Remembering Ruth's big league debut 100 years ago

mlb.com ^ | 07/11/2014 | Anthony Castrovince

[DFG]

The train traveled overnight, carrying him from his roots to his calling.

This was not a trip Babe Ruth planned, expected or even hoped to make. He was comfortable in his native Baltimore, still in awe of his surroundings after his exodus from an orphanage and reform school, still content pitching and pounding out home runs for a first-place Orioles team in the International League.

But that team was sagging in attendance and bleeding money, and it had shipped three of its better assets -- Ruth, Ben Egan and Ernie Shore -- to the American League, to Boston, to recoup some cash.

And so the train traveled up to Boston the night of July 10, 1914, a journey that, a century later, we can safely say changed the game of baseball forever.

It certainly changed Ruth.

[fhayek]

The greatest baseball player ever. End of discussion.

[gr8eman]

The greatest baseball player ever who wasn’t on steroids!

[driftless2]

Nobody yet has hit baseballs as far as Ruth did. And, despite his twenty-nine homers in his last Red Sox season, you have to remember he really didn't get a chance to hit a lot of homers until he was sold to the Yankees.

His first year with the Yankees was also the first year they had banned spitballs and other messed up pitches and threw out discolored or cut baseballs. If they had done this six years earlier when Ruth had broken in, and they had made him an outfielder and everyday player from the start, Ruth could easily have had more than one hundred more home runs. Maybe two hundred more.

[Squawk 8888]

Some passive-aggressive Toronto parochialism for you: http://torontodreamsproject.blogspot.ca/2010/07/babe-ruths-first-home-run.html