Replies

In a way, I wasn't surprised to see nothing from Babe Ruth represented - because the man was just too damned big to isolate really, legitimately memorable single moments (Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner have the same problem, seemingly, and you can make a case that likewise applies to Walter Johnson). A lot of what one might deem the Bambino's memorables were in due course eclipsed by later men in various ways and places. Those can never take Ruth's place in the history of the game, but it is no insult to his memory to say that when the record is reviewed objectively, the Bambino's entire career was a more memorable moment than individual performances or appearances therein turned out to have been. That of itself is one hell of an achievement, if pondered the right way.

Consider: The "called shot". Never happened. Those who were there have said mostly that what Ruth was holding up was a finger signal indicating how many strikes were in the count. Ruth himself seems to have admitted he never actually called his shot but, since the story got around anyway and he was a big fat ham as it was, what harm was there in going along with the gag? (Both the Yankees and the Cubs were taking bench jockeying to new levels of constancy in that World Series.)

Consider, too: The final three homers. Would have been nice if he really did go out with a bang like that. Trouble is - it didn't happen in his actual final game. Reality bites, alas.

As for the Babe Ruth farewell, it was legitimately touching (anyone who has ever heard an uncut recording of the speech cannot say otherwise) - but it insults both Ruth and Lou Gehrig to compare it to Gehrig's farewell. Gehrig was a far younger facing death than Ruth was a decade later.

I know the three homers didn't come in Ruth's final game, but it was right near the end, when it looked like he was all washed up, and no one expected it from him. Also, if I'm not mistaken, one of the three was a mammoth tape-measure blast. But that part might be just the imagination that Ruth always conjures up. What a bigger-than-life character he was! And with performance on the field to match! Truly the greatest baseball player ever, and, in my opinion, the greatest player in any sport.

As for the most memorable moment in baseball history, I might vote for Mazeroski's 1960 seventh-game, ninth-inning, Series-winning home run for the underdog Pirates against the much-favored Yanks (who had vastly outscored the Buccos in that Series). Can't get more storybook than that.