firs! with practically all athletes) and my adjectives were beginning to look a trifle shopworn. A great many of them I managed to wear thin in over 12 years of writing about Ruth.

For the Babe was, and still is, a wonderful person and a great human being. not write this as a popeyed cub or even ji an exponent of the "Gee whiz, ain't he grand?" school of sports writing, but in sober retrospection over the career of a man I genuinely love and admire.

THE last time I saw Babe Ruth was at Jones Beach State Park «n Long Island, where I was putting on a water circus for my paper. Ruth, finished as an active ball player, had been brutally discarded by the game and its operators, for whom he did so much.

It made me angry to see this glamorous figure suddenly completely neglected and out of the picture. I invited him to come down to the beach as guest star of the day's shows. It was a. warm, bright, sunshiny seashore afternoon in August, a Saturday, and there were some 75000 people jammed around the flat, sandy area of Zach's Bay, many of them standing waist-deep in the water to see the fun. Midway during the programme Ruth was led out from the show control station, down the aisle bordering the bay, and out across the catwalk that led 10 our big water stage. No announcement had been made or was to be made until he reached the stage and the act then going on was concluded.

Crowd Magnetism BUT, as we walked, a murmur began in the vast crowd as they recognised the big, burly man withe ugly face, blob nose, curly M hair, cigar stuck out of the side of his mouth. There were individual cries of "Hi, Babe!" "Oh, you Babe! Hey, Babe, look up here!" The name passed from lip to lip. The crowd caught fire like a blaze running over a dry meadow, and the murmur swelled and rose, gained and grew, and took on volume, until by the time he reached the stage it was one thundering booming rdar, drowning out the pounding of the surf on the beach a few hundred yards away. It shook the stands and the glassy surface of the water. It shook Ruth a little, too, the man who had heard so many of these crowd roars. He stood facing into this gale of sound grinning, his little eyes shining. The ringmaster had a stroke of genius. He dispensed with the microphone and'simply swept his arm in Ruth's direction. The greeting redoubled. And this was not a baseball crowd. Many of the people there had never seen a major-league baseball game. They were simply Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen out for a day's fun at the beach. But they all knew Ruth and somehow loved him. A few minutes later Babe began |o mt fungo flies out into the bay. Hitting fungo flies" is the baseball term for the fact of throwing the ball "P and out in front of you a little way and the hitting it up into the air with a specially constructed bat. fne first three baseballs had hardly splashed into the bay, the fourth was still in its arching flight, when the shore line—a half-mile or s „°..£ f >J— suddenly became frothed with white. The line of foam extended around the U of the bay and f. e . w , m width, white splashings in which dark heads bobbed, the beginning of one of the strangest and most fe ru races I nave ever witnessed. S e tr »an a thousand youngsters, H.L as . well as boys, with one sud"«i. simultaneous impulse, had !f«en to the water and were threshl,f out towards those tiny white oasebaUs bobbing on the blue surlaceof Zach's Bay. Many of them SS competitors who had been hT„i?i g i or their swimming races to mcalled and who should have been 3 a " d husbanding their length. They didn't care

Said Shocking Things WHEN Babe Ruth used to sav *, . * .casually: "I'm a bastard if that feller ain't hitten 'em to left field now,' he was merely using an accepted colloqualism of his early youth and stratum to indicate surprise, and therefore the word meant no more than if he had said, "I'm a wood nymph." Less. Like all people who spring from what we like to call low origins, Ruth never had any inhibitions. The polite evasions of civilised speech and their interdictions, until recent years, were never for him and sometimes he said shocking things. That is, they would have been shocking coming from an archbishop or a Princeton graduate or a virgin, but to me they never were because he was always so completelv natural and never said them with the purpose of startling or shocking, but merely for the more utilitarian purpose of expressing himself and his meaning. His language for many

tyjjhs Pepper Speech THERE has always been a cn , * jnagic about that gross, ugly, anri Gar f?antuan figure of a man It he di & ca„on «-i *he more remarkable bespiiin*,. 2 rge Herman Ruth is not HpTo after the model of a hero, ever t i ne the ugliest men I have rouov, f no ,*n. He was kneaded, a fim,'.? ' ec * out of earth, a golem, niaria u me that might have been by a savage. ' to it eet in height, or close featn'ro an unshapely body that torcn ' »u a tremendous, barrel-shaped smaii il at tapers down into too and r) P H?f, ancl . an amazingly fragile heart ii P air of ankVrs. But his is "pnnlw, even more remarkable. It bie w?i OUS ' to ° large even for his brown y , fra me. His eyes are clear ' small and deep sunk, but HL br ight. Nobnri w . ls and pushed in. way if . 11 f° r Him; it grew that Pealinr. I Bives him a quaintly apthelit?u ,^' ne emphasised by 'slarfri , g J'ttering eyes. His mouth by'finl an r .thick-lipped and featured dark hL teeth. His hair is a and ri,r?i Wn ' almost black, and crisp Hia £• caveriK° Ic ? runibles from the deep great His massive chest, a s Peec'h ??' masculine voice, and his Pleteiv if Pparse, salty and com®trone talk > peppered with 1 3 ! ba l d °aths. It is the talk "son of i t ar in the navy, with « j 1 " usef l so frequently, all of t't* Pleasantly that it loses becomoi anti-social qualities and does n 7? another word that any 'Particularly disturb the ears hleggpfi'. than - 'guy" or "I'm n °Uces JT a x Peculiarity one often °tjt strong speech. Habitual cith Is technically termed an roba it, oi its sting.

most harmful thing that Ruth in all his life ever did with his money was one time nearly to kill himself through overeating. Whether or not it grew out of his early unsatisfied hungers, he was a glutton. One hot afternoon in some dreadful little Southern whistle stop on the training swing up through the cotton States on the way north, he was hungry and thirsty. Therefore he bought as many greasy, railroad station hot dogs and bottles of arsenic green and jaundice-yellow soda pop as he could eat and drink. Eye-witnesses say he ate 12 frankfurters washed down with,, eight bottles of pop.

years remained the robust, expressive, if thoroughly gutter speech of the asphalt and gutter world. He was, after all, when first noticed, a tough kid in a Baltimore Catholic semi-correction school. His true antecedents —that is, father and mother—apparently will always remain misty and unexplored. After all, Ruth was an orphan. What he remembers about his parents is hardly pleasant, and he will not talk of it. Suffice it to say that they, too, were made of grey clay, and that, Ruth's youth was hard and bitter as was'Dempsey's, but the rancid bitterness and hardness of. cobblestones and backyard city slums, a drabness differing from those sections in the small country towns known as "across the railroad tracks" only by its components.

The result was the stomach-ache heard and felt around the world. Ruth never did anything fn a small way. The biggest-pain-ever griped his middle. , His training trip was interrupted. In New York he was carted from the train on a stretcher and taken to the hospital, where he nearly died. Few if any' American citizens have ever had such a death watch or caused so much public concern while lying on a sick bed. There was an inside story current at the time that actually the dog? and the soda pop were successfully digested and that Ruth was suffering from something a little more sinister. Actually, which story was true I do not know. Both were easily applicable to Ruth. But in this 'instance the cause was far less important than the effect. A baseball player lay close to death, and an entire nation held its breath, worried and fretted, and bought every edition of the newspapers to .read the bulletins as though the life of a personal friend or a member of the family were at stake. Enjoyed Life to Full

Salary of 70,000 Dollars THAT, of course, Is one of the never dimming miracles of this inexplicable country. Half-brutes like Dempsey or Ruth can and do emerge from the filth and ashes to shine more brightly than any phoenix as the beloved heroes of the nation, rich beyond maddest fantasies, and, above all, looked up to and worshipped by children. And I marvel, too, how as they age, these men who were toughies and hard nuts in their early years begin to take on a patina of civilisation and gentleness. True>, the layer never waxed very thick over Ruth's uncouth exterior, but he acquired it nevertheless. He can talk refined and gentle as long as you please now. It nearly kills him, but he can.

I LEARNED to love him because he was all man. .In his early days before the great reformation he drank, he smoked, he cursed, he wenched, he indulged himself, he brawled and sulked, and got the swelled head and got over it.

I am not equipped to tamper with the question of Ruth's mental age, because he was always a boyish, direct fellow who spent most of his time playing a game, but he is possessed of plenty of shrewdness and intelligence. Of his psychic age, however, I am prepared to suggest that it never grew beyond that of a nine-year-old. His reasoning and behaviour were always • engagingly childlike and wholly understandable. When he was poor and an orphan boy he had nothing and must have wanted everything. There was a time when he was undernourished and sometimes starving. No man who has ever gone hungry ever quite forgets it Now, consider that in the years j between 1914 and 1934 Babe Ruth in salarv and prize money alone earned the sum of 1,000,000 dollars. With the perquisites that fall to every successful athlete in the United States the endorsings, the syndicated articles, the sporting goods material and candy bar bearing his name, the moving pictures, the radio and the rovalties, he mast have made that sum over again. In 1914 his salary with the Baltimore team was 600 dollars a year, in ftve years with Boston it was 5000 dollars, and in ten years with New York it was 52 000 dollars and eventually rose to 70,000 dollars.

He was discovering, living, and enjoying this wonderful thing called Life, with all of his senses, enjoying it more than anyone I have ever known. God, life was swell! All the food he could eat, beer and whisky, girls with red or black or yellow hair and soft lips, baseball every day, nice warm places to sleep, silk underwear, fine warm clothing, plenty of pals, money in the pants pocket, more where that came from, name and pictures in the papers, a big shiny automobile to ride around in—wow!

And yet it never made him mean. He never forgot his early days. For that matter, he didn't want to forget them, because thinking of them sharpened his enjoyment of the new ones so much more. And he always had a tremendous earnestness and sincerity and, above all, something that only a great and really simple man could have: a sense of responsibility to the millions of people, young and eld, who loved him, and thought that he was a hero and a fine man.

This is perhaps the greatest truth about the Babe—that no matter how phony or drippingly sentimental the situation in which he found himself might be, whether it was the outcome of natural instincts on his part to be kind er whether it was as carefully stage-managed as the first visit of a cub columnist to the home of a particularly vicious prizefighter, Ruth was always the honest and sincere element in the situation.

Is any man who has starved and lived meanly geared to accept and handle sudden wealth? the

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Asked to Reform CONSIDER for instance the brilliantly phony plea to Babe Ruth made by his friend, Senator Jimmy Walker. This was made at a baseballwriters' banquet at the close of a season during which Ruth had been a particularly bad boy, had broken training, had quarrelled with Miller Huggins, his manager, had been fined and suspended and sent home, had, in short, acted the part of a spoiled, wilful, naughty brat.

The Senator rose to speak in a banquet hall filled with tough, hardboiled, worldly-wise baseball writers whose daily job it is to peddle treacle about the baseball heroes and softpedal the sour stuff, baseball managers, perhaps as tough and hard a group of men as there is in sports, celebrities of every kind; and he made a personal plea to Babe Ruth to reform himself and behave because he owed it to the dirty-faced kids in the streets' who worshipped him, the Babe, he said, had a great responsibility to the youth of the country and he must not shirk it.

It was maudlin; it was in some ways cheap and tear-jerking. But. as I have suggested, it was likewise brilliant, and the brittly hard, cynical Senator of the State of New York knew what he was doing.

Because Ruth robbed it of all cheapness, of all sensationalism, of everything that was vulgarly maudlin, by getting to his feet, and, with tears streaming down his. big, ugly face, promising the dirty-faced kids of the nation to behave—for their sake. And then he kept his promise.

He was never in trouble again. From that time on he began to learn a little about moderation and restraint. Nor did it make him any the less a picturesque character, because he never went sissy or holy on the boys. He retained all of his appetites and gusto for living. He merely toned them do\vn.*He learned what every celebrity in the United States eventually must learn, to perform his peccadilloes in strict privacy if possible. Formerly Ruth had perpetrated his right out in public.

Ruth's baseball record is a remarkable one and deserves inclusion even in such an informal estimate of him as this. He has an all-time total of 708 home runs and 723 homers. adding those he hit in World Series. He holds the record for the most home runs hit in one season, namely, fcJO, scored in 1027 in a season of 151 league games. He likewise holds the world's record for the total number of bases on balls during a playing career, 2036, an indication of what the opposing pitchers thought of him.

Played As He Lived FOR he played ball on the same enormous scale on which he lived, intensely, fervently, and with tremendous sincerity and passion. It was impossible" to watch him at bat without experiencing ah emotion. I have seen hundreds of ball players at the plate, and none of them managed to convey the message of impending doom to a 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.

By Paul J Gallico 1

And, curiously, no home run that Ruth ever hit managed to hint at the energy, power, effort and sincerity of purpose that went into a swing as much as one strike-out. Just as when he connected the result was the most perfect thing of its kind, a hall whacked so high, wide and handsome that no stadium in the entire country could contain it, so was his strike-out the absolute acme of frustration, lie would swing himself twice around until his legs were braided. Often he would twist himscif clear off his feet. If he had ever connected with that otic. . . .

And, of course, his home runs brought forth pandemonium, a curious double rejoicing in which the spectator celebrated not only Babe's feat and its effect upon the outcome of the game, but also his excellent luck in being present and with his own eyes beholding the great happening.

Abuse From Bench 1 REMEMBER with most, pleasure the last, world scries in which Ruth played, hack in 1932, and which involved the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs. The game took place in Chicago, and Root was pitching for the Western team. The Cutis were giving Ruth an unmerciful riding down on the field, and the sallies were deliberately vicious and foul, having chiefly to do with his origin, upon which, as I have indicated, "there may be considerable speculation. He had already hit one home run, and when he came to hat in the latter part of the game, the entire Cub bench came out to the edge of the dugout and began to shoot filth and abuse at him.

Because Ruth will always he one of the great .success stories, the fairy tale come true —from Rags to Riches, or the Orphan Who made Good. It is one of the favourite fables of our democracy, and when it conies to life as it sometimes docs in startling places, we are inclined to regard the lucky character as more royal than royalty.

For 12 years he led his American \ League in home runs hit, and for 11 years hit 40 or more out of the park each season. There are dozens of other minor records that one could dig out of the files and the record books, all connected with his prodigious hitting, such as runs batted in, runs scored, extra base hits, and so on; but they still remain dusty figures and reveal nothing of the manner of his making these numbers —numbers which in two or three generations will be all that will remain of George Herman Ruth, except legend. „ _ w

Root put over the first pitch and Ruth swung at it nnil missed. There was a great roar of delight from the partisan crowd, which hated everything that came from New York, and the players redoubled their insults. Ruth held up one finger so that everyone could see it. He was indicating that that was just one strike. The crowd hooted him. Root pitched again and Ruth missed for the second time, and the park rocked with laughter. The Cub players grew louder and more raucous. Tiie Babe held up two fingers. The crowd razzed him. and there was nothing good-natured about it, because his magnificent effrontery was goading them badly. Nominated His .Hit TWO balls, wide pitches, intervened. And at this point Ruth made the most marvellous and impudent gesture 1 have ever seen.

With his forefinger extended he pointed to the flagpole in centre field, the farthest point removed from the plate. There war no mistaking his meaning. He was advising crowd. pitcher, and jeering Cubs that that was the exact spot where Root's next pitch would leave the park.

The incensed crowd gave forth a long-drawn-out and lusty "Boooo!" Ruth made them choke on it by slugging the ball out of the premises at exactly that point, the centre-field flagpole, for his second home run of the day and probably the only homo run in the entire history of baseball that was ever called in advance, as to both time and place. Ruth could do those things, take those chances ard got away with them, because he was The Babe and because his imagination told him that it was a fine, heroic and Kuthian thing to do. And he had the ability to deliver. I suppose in fifty or sixty years the legerd will be that Ruth could call his shots any time. But once is sufficient for me, and I saw him do that.