Read complete books and articles on: Babe Ruth

Ruth, Babe - (George Herman Ruth), 1895–1948, American baseball player, considered by many the greatest of all baseball players, b. Baltimore.

Early Life

Ruth, Babe - (George Herman Ruth), 1895–1948, American baseball player, considered by many the greatest of all baseball players, b. Baltimore.

Early Life

When he was seven years old his parents placed him in St. Mary's Industrial School (Baltimore), an institution for underprivileged boys. His days at St. Mary's were spent learning the tailor's trade and practicing baseball in his spare time. He began to play semiprofessional ball in Pennsylvania and was signed by the Baltimore Orioles (International League) in 1914. That same year he was sold as a pitcher to the Boston Red Sox of the American League.

Major-League Career

Ruth, a left hander, proved to be (1914–19) a formidable pitcher for the Red Sox and one of the most successful in major-league baseball, winning 87 and losing 44 games and winning three World Series games (one in 1916, two in 1918). However, because pitchers do not play in every game, in 1919 Ruth was shifted to the outfield, where his hitting prowess could be used consistently.

The following year he was sold to the New York Yankees of the American League, and because of his batting feats and attractive public personality he greatly helped to salvage baseball's popularity, weakened by revelations that gamblers and players, in the so-called Black Sox scandal, had successfully conspired to influence the results of the 1919 World Series. Ruth hit the most home runs per season for several years (1919–21, 1923–24, 1926–30), tied for the home run lead in 1918 and 1931, and set a record of 60 home runs in a 154-game season in 1927. (In 1961 Roger Maris hit 61 in a 162-game season, in 1998 Mark McGwire hit 70, and in 2001 Barry Bonds hit 73.) Ruth hit 714 home runs in major league play, a record that held until 1974, when Hank Aaron surpassed it. Ruth led the Yankees to seven pennants (1921–23, 1926–28, 1932), and Yankee Stadium, built in 1923, came to be known as "the house that Ruth built."

He was the highest-paid player of his era, but toward the end of his career he took several salary cuts before he was traded by the Yankees to the Boston Braves (National League) in 1935. He played with the Braves while serving as assistant manager but soon (June, 1935) was released.

Ruth was an unmistakable figure with his large frame and spindle-thin legs, and his talented and colorful play captured baseball fans' imagination. For example, in the third game of the 1932 World Series he appeared to indicate a spot in the stands of the Chicago Cubs' ball park where he would hit the ball and promptly blasted it there for a home run. Off the playing field "the Bambino," as he was affectionately called, made headlines for his charitable actions, such as visiting sick children in hospitals, as well as for his prodigious appetites and flamboyant lifestyle.

In 1936, Ruth became the second player to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame; Ty Cobb was the first. A year before he died he established and endowed the Babe Ruth Foundation to aid underprivileged youth. He wrote How to Play Baseball (1931).

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9 of the Best Books and Articles on: Babe Ruth

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Did Babe Ruth Have a Comparative Advantage as a Pitcher?, in Journal of Economic Education » Read Now
by Edward M. Scahill. 9 pgs.

Collections: Education, Entire Library

...usual disclaimer applies . Did Babe Ruth Have a Comparative Advantage as a...different positions. One such player was Babe Ruth . Although Ruth achieved his...
2.

Reciprocal Grandeur: Babe Ruth and Yankee Stadium, in Nine » Read Now
by Peter Carino. 9 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
3.

Batting Around, in Nine » Read Now
by Donald Honig. 9 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
4.

Remembering the Babe: October 1, 1932, in Nine » Read Now
by Lowell L. Blaisdaell. 6 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
5.

Men, Women, and Issues in American History, Vol. II (Chap. 10 "Piety, Profits, and Play: The 1920s: Bruce Barton, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth") » Read Now
by Howard H. Quint, Milton Cantor. 302 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Men, Women, and Issues in American History VOLUME II THE DORSEY SERIES IN HISTORY Editor GENE A. BRUCKER University of California at Berkeley Men, Women...
6.

Baseball: The Golden Age (Discusses Babe Ruth in Part Five "The Czarist Regime") » Read Now
by Harold Seymour. 502 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
7.

Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States ("Ruth, George Herman ('Babe')" begins on p. 397) » Read Now
by George B. Kirsch, Othello Harris, Claire E. Nolte. 530 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

A comprehensive reference work on the development of athletics in the United States; this encyclopedia examines the sporting experience of Native Americans, African Americans and the immigrant groups of the United States from Colonial times to the present. It includes entries on racial and ethnic...
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A comprehensive reference work on the development of athletics in the United States; this encyclopedia examines the sporting experience of Native Americans, African Americans and the immigrant groups of the United States from Colonial times to the present. It includes entries on racial and ethnic groups, ethnic sports, mainstream sports, ethnic and racial institutions and famous sports figures.
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8.

Past Time: Baseball as History (Includes discussion of Babe Ruth in "New Ways of Knowing: Baseball in the 1920s") » Read Now
by Jules Tygiel. 258 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Few writers know more about baseball's role in American life than Jules Tygiel. In Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, Tygiel penned a classic work, a landmark book that towers above most writing about the sport. Now he ranges across the last century and a half in an...
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Few writers know more about baseball's role in American life than Jules Tygiel. In Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, Tygiel penned a classic work, a landmark book that towers above most writing about the sport. Now he ranges across the last century and a half in an intriguing look at baseball as history, and history as reflected in baseball. In Past Time, Tygiel gives us a seat behind home plate, where we catch the ongoing interplay of baseball and American society. We begin in New York in the 1850s, where pre-Civil War nationalism shaped the emergence of a "national pastime." We witness the true birth of modern baseball with the development of its elaborate statistics--the brainchild of English-born reformer, Henry Chadwick. Chadwick, Tygiel writes, created the sport's "historical essence" and even imparted a moral dimension to the game with his concepts of "errors" and "unearned" runs. Tygiel offers equally insightful looks at the role of rags-to-riches player-owners in the formation of the upstart American League and he describes the complex struggle to establish African-American baseball in a segregated world. He also examines baseball during the Great Depression (when Branch Rickey and Larry MacPhail saved the game by perfecting the farm system, night baseball, and radio broadcasts), the ironies of Bobby Thomson's immortal "shot heard 'round the world," the rapid relocation of franchises in the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of rotisserie leagues and fantasy camps in the 1980s. In Past Time, Jules Tygiel provides baseball history with a difference. Instead of a pitch-by-pitch account of great games, in this groundbreaking book, the field is American history and baseball itself is the star.
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9.

Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era (Discusses Babe Ruth in multiple chapters) » Read Now
by Charles C. Alexander. 337 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Breaking the Slump is the engrossing story of baseball during the 1930s, when the National Pastime came of age as a business, an entertainment, and a passion, and when the teams of the American and National Leagues fielded perhaps the greatest rosters in the history of the game. Whether as rookies...
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Breaking the Slump is the engrossing story of baseball during the 1930s, when the National Pastime came of age as a business, an entertainment, and a passion, and when the teams of the American and National Leagues fielded perhaps the greatest rosters in the history of the game. Whether as rookies, stars in their prime, or legends on the wane, Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio all left their mark on the game and on the American imagination in the decade before America's entry into the World War II. In one remarkable year, 1934, the entire starting lineup of the American League All-Stars consisted of future Hall of Famers. This surfeit of talent provided much needed entertainment to a nation struggling through economic hardship on an enormous scale. In the face of the Great Depression, noted baseball historian Charles C. Alexander shows, Organized Baseball underwent an array of changes that defined the structure and operation of the game well into the postwar decades. The 1930s witnessed the advent of night baseball, the flowering of an extensive and, in some cases, controversial minor-league system of "farm clubs," and the exploitation of the relatively new broadcast medium of radio. Power brokers such as Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and owners Branch Rickey and "Colonel" Jacob Ruppert oversaw these and other developments even as they retained other traditional aspects of the game. As it had since the 1880s, the reserve clause continued to limit the salaries and mobility of ballplayers, subjecting them to the will of ownership to a degree unfathomable today. And Organized Baseball remained racially segregated throughout the 1930s, as the Negro leagues operated largely beyond the notice of white baseball fans. While tracing these and other organizational developments, Alexander keeps his focus on the daily experience of the ballplayers. What was it like for young men trying to make their way as professional ballplayers in an economy that offered few prospects for them otherwise? What kind of conditions did they have to deal with in terms of playing facilities, transportation, lodging, and relations with their employers? And what about the play itself? Alexander offers an expert appraisal of how the ballplayers and the quality of the game they played differed from today's. Americans have periodically been reminded of baseball's extraordinary capacity to enrich and enliven the national spirit during hard times. Breaking the Slump is a vivid portrait of the great game and its cultural significance during America's hardest times.
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