Baseball history: Celebrating Babe Ruth 75 years after his retirement

          While I was a young baseball fan in the early 1970’s the number ‘714’ stands out in my mind as the mark of greatness, a magical number that was alone for years. The number of course was Babe Ruth’s home run record. For years it was the mark to look up to, there were songs about him, movies about ‘The Babe’ and so much in between. Babe Ruth commanded baseball for the time that he played and I enjoyed looking at all the artifacts that are still in the Baseball Hall of Fame that commemorate the ‘Sultan of Swat’.

           Ruth’s birthday just passed in February, what would have been number 115 since his birth. He was born Feb 6, 1895 and started out in baseball at a very young age, he was 19 when he joined the Boston Red Sox as a pitcher, but was sold to the NY Yankees at age 24 because he wanted a big raise in salary. Ruth then became a full time right fielder. Ruth was the powerhouse in the NY Yankee team that saw them win four World Series titles.  Ruth was a character and loved the game of baseball, his lifetime batting average was .342, he hit 714 home runs, and had 2,217 hits. He was on 7 World Series winning teams, having won three of them with Boston and the rest with the Yankees.

           There is so much to learn about Babe Ruth, I think I will end my post here, you can find a lot of info out on him on the internet, in baseball history books and at the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was a legend, a player for the ages and he’ll always be remembered.
                     

       

       

       
Number 3, Babe Ruth