THE BABE – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  We missed this, but yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth's debut in major-league baseball.  From Fox: 

George Herman “Babe” Ruth played his first Major League Baseball game 100 years ago Friday, marking the beginning of a legendary career and legacy that lasted decades.

One hundred years after Ruth took to the Fenway Park mound and tossed seven innings against the Cleveland Naps, he is still known to any Pee Wee league player trying to break in a glove today as simply, "The Babe."

Ruth, who was 19 and, according to one teammate, looked like a "big overgrown pea" at the start of the game, went on to play for 22 years, 15 of those with the New York Yankees. He amassed 714 home runs and 1,330 strikeouts.

He jokingly rationalized the strike percentage by saying, "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."

One of his most memorable home runs came during the 1932 World Series at Chicago's Wrigley Field, when he appeared to point to the outfield stands to call his shot.

Ed Sherman, the author of "Babe Ruth's Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball's Greatest Home Run," writes about whether Ruth was indeed predicting a homer, or pointing at players in the Cubs dugout who were apparently yelling things at him.

"Part of the beauty of the whole story is that we'll never have a definitive answer," Sherman told The Chicago Tribune. "But if you look at the video, there's something there. Was he pointing to center? Did he say, 'I'm going to hit a home run here and now'? I can tell you one thing: Ruth was challenged, and he responded to the challenge, and the World Series effectively ended right there. It just took the life out of the Cubs. They were done."

Ruth was known for his larger-than-life personality.

Jim Reisler, the author of "The Best Game Ever," wrote in The New York Times that Ruth could visit a "ballpark, a brothel and an orphanage in a single day," and pointed out that when he met President Warren Harding, he said, "Hot as hell, ain’t it Prez?"

Ruth did not resemble today's athletes who look like they live at the gym and sustain themselves on protein shakes. He looked like the affable uncle who just got up off the couch, but could hit the cover off a fastball.

COMMENT:  Ah yes, a real person.  How rare.  When, one season, he was paid $75,000, he was asked by a reporter how he could justify a salary higher than that of the president of the United States.  His answer:  "I had a better year than he did."

I'm old enough to remember the day in 1948 when Babe Ruth died.  We were sitting on the porch of our tiny house in Queens, New York, when the news came by radio.  A pall was cast over all of New York for days.  He'd only been 53.  Babe Ruth was, in our minds, larger than life, in part because we never saw him on a 12-inch television screen. 

In one of my assignments at The New York Times I had a desk right next to Sam Falk, the legendary Times photographer, who had covered Ruth extensively.  He confirmed the description in the story above.  Ruth was a bad boy, a legendary party animal, who'd party late into the night, despite an important game the next day.  He wasn't all that kind to adults, but he did in fact love kids.  He also loved women, a bit too much.  His womanizing caused his first wife to leave him, but he did hold on to his second, Claire, who died in 1976. 

Ruth had two adopted children – Dorothy, who died in 1989, and Julia, who is 97, and threw out the first ball this year at Wrigley Field in Chicago, in a game commemorating Babe's 1932 "called shot." 

July 12, 2014