The King of Swing

By Peter Stoler

BABE: THE LEGEND COMES TO LIFE

by ROBERT W. CREAMER 443 pages. Illustrated. Simon & Schuster.

$9.95.

For baseball fans it is a great moment in history--like the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth Rock or King John's signing the Magna Carta. There stands Babe Ruth with two strikes on him, gorilla-chested, monkey-faced, pipestem-legged, pointing imperiously to deep centerfield. It is the 1932 World Series against Chicago in Wrigley Field, and when Cub Pitcher Charlie Root fires the ball, the Babe hits a vast home run to the very spot, winning the ball game. Unfortunately, things did not happen quite that way. But, as Robert Creamer demonstrates again and again in this book, what really did happen, though different, is in some ways better. Ruth did take two strikes. Then as the Cubs, who thought he had struck out, began surging onto the field, the great New York Yankee slugger waved them back with a gesture that would have done credit to the mythical Casey. Holding up two fingers, he shouted, "It takes only one to hit it." Then he slammed his historic homer.

Dozens of books have already been written about Babe Ruth. Four new titles will be in the bookstores before the end of this baseball season. The one that provides the most pleasure, and information, is unquestionably Creamer's. It is the first really adult biography of the Babe, as well as one of the best, and least sentimental, books about a great sports figure ever written. Though it is no hagiography, Babe will please worshipful sports fans. Sports biographies are rarely truthful, and when truthful they are customarily boring. Creamer, a senior editor of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, does not disguise the fact that his hero was an overgrown child and far from a genius. Ruth, in fact, sometimes had trouble remembering the names of fellow players. But he played baseball--and lived--with a headlong joy that has rarely been matched.

Waterfront Kid. George Herman Ruth (Baltimore sportswriters nicknamed him "Babe" because Ruth at 20 was the baby of the old Orioles) was not, as rumored, an orphan. His parents ran a Baltimore saloon, but by the time he was nine Ruth proved too wild for his family or regular schools to handle. He was packed off to St. Mary's Industrial School, a combination orphanage and reformatory. That incarceration proved a break for baseball. At St. Mary's, the large and lumpish Ruth caught the eye of Brother Matthias, an equally huge Xaverian Brother who taught him to play every position. By the time Ruth signed out of the school at 20 to join the Orioles, his skills as both a pitcher and hitter were well up to major-league standards. He hit .315 in his first full year in the majors.

Ruth rapidly became not only the Sultan of Swat but an aspiring social lion awkwardly eager to say the right thing. The rude, uneducated kid from Baltimore's waterfront once convulsed guests at a formal dinner party by spurning a plate of asparagus. "Asparagus," he explained to his hostess in his politest tones, "makes my urine smell." Asparagus, though, was about the only thing that Ruth would not eat. He used to munch hot dogs during practice sessions with the Yankees, once put away an omelet made of 18 eggs and three big slices of ham. He was equally omniverous about girls. During a road-trip series with the Browns, Ruth announced that he was going to bed with every hooker in a St. Louis whorehouse--and he proved as good as his word. He spent his enormous salary ($80,000 in 1930) on clothes, women and cars which he often wrecked or petulantly abandoned, though he once gave a 1925 Cadillac to Brother Matthias out of gratitude.

He started his career as a pitcher and was good enough to win three games for Boston in the 1916 World Series. When he switched to the outfield in 1918, he almost singlehanded made baseball into a slugger's game. His home-run record has been eclipsed, of course, and also the Ruth lifetime batting record of .342.* But the Babe's 1920 season for the Yankees, during which he batted .376, hit 54 home runs, 9 triples, 36 doubles, scored 158 times, batted in 137 runs and stole 14 bases, is still the best year any major leaguer ever had. Ruth's slugging average (the production of extra base hits), a spectacular .847, remains unsurpassed to this day, when an average of .600 is considered excellent (Hank Aaron's slugging average is around .569).

Ruth set another unbroken record. During the 1922 season, he was suspended no fewer than five times--for drinking, being late to games, and disobeying the formidable commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. (He did not, as has often been reported, hold the Yankees' minuscule manager Miller Muggins off the rear platform of a train or threaten to drop him. But he might have.)

"He was the best-hearted fellow who ever lived," said former Boston Red Sox Pitcher Ernie Shore. Apparently that was true, except when it came to his two wives. (On road trips Ruth tended to forget that he was married at all.) Fans and teammates loved him, exulting in his excesses, empathizing with his small-boy penitence when disciplined by the ball club, and appreciating, as perhaps only those who follow baseball can, the way he cocked his bat, stepped into a pitch, swung as if to clear the bases. Today only a handful of Americans can identify Roger Maris, who broke the Babe's season record by hitting 61 home runs back in 1961. But everyone, even those born after his death from cancer in 1948, knows about Babe Ruth. Maris was a highly skilled athlete. In more ways than one, Ruth was a Homeric figure.

qed Peter Stoler

* Among the dozen players who have topped it are Ty Cobb (.367), Rogers Hornsby (.358), Tris Speaker (.344) and Ted Williams (.344).

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