45 Fun Facts About Babe Ruth

In which city was Babe Ruth born in 1895?

Baltimore was certain, but the date was not. For most of his life Ruth believed he was born on February 7, 1894; a passport application then turned up a birth certificate dated February 6, 1895.

Sent at age seven to St. Mary's Industrial School, Ruth was recorded there as what?

Incorrigible was the entry. St. Mary's was a reformatory as well as an orphanage, and Ruth was no orphan, yet the Xaverian Brothers kept him for most of the next 12 years.

Which St. Mary's staff member did Ruth credit with making him a hitter?

Brother Matthias ran discipline at St. Mary's, yet Ruth came to see him as a father. Ruth praised him for the rest of his life.

Why did the Orioles have to sell Ruth to the Red Sox in July 1914?

A rival league wrecked attendance: the Federal League's Terrapins played across the street and outdrew the Orioles even while Ruth's club sat in first place. Owner Jack Dunn sold his best players to stay afloat.

Which actor played Ruth in the 1992 film The Babe?

John Goodman took the part 44 years after The Babe Ruth Story, a 1948 biopic starring William Bendix. A dying Ruth left hospital to attend that film's premiere three weeks before his death.

In which 1993 film do neighborhood kids lose a prized Babe Ruth souvenir to a fearsome dog?

The Sandlot has Ruth himself appear in a dream to tell one of the boys to go over the fence after the ball. The monstrous Beast guarding it turns out to be an ordinary dog.

Which pitcher tied Ruth's 1916 AL record of nine shutouts by a left-hander in 1978?

Ron Guidry's nine shutouts for the 1978 Yankees tied a mark Ruth had held alone for 62 years. The pitching record outlasted both of Ruth's famous home run records.

What still-standing postseason record did Ruth set in Game 2 of the 1916 World Series?

Longest complete-game win: Ruth gave up a first-inning home run, then held the Robins scoreless for 13 innings until Boston won 2-1 in the 14th. No World Series game ran longer until 2018.

After Ruth was ejected and punched an umpire in 1917, what did reliever Ernie Shore do?

Ernie Shore retired all 26 batters he faced, after the one runner Ruth had walked was caught stealing. It counted as a perfect game until 1991, when baseball relabelled it a combined no-hitter.

In 1999 an ESPN panel ranked Ruth the century's second-greatest North American athlete, behind which star?

Michael Jordan topped ESPN's list, but an Associated Press panel that same year reversed the order and put Ruth first. He had been dead for 51 years.

Which pitcher broke Ruth's record of 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless World Series innings in 1961?

Whitey Ford broke it 43 years after Ruth set it. Ruth claimed the streak was the baseball feat he was proudest of, ahead of anything he did at the plate.

Which Red Sox owner sold Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season?

Harry Frazee, a New York theater producer, also took a loan from the Yankees' owner as part of the deal. Its collateral was Fenway Park, so for years the Red Sox's rival held the mortgage on their home.

For how much did the Yankees buy Ruth's contract, then the largest sum ever paid for a player?

The Yankees paid $100,000, in four yearly instalments of $25,000. It paid off at once: in 1920 they drew 1.2 million fans, the first team ever to pass a million in a season.

Which Broadway musical is often, and inaccurately, said to have been financed by the Ruth sale?

No, No, Nanette did not open on Broadway until 1925, more than five years after the sale. It was, though, a musical remake of My Lady Friends, a play the Red Sox owner staged in 1919.

What is Boston's 86-year title drought after selling Ruth called?

The Curse of the Bambino got its name only in 1990, from a Boston sportswriter's book, 70 years after the sale. When Ruth left, the Red Sox had five World Series titles, more than any other club.

In 1920 Ruth's Yankees were tenants of the Giants at which ballpark?

The Polo Grounds belonged to the Giants, and once Ruth's Yankees began outdrawing their landlords they were told to find another home. The result, in 1923, was Yankee Stadium.

Whose career home run record of 138 did Ruth break in 1921?

Roger Connor retired in 1897 with 138, more than anyone had ever hit. Ruth passed him at just 26, so every one of his next 575 home runs broke his own record.

Why did Commissioner Landis suspend Ruth for the start of the 1922 season?

For a banned barnstorming tour: World Series teams were ordered to disband once the Series ended, and Ruth played exhibitions anyway. Landis took his Series pay too and kept him out until May 20.

Which honor did Ruth win only once, in 1923?

American League MVP. The league's award then barred past winners, so Ruth could never win it again, not even for his record 60 home runs in 1927.

Ruth won 12 home run titles but which title only once?

The batting title came with a .378 average in 1924. A year earlier his career-best .393 had not been enough, because Detroit's Harry Heilmann hit .403.

What did sportswriters call Ruth's mysterious illness of 1925?

The bellyache heard 'round the world was no mere stomach ache. Ruth collapsed on the trip north from spring training and spent weeks in hospital, and the exact cause was never confirmed.

What did Ruth become the first player to do in a World Series game in 1926?

Ruth hit three home runs in Game 4 at St. Louis. Four days later he made the last out of the Series himself, caught trying to steal second with the Yankees a run down in Game 7.

Ruth's 1926 promise of a home run for sick Johnny Sylvester was written on what?

A signed baseball carried the promise that Ruth would knock a homer for the boy in Wednesday's game. He kept it, and newspapers were soon claiming the home runs had saved the boy's life.

What was the 1927 Yankees lineup nicknamed?

Murderers' Row won 110 games, then a league record, and swept Pittsburgh in the World Series. The last run of the sweep scored on a wild pitch.

Ruth's 60 home runs in 1927 stood as the season record until which Yankee hit 61 in 1961?

Roger Maris hit his 61st on the last day of a season eight games longer than Ruth's. The commissioner had said such a record should be shown separately, and a 1991 committee confirmed Maris as the holder.

Which teammate briefly led Ruth in the 1927 home run race, 45 to 44, in early September?

Lou Gehrig edged ahead 45-44 in early September 1927, but Ruth answered the same afternoon and never trailed again. He hit 17 that month to finish with 60; Gehrig ended on 47.

Why did Ruth wear the uniform number 3?

He batted third in the order, and the 1929 Yankees numbered players by lineup spot so fans could tell them apart. The team kept handing out his 3 after he left, and retired it only in 1948.

What did Ruth reportedly say about out-earning President Hoover in 1930?

"I had a better year than he did" is the line that stuck, though it is quoted in several wordings. Ruth's $80,000 topped Hoover's $75,000 as the Depression began, which is why the quip landed.

Ruth's "called shot" came in the 1932 World Series against which team?

The Chicago Cubs had voted Ruth's old teammate Mark Koenig only half a Series share, and Ruth attacked them for it in the press. Their bench and crowd were jeering him at Wrigley Field when he gestured and homered.

Off which pitcher did Ruth hit his 1932 'called shot'?

Charlie Root always denied that Ruth had called anything. Had Ruth really pointed at the fence, he said, the next pitch would have knocked him down.

Ruth hit the first All-Star Game home run in 1933, at which Chicago ballpark?

Comiskey Park staged the first All-Star Game, an idea dreamed up by a Chicago Tribune sports editor. Ruth, by then 38, hit a two-run homer in the third inning and his side won.

Which team did Ruth join for his final season in 1935?

The Boston Braves lured him with talk of becoming their manager. He soon saw the promise was empty, hit .181 in 28 games and quit before the season was half over.

Ruth's last home run, hit in Pittsburgh in 1935, was the first ever to do what?

Clear the ballpark roof: the 40-year-old's third home run of the afternoon flew out of Forbes Field over the right-field stands. It was number 714, the last of his career, and he retired about a week later.

Who broke Ruth's career record of 714 home runs?

Hank Aaron finished 1973 stuck on 713, one short, and had to wait all winter. He hit number 715 in front of his home crowd in Atlanta the next April, ending Ruth's 53 years as the record holder.

When MLB added Negro Leagues statistics in 2024, which star passed Ruth as career leader in slugging percentage?

Josh Gibson now tops the list at .718 to Ruth's .690. The same change made the Negro Leagues catcher baseball's career leader in batting average as well.

Which player received more votes than Ruth in the first Hall of Fame election in 1936?

Ty Cobb drew the most votes of the five men elected, ahead even of Ruth. Cy Young, who won more games than any pitcher in history, missed the cut and had to wait a year.

Which team hired Ruth as a first base coach in 1938, his only major league job after playing?

The Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in June 1938 for the rest of the season. Ruth hoped coaching would lead to a manager's job, but the call to run a team never came.

How did Ruth's first wife, Helen, die in 1929?

Helen died in a house fire in Watertown, Massachusetts, in January 1929, where she had been living as the wife of a dentist; three months later Ruth married Claire Hodgson.

Ruth fell ill in 1946 with which disease, which killed him two years later?

Throat cancer, of a kind called nasopharyngeal carcinoma, made Ruth a test case. He was among the first patients given radiation and an experimental drug together, and for a while he improved.

Which great did Ruth beat 1-0 over 13 innings?

Walter Johnson was the American League's leading pitcher, and a 21-year-old Ruth out-pitched him over 13 innings at Fenway Park. The man remembered for home runs retired with a 94-46 record on the mound.

At his final Yankee Stadium appearance in June 1948, what did Ruth use as a cane?

At Yankee Stadium's 25th-anniversary celebration on June 13, 1948, a frail Ruth leaned on a bat as a cane, the scene of Nat Fein's Pulitzer-winning photograph; his number 3 was retired that day.

Baby Ruth's makers always claimed the candy bar was named after a member of which family?

President Grover Cleveland's daughter Ruth had died in 1904, well over a decade before the bar appeared. The maker still went to court and forced the Babe's own Ruth's Home Run bar off the market.

Ruth headlined an American all-star baseball tour of which country in 1934?

Japan turned out some 500,000 people to welcome the Americans, and Ruth was the crowd's favorite. Seven years later the countries were at war, and Japanese soldiers were said to shout "To hell with Babe Ruth" in battle.

What was Babe Ruth's real first name?

George Herman Ruth Jr. became Babe at 19. By most accounts, veterans on his first professional team teased the raw teenager as the owner's newest babe, and the name stuck.

Ruth's funeral Mass in 1948 drew tens of thousands of mourners to which New York church?

St. Patrick's Cathedral was the second stop. First his open casket lay for two days at the entrance to Yankee Stadium, the House That Ruth Built, while fans queued to file past.