Babe Ruth (1998) - full transcript

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[whimsical music plays]

[crowd cheer]

[crowd groan]

[crowd cheering]

[music concludes]

[Jimmie] A fellow by the name of Babe Ruth was my roomie,

and it was an experience unlike anything

I've ever had during my course of baseball,

which covers over 60 years.

[sports commentator] The Babe made baseball

more than a mere game.



He made it a personal drama of the diamond.

No matter whether he was barnstorming

or playing in the big leagues, Ruth always stole the show.

The most colorful figure the game has ever known,

Babe Ruth numbered President Harding

among his admirers.

Here you see him with Eddie Collins, Ty Cobb,

and Tris Speaker, heroes of bygone days.

[Mel] Babe Ruth. Forty years after his death,

60 years after he was in his prime,

there still has never been anyone one quite like him.

But that's the trouble with legends.

The passage of time tends to polish the surface,

turning the stories into truth and obscuring the real person.



Who was he really? What kind of man?

I'm Mel Allen, fans.

Most Americans today weren't alive, of course,

during the Babe's career, but they all know his name.

The rest is consigned to that gray area

where myth and reality meet.

But how much of him is the legend? How much fact?

What was he to his contemporaries,

the fans, to the press

before the next generations began

to embellish the story in the telling?

And what was his peculiar place in history?

Well, today, with some personal accounts,

some famous material, and some rare archival footage,

we'll see not so much a chronicle of his career

as an examination of the phenomenon

and why it endures.

We're going to put Babe Ruth back into perspective.

You know, many people think that the story of Babe Ruth

begins and ends with this, his incredible 52-ounce bat,

but when he broke into the majors,

he signed with the Boston Red Sox

as a hot young pitcher.

-[whimsical music playing] -[Mel] 1895.

George Herman Ruth begins life as a tough kid

on the Baltimore waterfront.

His mother dies when he's six, and his father, a saloonkeeper,

sends him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys

to learn a trade and to gain a sense of discipline.

In his 12 long years there, the discipline never catches on,

but what he does gain is a sense of baseball.

As he says later, "I think I could hit

the first time I picked up a bat."

He soon shows an all-around talent

and a knack for pitching that catches the eye

of the Baltimore Orioles,

who sign him at the age of 19 for 600 dollars a season.

He is on his way.

After pitching

ten straight victories for Baltimore,

he's bought by the Boston Red Sox.

He's introduced as Jack Dunn's new Babe,

and the name sticks.

He quickly becomes their star pitcher,

winning 46 games in two years.

World War I hits home, and the issue

of drafting baseball players is never resolved,

but the Babe does his part for morale

by delivering autographed bats to the training camps

and putting on impromptu exhibitions.

On the field, his bat is already outperforming his arm,

and in 1919,

Boston manager Ed Barrow puts Ruth in right field

so he can play every day.

At the time, it was a simple managerial decision,

and no one had any idea

that it would change the game forever.

In six days, the Babe is leading the league in hitting.

No one had ever seen a hitter like this.

The game had been what today is called "little ball."

Singles, bunting, stealing bases,

sacrifices, strategy.

And hitting was considered a lesser art than pitching.

But suddenly, here's a man hitting balls out of sight.

It's exhilarating. Power baseball.

[music concludes]

League leader in the American League

was a fellow named "Home Run" Baker.

I think he hit seven that year.

He led the league, and in the National League,

they had a fellow named Gavvy Cravath.

He hit about the equal number.

But when he came along,

why, he changed the whole aspect of the game.

When Babe first started,

the balls were a little... they were dead.

They're much livelier now because the average fan thought

that a home run drew a lot of people

to the ballpark.

Of course, there was nobody who could hit them

as far as he could.

[Mel] How did the Babe do it when no one else could?

Was he special in some God-given way?

As it turned out, yes.

Researchers at Columbia University

did a scientific study of Ruth

and reported in Popular Science magazine

that the Babe was blessed with incredible vision

and an almost inhuman reaction time.

And it turned the game of baseball

right on its ear.

The game would change more between 1917 and 1921

than it would for the next 40 years.

Ruth's first homer ever, by the way,

was against the Yankees, and when he hit 29 home runs

in 1919, it was by far an all-time record.

"I swing big with everything I've got," he said.

"I hit big, or I miss big."

"In any case, I sure like to live as big as I can."

And there in a nutshell

is the emerging metaphor of Babe Ruth,

because it quickly became obvious

that this young man not only swung hard

at a baseball,

but he swung hard at life itself.

He was just the type that America was looking for

as the roaring '20s came into view.

Brash, high-living, talented.

I tell you, the Boston media loved him.

But in 1920, Boston owner Harry Frazee, deeply in debt,

sold Ruth to the New York Yankees

for 125,000 dollars.

Colonel Jake Ruppert paid that much for him

and also gave him a 350,000-dollar loan.

It was easily the most anyone had ever paid

for a player, but it was baseball's all-time bargain.

Suddenly, the Babe found himself

in the media capital of the world.

Now, what did he do under the crush of attention,

with all the expectations? I'll tell you what he did.

He took that record of 29 homers and buried it.

[whimsical music playing]

[Mel] When Ruth joins the Yankees,

they've never won a pennant, much less the World Series.

They're using the Giants' park, the Polo Grounds,

where the fans at first come out to see just what it is

that has enticed Yankees owner

Colonel Ruppert to pay this kid 20,000 dollars a year.

They don't have to wait long. Ruth hits 54 home runs in 1920.

By midsummer, they've passed the Giants' attendance record,

and by season's end,

they're the first team in history

to draw over a million people.

They came to see the Babe. Even when he missed,

-it was exciting. -[music concludes]

The great war was over. The boys were back home.

The economy was sound. It was time to enjoy life again.

So, the stage is set for a dizzy, rollicking spin

through the '20s,

with a hefty hero leading the way.

And then the bottom dropped out.

The specter of corruption threatened to destroy

the national pastime.

Branch Rickey,

who was managing in St. Louis at the time,

tells the story.

[Branch] By 1919,

baseball had embarked upon a new prosperity.

The world was said to have been saved for democracy,

you'll recall, and at home,

people celebrated by going to the ballpark as never before.

The 1919 World Series.

The great teams, the Chicago White Sox

and the Cincinnati Reds,

Chicago highly favored, and then everything happened.

The White Sox, they faltered, or did they?

This series is lost to Cincinnati.

It seems a natural upset, and yet, a year later,

the series is baseball's biggest scandal,

due to one man and one man only.

The insistence of Ban Johnson that something was wrong.

Then came Judge Landis into the picture.

He relieved Mr. Johnson of all authority

and really expelled

all the guilty players for lifetime.

These were the '20s,

and the young nation letting go.

The past was past. The byword was action,

and what happened was scintillatingly attractive.

A new breed of heroes accommodates the scene.

On the range, Tom Mix. In the streets of reality,

the bootlegger, the hero in reverse.

The angry young man from Manassas, Jack Dempsey.

And the glamorous rectangle of tennis, Bill Tilden.

Golf provided a champion in Bobby Jones.

These would one day be called "baseball's golden years."

Yet in the '20s, only one chief cloud,

one chief hero,

one chief everything in the game,

George Herman Ruth.

The Bambino, the King, the Sultan of Swat.

Baseball needed a revival of faith,

and in the '20s, Babe Ruth was exactly that.

A necessary focal point of public confidence

and adulation.

He was the Babe, honest, outspoken,

and with the Babe to believe in, baseball went on.

For Babe Ruth, every honor.

From New York's mayor, Jimmy Walker,

to what the papers called "the great unwashed."

People came to pay him homage, to watch him practice

the art of something he seemed almost to have invented,

the home run.

With the exception of 1925,

he traveled the land, engaged in breaking records.

He made 714 home runs in his career.

To pay him homage, as Mr. Rickey put it.

How could a young man fit his head through the door

when he's being called the savior

of the national pastime?

How did he handle the constant badgering

from a hungry press,

with their exciting new toy, the movie camera?

[whimsical music plays]

[music fades]

♪ Birthday to you Happy birthday to you ♪

[whimsical music playing]

[music concludes]

[Mel] Hollywood got him into the act, too, of course.

Like Gene Tunney, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey,

and all the other sports heroes of the day.

He never stepped too far out of character, though.

He always seemed to be wearing a baseball uniform.

In this scene from Headin' Home, Babe plays a local rube

who fills in when the visiting team

is a man short.

Though his girlfriend is rooting for him,

the whole town turns on him when he hits a home run

to win the game for the other side.

His acting left everything to be desired,

but the public loved him even more for it,

-and Ruth was paid a fortune. -[music ends]

If Ruth was accessible to anyone, it was the kids.

He always had time for autographs,

stopping to talk to them on the street,

being what they desperately wanted him to be, a hero.

"Kids and me get along just fine," he says.

The media love him for it.

He has a soft spot in his heart for children

that will become part of the Babe Ruth legend.

Babe especially liked the idea of appearing on camera with kids

so that he could reach as many as possible.

It was mostly basic inspirational stuff,

encouraging them to stay in school

and never give up on their dreams.

He realized that only a small number of kids

would ever get to see him at all.

Aside from the ballpark, the silver screen was it.

Mr. Ruth, it's a mighty nice thing of you

to come up here and see these boys,

say a word to them.

Well, the best and largest smile,

I'm going to give this autographed ball to.

So, Rex, you get to try first.

Now you.

-[all laugh] -[chuckles] That's a funny one.

-Oh, look at this guy. -[all laugh]

Sometimes it seemed to be never ending,

as Jimmie Reese,

now on the coaching staff of the California Angels,

tells the story.

We were playing Sunday afternoon,

and we had a dinner engagement.

That is, I was invited over to Babe's house for dinner.

Sunday afternoon, there was a big crowd,

and after the game was over,

we went out through the side door.

We thought we wouldn't run into too many kids.

There must have been 1,000 kids out there

waiting for Babe's autograph.

And Babe's car is sitting out there.

He had a 16-cylinder Cadillac.

And, uh, he said, "You'll have to wait a while."

"I got to sign for all these... all these kids."

He can't... He wouldn't turn anybody down.

One particular time, a little girl came out...

out in left field, where he was playing.

He was playing left field that day and...

during the course of the game,

she sneaked out, out of the stands, and...

and walked out, and said...

and Babe put up his hands and said, "Hold it a while."

This little girl, and he says, "What do you want?"

She says, "I want you to sign a little autograph."

He says, "All right." So he signed it

and gave her a little pat, and off she went.

Made a big hit with the fans. And he liked it.

He enjoyed doing it. He never turned anybody down.

Of course, it wasn't just a joyride.

Ruth was headstrong,

and he was in danger of becoming

bigger than the game itself. As a matter of fact,

just a year after the Black Sox scandal,

Ruth defied Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis's ban

on barnstorming.

You know, going around to the small towns of America

and playing exhibition games,

billed as "the World Series Players."

It was one of Ruth's favorite pastimes.

Ruth's team, the Bustin' Babes, would play Gehrig's team,

the Larrupin' Lous.

And though they were often the only Yankees on the teams,

they drew huge crowds.

Ruth loved barnstorming, and not just because

he made some pretty good money in the off season.

Touring the backwaters of America,

where the fans are as rabid as any in New York,

kept him in touch with the grassroots of the game.

He knew he was giving these people

memories they'd carry forever.

And now Commissioner Landis wanted to take it all away.

So Ruth defied him. Commissioner Landis declared,

"We're playing a game called 'baseball,'

not a game called 'Ruth,'"

and he suspended him for 40 days.

The Babe got angry and fought with the other players

and the press.

He even chased a fan into the stands.

He never recovered in that 1922 season,

but his attitude was so bad, he did set one record.

Five suspensions in one year. How about that?

So it wasn't just success upon success.

The '20s were tumultuous for the Babe as well.

The press adored him, but as with stars of any era,

they'd turn on him when he let them down.

Same with the public.

He fought constantly with Miller Huggins,

then the Yankee manager, to the point

that Huggins fined him 5,000 dollars,

ten times more than the largest fine ever,

for being late to a game.

Ruth later hung him by his feet over the back end of a train.

But his only real enemy year in and year out was himself.

This was New York in the '20s,

gorgeous women coming at him from all directions,

the best cigars, the finest restaurants

proud to have him there and on the house,

and speakeasies

that couldn't open the door fast enough

when they saw his face through the peephole.

The players assigned to travel with him

used to say they roomed with Babe Ruth's suitcase.

Yes, the Bambino sure loved to celebrate.

[Mel] Ruth's stomach and his bat

would spend his career at odds with one another.

After a miserable 1922 season,

he declares, "I'm gonna work my head off

and maybe part of my stomach."

"I'm going to tell the newspapers and the fans

that I've had my last drink

until the middle of next October. No kidding."

Yankee Stadium, the house that Ruth built,

completed in the spring of 1923

at the unheard-of cost of 2.5 million dollars.

Opening day, April 18.

One hundred thousand fans tried to get in,

vying for the 62,000 seats,

all waiting to see if the Babe could return to form.

Can the Babe come back,

or has he consumed his way out of a career?

The answer comes in the third inning

with two men on.

A tremendous shot to the seats in right center field,

the first home run in Yankee Stadium.

The Babe goes on to hit 393, his all-time high,

and the Yanks win their first-ever World Series.

In 1924, Ruth hits 46 home runs and bats 378,

easily winning the batting crown.

Time to celebrate again.

All winter long, he eats and drinks,

then shows up at training camp in 1925

with a belly that even his huge bat

couldn't get around.

The spring of 1925, the time of the big bellyache.

The story goes that on the ride up from Florida,

Ruth stopped off at a train station

and in the space of a few minutes,

consumed about a dozen hot dogs,

washed them down with eight bottles of soda,

then collapsed

a little while later on the train.

Well, that's probably a slight exaggeration,

but I'll tell you this, the Babe was truly sick.

He was rushed to a hospital in New York

and didn't see a ballpark again until June.

One English newspaper even reported him dead.

He played in only 98 games, had his worst season ever,

and confessed the error of his ways to his public.

The fact is you can't talk about Babe Ruth

without eventually turning

to his eating and drinking habits,

because the way the Babe lived was crucial to his legacy.

In 11 years as a professional ballplayer,

he had blown half a million dollars

and had nothing to show for it but a potbelly.

But you know what? If he'd been a simple farm boy

who never broke training

and, by the way, hit 714 home runs,

he would be nothing more than a name from the past

or a record to shoot for.

He was so much more, more of a man, a character,

and his appetite became a part of the Babe Ruth lore.

But was that all it was, legend?

Did the media make a big deal out of nothing

just because it fit his bigger-than-life image? Hardly.

Take it from someone who had to sit there and watch him eat.

Once in a while, it affected...

His stomach was a little upset at times.

And when Babe would come into the Clubhouse

and it bothered a little bit, he would call the trainer

and tell him he wanted "a little bi."

He meant bicarbonate of soda.

And that started to straighten him out,

and he went out and he kept hitting the ball

just as hard as before, that's all.

He recovered very quickly.

But one day, he came home late, got up,

he was quite ill, and he got up in the middle of the night

and asked me to call the trainer.

And when he said "please,"

I knew there was something wrong.

So I called the trainer. And he was awfully sick.

We were playing an exhibition game at that time.

And then the trainer got him straightened out a little bit.

And we dressed at the hotel, and the trainer said,

"He'll never be able to play today,

but we got to get him out there to show him off to the fans."

Well, they fed him some coffee

and dressed him and got him cleaned up,

and came out, and the fresh air hit him a while.

When the game started, he started the game,

and he hit two home runs, two doubles, and a single.

And two hours before, I thought he was going to die.

By anyone's account, 1925 was a disaster for Ruth.

Mayor Jimmy Walker told him, "You have a sacred duty

to the dirty-faced kids of America,

and you're throwing them down."

Well, that hit Babe where it hurt.

So once again, he promised to whip himself back into shape

for the next season.

In a well-publicized fitness binge,

at least by day, Ruth spends the winter working out.

Boxing, medicine balls, leg work,

something approximating a diet.

The press follows his every move,

not only because he's such good copy,

but because from city hall to the Sandlots,

the world wants to know, can he come back again?

1926, a big sports year.

Jack Dempsey loses the heavyweight title

to Gene Tunney.

Knute Rockne is in his prime at Notre Dame.

But Yankee manager, Miller Huggins

and the rest of the baseball world

have their sights set on the Babe.

He's making 52,000 dollars a year now,

but newcomer Lou Gehrig is starting to push the king

just a little.

The pressure on the Babe is enormous,

but from opening day on, he's up to the challenge.

He clobbers 47 home runs in 1926

and takes the Yankees all the way to the World Series,

where he hits four more in a Yankee sweep.

His salary jumps to 70,000 dollars.

Then the great year, 1927.

Twenty-two home runs by June 1st,

forty-three by September.

With two games left in the season,

the Babe has already equaled his single season mark

of 59 home runs. Seventy thousand people

are holding their collective breath.

-[crowd cheer] -[Mel] Sixty home runs.

Only the Babe. Only the Babe!

In the next year, he hit 54.

Now, people these days that try to say,

"Well, it was different then."

"When Roger Maris was approaching 60 home runs

in 1961, he was battling the ghost of Babe Ruth,

the legend,

something that Ruth himself never had to contend with."

But that couldn't be farther from the truth.

When Ruth hit 29 home runs in 1920,

it was so far beyond what anyone had seen

that they figured he had hit the limit.

Then he hit 54 the next year,

more than all but one team in the major leagues,

and it was downright confusing.

The standards for human performance

went right out the window.

Look at this headline from the Los Angeles Herald-Express.

This is on the front page, and it was just an exhibition.

Then he hit 59 the next year, and for the next six years,

he was the only man

with the hope of breaking that record.

In short, as his totals mounted in 1927,

he had his own ghost to contend with.

The pressure day to day was unbelievable,

but he did it, he hit 60, broke the record.

Now did he have the inevitable letdown?

Well, he hit 54 in 1928.

But 1929 began with a tragedy for Ruth and never let up.

It was a tough, tough year for everybody.

On January 11, 1929,

Helen Ruth was trapped alone in a burning house in Watertown,

Massachusetts. She died in that fire.

Helen and Babe had been separated

for three years, and it was an open secret

that he would soon marry Claire Hodgson,

a model and actress.

It happened in the spring of that year.

A bright and resourceful woman,

she would work hard to bring some order to the runaway train

that was his playboy life.

But she only had limited success.

They had a good relationship,

although Babe... Babe was a social lion, that's all.

He liked to go out and liked to meet people,

and that hardly ever turned anybody down.

But his wife would watch him very closely,

as close as she could.

Didn't always have the best of the good luck,

but she did pretty well considering.

[Mel] In September of 1929, Miller Huggins died,

leaving the Managerial spot open,

and the Babe desperately wanted to manage.

Already 34, he knew his days on the field were numbered,

and he had proven his point as a player.

Colonel Ruppert knew the fans came to see him play.

So, instead, he hired Jack Shawkey

and gave Ruth another raise.

Eighty thousand dollars for each of the next two years.

Babe thought he should have been named

manager of the ball club,

and the owner, Mr. Ruppert,

felt that Babe should get some experience

in the minor leagues. Babe didn't agree with him,

and it caused quite a steam between them.

He accepted it, but he wasn't too happy about it.

But he always felt

he was capable of becoming a manager

without any minor league experience.

[Mel] He knew why he'd been passed up,

because he couldn't shake the image

of an irresponsible playboy.

The public wasn't interested in Ruth's managerial hopes.

They were more fascinated with his salary.

But by now, he was a bit jaded.

And when someone asked him why he should make more

than President Hoover, he answered, "Why not?"

"I had a better year than he did."

When Colonel Ruppert himself stated that

80,000 dollars marked the limit of any star's possibilities

at the gate, Ruth had a lot more to say.

"Why 200,000 dollars a year for a motion picture actor

and not 80,000 for the chief figure

in a sport that interests millions of people

and represents more than 50 million dollars

in investment capital? Why not 100,000?"

Well, this was clearly a man who knew his place in the game

as a player. But as a manager,

well, the Colonel's refusal was only the first.

Meanwhile, there was baseball to be played.

But Ruth is clearly slowing down.

His legs hurt him, and he has to apply

a heating pad to them after every game.

More and more often,

it takes Gehrig to drive him home,

where he arrives barely ahead of Lou.

[whimsical music playing]

-[music ends] -[Mel] The game is getting

hard to play.

By now, the Babe is pushing 40, and though he publicly states,

"I'll play until they take my uniform away from me,"

he's already looking ahead.

He's financially secure now, thanks to the efforts of Claire

and a man named Christy Walsh, who was managing his career.

Christy Walsh was a brilliant man

who actually got to the Babe when he was least accessible,

and that was during the early '20s.

He posed as a beer delivery boy,

and before Ruth could even throw him out,

Christy had convinced him that he should have

someone managing his businesses for him

and that he was the man.

A shrewd manager and a fine promoter,

the relationship was just what the Babe needed.

Christy even talked him into selecting

the first All-Star teams.

[dramatic music plays, ends]

[male reporter] Babe Ruth

at the insistence of Christy Walsh

is just completing the selection

of the All-American Baseball Team for 1933.

Babe Ruth is host here at the New York Athletic Club tonight

to the All-America Board of Baseball,

which includes leading sport writers

and Christy Walsh, its sponsor.

[Mel] Christy Walsh, seen here with Ruth,

was the man who finally, belatedly,

got the Babe's life in order.

He convinced Ruth that despite his record paycheck,

his days were numbered as a player.

He began with getting Ruth top dollar

for his weekly articles on baseball,

even though they were ghostwritten by Walsh

and it was the world's worst-kept secret. [chuckles]

They struck deals with movie studios

and radio networks.

They set up a trust fund for 200,000 dollars

and established a 50,000-dollar annuity policy.

He spent his money just as fast as he earned it.

It didn't make any difference.

And his wife came to Christy Walsh,

who was then a newspaperman, I believe,

and asked him if some way they could work out

so Babe could...

Need somebody to take care of him.

Christy became his manager, and gave... They made a deal,

and he signed it,

and he gave Babe 35 dollars a week for spending money.

And he was making 80,000. It killed him,

but they caught him in a weak mood.

And in that way, Babe saved enough money,

when he passed away, Mrs. Ruth was pretty well set

for the rest of her life.

[Mel] The Babe turns 40, and a pattern begins

that would frustrate him to no end.

He says, "Let me manage, or I quit."

And the ultimatum backfires.

While on tour in Japan, where they adore him

and call him "the God of baseball,"

Colonel Ruppert offers Ruth a contract for one dollar,

the minimum allowed.

Ruth gets the message.

He quits the Yankees and heads for the Boston Braves

with the promise of managing in a year.

It was a carrot held out to an aging player

who was desperate to manage.

He posed. He took batting practice.

Attendance soared in Boston.

In fact, they got everything out of his presence

that they had hoped for, but after a dismal season,

Babe was not hired as manager, so he quit.

The same thing happened with the Dodgers a year later.

More staged batting practices, more handshaking and posing.

They just wanted him there

because he still packed them in just by coaching first base.

That didn't last, either, and by 1936,

he was out of the game. His health began to deteriorate.

In 1939, he had a heart attack, and it was downhill from there.

He developed cancer of the throat.

June, 1948.

A deathly ill Ruth appears at Yankee stadium

to celebrate the 25th anniversary

of Yankee stadium.

No one has told him that he has cancer,

but he confides to his friends, "They haven't told me,

but I know what I've got."

A pale, frail man of 52,

he gets an ovation

that still echoes throughout the stadium.

-[speaks indistinctly] -[Mel] He says,

"I'm proud to have hit the first home run

in this stadium,

and Lord knows who will hit the last."

-[camera shutters clicking] -The only real game,

I think, in the world, is baseball.

[crowd cheer]

[Mel] It's his last public appearance.

In eight weeks, the Babe is dead.

The zest for living, the moon-faced smile,

the pigeon-toed trot around the bases,

all stilled forever.

Babe Ruth.

Was he all that history says he was?

As Jimmie Reese would put it,

you haven't heard the half of it.

Was he the greatest player ever? Probably.

He was certainly the greatest figure,

the greatest influence

of any man in any sport in history.

And when he died, he was waked in Yankee Stadium,

where over 150,000 people came to pay their last respects.

And he was afraid of being forgotten.

How about that?

[jazz music playing]

[music concludes]

[music ends]