Babe Ruth - Legacy

Legacy

Ruth's impact on American culture still commands attention. Top performers in other sports are often referred to as "The Babe Ruth of ______." He is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players in history. Many polls place him as the number one player of all time. During his lifetime he became such a symbol of the United States that during World War II, Japanese soldiers yelled in English "To hell with Babe Ruth" to anger American soldiers. (Ruth replied that he hoped that "every Jap that mention my name gets shot".)

Ruth was mentioned in the poem "Line-Up for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:

R is for Ruth.
To tell you the truth,
There's just no more to be said,
Just R is for Ruth.

As a sidelight to his prominent role in changing the game to the power game, the frequency and popularity of Ruth's home runs eventually led to a rule change pertaining to those hit in sudden-death mode (bottom of the ninth or later inning). Prior to 1931, as soon as the first necessary run to win the game scored, the play was over, and the batter was credited only with the number of bases needed to drive in the winning run. Thus, if the score was 3–2 with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and the batter smacked an "over the fence home run", the game would end at 4–3, with the batter only allowed a double, and the runners officially stopped on 2nd and 3rd (since they were not needed to win the game). The new rule allowed the entire play to complete, justified on the grounds that the ball was dead and that all runners could freely advance, thus granting the full allotment of HR and RBI to the batter, as we know it today. Several players lost home runs that way, including Ruth. As noted in the inaugural edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia (MacMillan, 1969), Ruth's career total would have been changed to 715 if historians during the 1960s had been successful in pursuing this matter. Major League Baseball elected not to retrofit the records to the modern rules, and Ruth's total stayed at 714.

Another rules change that affected Ruth was the method used by umpires to judge potential home runs when the batted ball left the field near a foul pole. Before 1931, i.e. through most of Ruth's most productive years, the umpire called the play based on the ball's final resting place "when last seen". Thus, if a ball went over the fence fair, and curved behind the foul pole, it was ruled foul. Beginning in 1931 and continuing to the present day, the rule was changed to require the umpire to judge based on the point where the ball cleared the fence. Jenkinson's book (p. 374–375) lists 78 foul balls near the foul pole in Ruth's career, claiming that at least 50 of them were likely to have been home runs under the modern rule.

Ruth's 1919 contract that sent him from Boston to New York was sold at auction for $996,000 at Sotheby's on June 10, 2005. The most valuable memorabilia item relating to Ruth was a 1920-era Yankees flannel jersey which sold in May 2012 for $4.4 million, making it the most valuable piece of sports memorabilia ever sold at public auction. The jersey was purchased by another auction company on behalf of a private client and is now on loan to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The 1923 bat which he used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923. Ruth's heavy Louisville Slugger solid ash wood bat sold for $1.26 million at a Sotheby's auction in December 2004.

A biopic of his life, The Babe, was released in 1992 and starred John Goodman in the title role. Films have been made featuring Ruth, or a Ruth-like figure ("The Whammer" in The Natural, for example).