Ruth: The Game's Slugging Legend

He was, by any generation's box score, a monument of talent, accomplishment and appetite. George Herman Ruth -the glorious Babe of baseball -was and is the nation's finest sports legend. No one will ever replace him as the Sultan of Swat. Without Ruth, Hank Aaron and future sluggers would have no standard of greatness to be measured against.

In a sport that nourishes itself on an endless catalogue of statistics, the Babe's achievements are as secure in the record books as the memory of his magnificent seasons at Yankee Stadium: the "House That Ruth Built." In a career that spanned 22 seasons, from the early days of World War I to the depths of the Great Depression, Ruth slugged his way to a total of 44 different majorleague records.

Weaned in a seedy Baltimore saloon and shunted off to a Catholic trade school for the underprivileged by his bartender father, Ruth was only 19 when he became a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles in the International League and the legal ward of the Oriole manager. In 1915, one season later, he moved up to the majors and won 18 games as a lanky lefthander for the Boston Red Sox. After that he put together winning seasons of 23 and 24 games each, plus victories in three World Series starts, before he changed from pitching to full-time batting -and altered the nature of the national pastime.

In 1919, just four seasons after his Red Sox had won the American League pennant with a team total of 13 home runs, he smashed the single-season homer record with the then astronomical figure of 29. That was only the beginning. The following season, his first as a Yankee, he clouted 54. The runnerup, George Sisler, had 19. In fact, Ruth's home-run record that year was greater than the team total of 14 of the 15 other major-league clubs. Yankee attendance ballooned to nearly 1.3 million, from 619,000 the previous year. The crowds came to watch the power and grace of the Babe at bat; they came to cheer his peculiar pigeon-toed trot as he rounded the bases after clouting one into the stands.

He simultaneously developed a reputation for clout in the dining room. A typical Ruthian breakfast: a porterhouse steak, four fried eggs and a large portion of fried potatoes, washed down with a pot of coffee and a pint of bourbon. Between games of a doubleheader, he would mix a quart of pickled eels (donated by Teammate Lou Gehrig's mother) with a quart of chocolate ice cream and devour the concoction.

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He also continued to devour American League pitching. He hit his record 60 in 1927, 54 more in 1928 and then, after the stock-market crash in 1929, held out for what seemed to be a stupendous salary: $80,000. He was counseled against the move by a sportswriter whose principal argument was that President Herbert Hoover was only making $75,000. With irrefutable logic, Ruth replied, "Yeah, but I had a better year than he did."

Toward the end, playing out his days with the Boston Braves as a spindly-legged, potbellied oldtimer of 40, he reached back one May afternoon and recovered for a brief instant the intuitive skills of earlier springs. A Pittsburgh sportswriter had kept him propped against a bar the night before until 5 a.m., but no matter. With three swings, the Babe hit homers 712, 713 and 714, driving the final pitch completely out of Forbes Field.

When asked once whether he could have hit .400 (his career average was .342) if he had concentrated on meeting the ball for mere base hits rather than swinging for the fences, Ruth replied: "Four hundred? Hell, kid, I could have hit .500." He probably could have. But that would have left Hank Aaron no one to chase.

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