Happy Birthday, Babe

Today is the birthday of George Herman “Babe” Ruth, born February 6th, 1895 in Baltimore, Maryland. 

When Ruth wasn’t running around waterfront stealing and vandalizing property, he was in his father’s bar drinking the dredges from old glasses of beer and acquiring a taste for chewing tobacco. He was so rowdy that his family petitioned courts to declare him “incorrigible”, and at just 9 years old, sent him off to St. Mary’s Industrial School. 

There, Ruth found “...the father I needed and the greatest man I’ve ever known”, Brother Matthias, a Canadian priest. It was Matthias who introduced him to the game of baseball, and whose swing he imitated — a big, highly levered hack towards the fences. Ten years after being sent to boarding school, Ruth made his debut at Fenway Park as a pitcher for the Red Sox.

It wasn’t until 1918 that he’d appear at the plate regularly and demonstrate the effectiveness of his, at the time, unique hitting. Up until Ruth, hitters of the dead-ball era focused mainly on contact, and avoiding strikeouts. Ruth went for a full swing uppercut. His success ushered in not only a new style of hitting, but an entirely new era in the game.

As high as he flew, Ruth suffered his own tragedies and let-downs. His estranged wife died in a house fire in Watertown, he never managed to become a manager for the Yankees — instead spending his last years with the Boston Braves, and in the last two years of his life, he fought a losing battle with cancer. 

But the lows were part of it, and he knew it. “I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

A Parting Warning, an Easter-Egg, and ‘Stuff+’

• Fay Vincents Parting Warning – In the wake of the decision to fire umpire Pat Hoberg, The Athletic published excerpts of an interview with Fay Vincent, where he cautioned that, “Gambling always leads to corruption”.

• Alonso’s Sticking Around — Pete Alonso has re-signed with the Mets for a 2-year, $54m deal. It’s likely less than he was aiming for, but with how the team is looking for 2025, it means he’ll have a good shot at showing up in the post-season again. Can you put a price on a chance at a ring?

• Baseball-Reference Easter Egg – A stat nerd hunting around in Baseball-Reference found out that the go-to baseball stat site Baseball Reference made a custom row for Tommy John’s 1975 season.

• Speaking of Stats & Pitchers… – Eno Harris at The Athletic dives into the baseball stat that’s changing the MLB, Stuff+, a stat that can tell you how good a pitch is based off of characteristics like velocity, spin, and movement.

• Uncanny Ichiro – There should be a law against this.

Red Sox Integrate Their Spring Training

• 1958 — The Red Sox announce that, for the first time, their black and white players would be housed together in Scottsdale, Arizona. It would be over a year before Elijah “Pumps” Green joined the major league team, 12 years after Jackie Robinson first played at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York, making the Red Sox the last team in the MLB to integrate their club.