Posted on 05/25/2023 7:19:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Babe Ruth is #3 on the home run list behind Bonds and Aaron. However, 714 is one of those magic numbers for baseball fans like me. 60 (later 61) and 714 were the big baseball numbers that we grew up hearing about. Frankly, I never thought that anyone would catch Ruth's 714. At the same time, I cheered Aaron all the way, especially after he got to 700 and eventually passed Ruth in 1974.
Babe Ruth hit # 714 on this day in 1935. Like everything else, he did it with style and noise. This is how it went down:
Every star player’s illustrious career must come to an end at some point. It only seems fitting that Babe Ruth’s final home run came in a game in which he hit three on May 25, 1935.
Most players’ star power begins to fade over time, and Ruth was no exception to this rule.
Released by the Yankees following the 1934 season, Ruth returned to Boston to play for the Braves.
On May 25, 1935, the Braves and Ruth lost 11-7 to the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose lineup boasted three future Hall of Famers: The Waner brothers Lloyd and Paul playing center and right field, respectively, as well as shortstop Arky Vaughan.
Ruth drove in six of the Braves’ seven runs with his three blasts.
He would play in five more games that season, but did not record another hit.
I am not even sure if he knew that the curtain was closing or his career was over. My only regret is that he did not finish with the Yankees. He died in 1948 from cancer.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Great players all the way up to the mid 80s. When they went on strike, I lost interest in the game.
Aint a thing lawyers touch that they dont eff up.
Every other hitter in the majors is measured by the standard that Ruth set 100 years ago.
He very well could have been a Hall of Famer pitcher if he continued pitching.
Hank Aaron received a fair amount of hate mail while he was chasing Babe Ruth’s record. But Ruth’s widow was very supportive: “The Babe loved baseball so very much; I know he was pulling for Hank Aaron to break his record.”
Classy lady there.
As a kid, I watched Hank Aaron hit 714 and 715 on the old RCA television. My folks took pictures (slides) of the TV screen with the 35mm Pentax camera and Kodachrome film.
Greatest of All Time... Period. No one else comes close, and unlike other sports that make claims of such things, the Babe’s stats back it up.
When compared to other players of his era, no one was even close..
Sadly the Yankees today are a far cry from that Era.... but then again, so is baseball in general.
“When they went on strike, I lost interest in the game.”
Went to many Yankee games when I lived in the Bronx, after the strike I lost interest.
It’s not just hitting though, when you look at Ruth overall, he was so far beyond everyone else playing the game in his era, that it’s ridiculous. No one since has even come close.
And back then bats and baseballs were vastly substandard compared to today’s equipment.
Most people don’t understand how critical that is.
Of course, the other side of that is Ruth never faced pitching speeds and the ridiculously wicked junk today’s pitchers throw.
I’m old enough to remember when a lot of scientists were trying to prove the curve ball was an optical illusion.......I bet none of them ever faced a 3 foot breaking ball. Lol!
single handedly changed the way the game was played...
For many years, baseball was a game that offered a relatively honest comparison between the different eras, as the rules of the game were mostly unchanged from the 20’s through the 70’s. But with the addition of the Designated Hitter, the game slowly changed. And while it wasn’t a rule change, the emergence of the closer as a specialist brought another subtle change. And the changes just kept coming. PED’s, inter-league play, ghost runners in extra innings, pitch clocks, and larger bases have now clearly obliterated any sort of valid comparison of players from different eras. And so it is, Babe Ruth remains the best there ever was.
Most career walks, most HR in a season, most HR in a career...
Barry Bonds
I can imagine those many people who wrote those letters were basically full of the idea that Ruth was God and no one, especially a black man, could challenge that and the home run record. And that is not at all dissimilar from the mentality behind the anger and hatred directed at Trump when he challenged and defeated Hillary.
Did Ruth ever skipper a major league team after retiring from playing?
Most steroids ever used. Barry Bonds
Most people don’t understand how critical that is
What drove that point home to me was a trip to the Ruth museum in Baltimore (back before Baltimore was a war zone). They have a plexiglass case holding two bats upright, one the Babe's and the other Cal Ripken's, and there are holes in the case so you can grasp each hat by the handle and heft it.
What was astonishing (to me anyway) wasn't so much how heavy the babe's bat was, it was how much thicker it was at the handle. It felt like I was grasping a wooden fencepost. Nowadays, all the weight is concentrated in the barrel. The handles are thin and fragile, but no matter if you break one at every at-bat because the bat company has a van with a wood lathe and bat blanks in the parking lot and they will make you a new one in five minutes. In Ruth's day it wasn't unheard of for one bat to last a player an entire season.
Ruth's heaviest bat was 54 ounces. That's a full pound heavier than Barry Bond's bat was.
The Babe Ruth museum also had a display case of balls signed by the big hitters. I stood there and read every signature on every ball. Some were old and faded and you had to study on them a while to figure out who's signature it was. But the one that surprised me the most was signed by Sadaharu Oh. Which I found not only extremely diplomatic of the museum curator, honoring a player who never played in the American majors because he exceeded the Babe's record showed that both that museum and the sport of baseball are (or at least once were) bigger even than The Bambino.
Interesting facts, thanks for sharing.
54 oz. bat.......that’s more of a CLUB. LOL!
He wanted to very badly, but never got the chance. There was serious doubt over The Babe’s abilities to manage a team (he couldn’t manage himself was the refrain). It was a bitter disappointment for him. He became the first base coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 and had some hope that he would be offered the opportunity to manage, but it never was offered.
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