Separating Babe Ruth truth from fiction
Mark Twain seemed to anticipate 2016 when he remarked that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on."
Mark Twain seemed to anticipate 2016 when he remarked that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on."
In the intervening century-plus, that travel time has been greatly reduced. Today, thanks to social media, a lie can orbit the earth before truth's alarm clock even buzzes.
We got another reminder of that last week when hackers broke into the NFL's Twitter account and mischievously transmitted the following faux news:
"We regret to inform our fans that our commissioner, Roger Goodell, has passed away. He was 57."
Within minutes, the league had issued denials, and Goodell himself soon responded, via Twitter, of course.
"Man, you leave the office for 1 day of golf w/ @JimKelly1212 & your own network kills you off. #harsh."
It wasn't the first time the media had prematurely killed off a prominent sports figure. Twice during the 1920s, newspapers, including at least one in Philadelphia, mistakenly reported the death of Babe Ruth.
The first came in the summer of 1920, midway through Ruth's initial season with the New York Yankees.
On July 7, driving from Washington to Philadelphia after the Yankees' 17-0 rout of the Senators, he overturned his $10,000 Packard sedan on a rain-soaked Route 1 curve, near Wawa in Delaware County.
Ruth, who suffered facial cuts and a banged-up knee, spent the night in a neighboring farmhouse. The following morning, after telling a local mechanic to keep the car because, "I'll get another one in New York," he and his traveling party caught a train in Media.
Somehow, news of the accident reached Philly before they did.
"They made their way into Philadelphia," the late Robert Creamer wrote in his superb 1974 biography, Babe: The Legend Cones to Life, "and were startled to discover a newspaper headline screaming, RUTH REPORTED KILLED IN CAR CRASH."
I've never been able to locate that historic headline in microfilm archives, not surprising given that there were at least six daily newspapers in the city, most printing multiple editions. The mistaken report, however, has been referenced by several other Ruth biographers.
It wasn't until Ruth arrived back in New York the night of July 8 that the rumors, and fortunately not the 25-year-old outfielder, were laid to rest.
The second instance, five years later, wasn't so easily dismissed.
By 1925, Ruth was the most famous man in America. Everything he did or didn't do was news. That spring, he arrived at training camp out of shape and overweight. Various accounts put his weight anywhere from 255 to 270.
As the Yanks departed Florida and traveled north, he developed a fever. Abdominal pains that had bothered him all spring worsened.
At an exhibition game in Chattanooga, he managed to hit two home runs, but on the subsequent train trip to Asheville, N.C., his condition deteriorated. When he passed out, the Yankees arranged to send him back to New York.
Given Ruth's enormous fame, the illness was big news. And when the train he was believed to be on arrived in Washington without him - he'd missed a connection in Salisbury, N.C. - a rumor that he was dead rapidly gained momentum.
"It spread with fantastic speed," wrote Creamer, "and in London, where Ruth's exploits and fabulous salary were well-known, one paper ran a banner headline."
Other papers there and in the United States ran with the hyperbolic story that the London Evening News, without additional confirmation, apparently had originated:
"The Great Pitcher has struck out Babe Ruth. The death of the beloved and incomparable Bambino is a national calamity for it wipes out the highest paid athlete in the world and easily the most popular figure in the history of American sport, other than Jack Dempsey.
"The Title of home run king will probably be his for many years. He was a big-hearted boy. He earned good money and gave it liberally. He was a unique champion such as the world has never seen before and probably never will see again. He was the man who earned more money than the presidents of many big corporations simply because he had the strength and ability to drive a baseball farther than any man before him."
When Ruth, accompanied by Yankee scout Paul Krichell, finally got to Washington, the overheated atmosphere cooled a bit. But when they arrived in New York, the buzz became a roar.
Some reports claimed a crowd of 25,000 awaited Ruth at Penn Station. Trying to freshen up in a restroom, the ailing superstar fainted again. An ambulance was summoned and Ruth, unconscious and swaddled in blankets, was removed from the train on a stretcher.
He suffered several convulsions en route to St. Vincent's Hospital, where he would be operated on for what doctors called an intestinal abscess and remain for seven weeks.
Ruth recovered fully, of course, and the exact nature of the illness was never revealed. But sportswriters, aware of the big man's penchant for hot dogs, soda, and beer, dubbed it the "bellyache heard round the world."
Privately, many writers and ballplayers believed that what really ailed the notorious womanizer was venereal disease. That theory persists, even though the surgery left a "long vivid scar" on Ruth's abdomen, nowhere near his genitalia.
Ruth would have two of his greatest seasons in 1926 and 1927, by which time the myth was as large as the man. Whether it was the length of his home runs, his beer-drinking prowess, or things he said, separating truth from fiction became impossible.
One of the few things we know for sure about the man was the subject of another banner headline, this one in his hometown Baltimore Sun on Aug. 16, 1948:
BABE RUTH DIES AT 53; ENTIRE NATION MOURNS PASSING OF BASEBALL'S MOST COLORFUL FIGURE.
This time, sadly, the reports were true.
@philafitz