Beyond the Trivia-Babe Ruth Day

Of the designations for April 27th, one of them is Babe Ruth Day, in honor of one of baseball's greatest players. Of the following four statements about Babe Ruth, which are true? (1.) His first name was George. (2.) His height was 5'9". (3.) Babe Ruth started out as a pitcher, but he wasn't anything special at that position. (4.) If he hadn't died early, Ruth would have been a baseball manager.

Answer:

Babe Ruth's life is the stuff of legends. He was born into a dysfunctional family and was considered a delinquent. At the age of seven, he was sent to a reformatory and basically grew up there. A priest at the reformatory and orphanage was a skilled baseball player and taught the young Ruth how to play. Ruth showed promise as both a pitcher and a hitter, and, at the age of 19, he became a professional baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles, which at that time was a minor league team. Statement one says Babe Ruth's first name was George. And that's true. George Herman Ruth was his name.

Americans are generally taller than they were in Babe Ruth's era. Statement two says he was five foot nine, which was actually just a bit taller than average at the time. But that's false. Ruth was said to be six foot two, which was exceptionally tall. Although Ruth started out as a pitcher, eventually he became an outfielder. Statement three says he was nothing special as a pitcher. That's not true. Ruth won more than 20 games in two seasons. In his six seasons with Boston, he won 89 games and recorded a 2.19 era. In the 1918 World Series, Ruth pitched 29 and 2/3 scoreless innings. It's said he was prouder of that record than he was of any of his batting feats, but Ruth wanted to play every day and eventually management agreed.

Statement four says Ruth would have become a manager if he hadn't died early. Ruth died of cancer in 1948 at the age of 53. April 27,1947 was declared Babe Ruth Day, a day to say goodbye to the babe. Ruth had retired as a player in 1936, and he wanted to be a manager, but he was repeatedly turned down. So statement four is false. Babe Ruth was a colorful character, but he had a reputation as being hard to deal with. And his behavior on and off the field was not always stellar. Not becoming a manager was Ruth's greatest disappointment. He could see that the other four members of the first class of the Baseball Hall of Fame (Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Honus Wagner) had all been given offers to manage a baseball team. Family members say it caused the babe to be depressed.

Any extensive review of Babe Ruth's life must include the so-called Curse of the Bambino. It's been said that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees to finance a Broadway play. Frazee was better known as a theatrical producer than as an owner of a baseball team, but fairly recent research indicates that Frazee used the money to pay off his mortgage of Fenway Park. Frazee and American League President Ban Johnson didn't always see eye-to-eye, and Johnson had actively sought to push Frazee out of his ownership. The trade came after Ruth had demanded a new contract that would double his salary. The story becomes quite involved, but essentially Johnson had limited Frazee's choices in trading Ruth to two teams, the Yankees and the White Sox. Frazee had been interested in Shoeless Joe Jackson, but the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 left Frazee with only one choice, the Yankees.

At the time of his retirement, Ruth held many of baseball's most esteemed records, including the career records for home runs, slugging percentage, runs batted in, bases on balls and on-base plus slugging. Several of those records have been broken, but In various surveys and rankings, Ruth continues to be regarded as the greatest baseball player of all time, and in 2018, President Donald Trump announced that Ruth would posthumously receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.