The Babe

He was the Babe, the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat. The great Yankee slugger George Herman Ruth was also a legend in his own time, with a personality and appetite as large as his home runs. “I swing big, with everything I’ve got,” said the man who, by himself, hit more homers in a single season (1920) than any one team. “I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

The Bambino was famous for saying, “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” In his career, he would hit 714 round trippers, enough to put him in the Hall of Fame and make him baseball’s legendary home run machine.

When Babe Ruth died in 1948, The Times wrote, “He was the boy who rose from the obscurity of a charitable institution in Baltimore to a position as the leading figure in profession baseball. He was also its greatest drawing card, its highest salaried performer – at least of his day – and the idol of millions of youngsters throughout the land.”