Italic season totals indicate player led all major leagues. Italic career totals indicate active career leader. Gold career totals indicate an all-time career record. Did you know that Babe Ruth 's inning win in Game 2 of the World Series is the longest pitching outing in baseball postseason history? Subscribe to Stathead , the set of tools used by the pros, to unearth this and other interesting factoids.
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Hall of Fame Statistics. Similarity Scores Explanation of Similarity Scores. More Ruth Pages. Full Site Menu Return to Top. With its titles and "the Babe," Boston was clearly the class act of the major leagues. All that would change in , however, with a single stroke of a pen. Faced with financial hardships, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee needed cash to pay off his debts.
The deal came to shape both franchises in unforeseen ways. For Boston, Ruth's departure spelled the end of the team's winning streak. The club wouldn't win another World Series until , a championship drought that later sports writers dubbed "The Curse of the Bambino.
For the New York Yankees, it was a different matter. With Ruth leading the way, New York turned into a dominant force, winning four World Series titles over the next 15 seasons. Ruth, who became a full-time outfielder, was at the heart of all the success, unleashing a level of power that had never been seen before in the game. In , while with the Red Sox, Ruth set a single-season home run record of This turned out to be just the beginning of a series of record-breaking performances by Ruth.
In , his first year in New York, he knocked 54 home runs. In his second season he broke his own record by hitting 59 home runs and, in less than 10 seasons, Ruth had made his mark as baseball's all-time home run leader. Yet the athlete seemed determined to continue breaking his own records.
In , he outdid himself again by hitting 60 home runs in a season's time—a record that stood for 34 years. By this time, his presence was so great in New York that the new Yankee Stadium built in was dubbed "the house that Ruth built. Over the course of his career, Ruth went on to break baseball's most important slugging records, including most years leading a league in home runs 12 ; most total bases in a season ; and highest slugging percentage for a season.
In all he hit home runs, a mark that stood until , when Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves surpassed him. Ruth's success on the field was matched by a lifestyle that catered perfectly to a pre-Depression America hungry for a fast lifestyle. Rumors of his large appetite for food, alcohol, and women, as well as his tendency toward extravagant spending and high living, were as legendary as his exploits at the plate. This reputation, whether true or imagined, hurt Ruth's chances of becoming a team manager in later life.
Ball clubs, wary of his lifestyle, didn't want to take a chance on the seemingly irresponsible Ruth. In he was lured back to Boston to play for the Braves and for the opportunity, so he thought, to manage the club the following season. Finally, after one heated exchange in early July, Ruth quit the team.
He returned a few days later and, after renegotiating his contract with Frazee to include some hitting-related bonuses, patched up his disagreements with Barrow. From mid-July to early September , Ruth pitched every fourth day, and played either left field, center field, or first base on the other days. In one game stretch at Fenway, Ruth hit. He was remarkably adept at first base, his favorite position.
On the mound, he allowed more than two runs only once in his last ten starts. All draft-age men were under government order to either enlist or take war-related employment — in shipyards or munitions factories, for example — which led to paltry turnouts of less than 1, for many afternoon games that summer. He pitched well in Game Four, despite having bruised his left hand during some horseplay on the train back to Boston, and his double drove in what turned out to be the winning runs.
While with the Red Sox, Ruth often arranged for busloads of orphans to visit his farm in Sudbury for a day-long picnic and ball game, making sure each kid left with a glove and autographed baseball. Ruth was barely out of his teens himself.
He thought that if we worked hard enough, we could be as good as he was. But we knew better than that. Babe Ruth was an angel to us. To management, however, Ruth was a headache. The Red Sox owner had spoken publicly about possibly trading Ruth before the season, when Babe was holding out for double his existing salary and threatening to become a boxer.
He played games in left field, belted a record 29 home runs, and led the major leagues in slugging percentage. But while Ruth also won nine games on the mound, the rest of the staff fell victim to injuries and the defending champs finished in the second division with a record.
Many fans were aghast that such a talent would be cast off, while others, including many former players, insisted that a cohesive team as opposed to one egomaniac plus everyone else was the key to success. He also intimated that the Yankees were taking a gamble on Ruth.
It was a statement he would be later ridiculed for, but at the time the Yankees felt the same way. It would have surprised no one if, for whatever reason, Ruth was out of baseball in a year or two. Amidst this speculation over his future, on February 28, , Babe Ruth left Boston and boarded a train for New York, on his way to spring training in Florida. He was still just 25 years old. Babe Ruth arrived in New York City at the best possible time for his outsized hitting and hedonistic lifestyle.
It was the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, a time of individualism, more progressive social and sexual attitudes, and a greater emphasis on the pursuit of pleasure. Prohibition, instituted in , had no effect whatsoever. Both leagues began using a better quality i. Ruth thrived — and over time, so did the players in both leagues.
The Babe got off to a slow start in He was in spring training for nearly three weeks before he crushed his first home run. After a disappointing April, in which he missed time due to a strained right knee, Ruth began May with home runs in consecutive games against the Red Sox.
He went on to set a major league record for the month with 11 homers. That record lasted less than 30 days, when he smacked 13 long balls in June. He tied his own single-season record of 29 home runs — set the previous year with Boston — on July Two weeks later, he had He finished the year with the unfathomable total of 54 home runs.
He outhomered 14 of the other 15 major league teams. Ruth hit For Barry Bonds to outdistance his peers in when he set a new single-season mark of 73 home runs as Ruth did in , Bonds would have needed to hit homers.
In addition to this stunning display of power, Ruth was fourth in batting average at. His slugging percentage of. In the 12 seasons between and , Ruth led the AL in slugging 11 times, home runs 10 times, walks nine times, on-base percentage eight times, and runs scored seven times.
His batting average topped. In exactly half of those 12 seasons, he batted over. The game they had learned was being changed in front of their faces. The plot, such as it was, starred Babe as a country bumpkin who makes good in big league ball — not exactly playing against type. During his final season in Boston, Ruth played most of his games in left field. When he joined the Yankees, and began playing his home games at the Polo Grounds, he played all three outfield positions.
In , Ruth started 84 games in right, 31 in left, and 25 in center. Once the Yankees moved into their own stadium in the Bronx, Ruth generally played right field at home and left field on the road.
Although the Babe is remembered as mainly a right fielder, he started nearly as many games in left 1, during his career as he did in right 1, Ruth quickly became one of the most famous people in the country. On Yankees road trips, people with no interest in baseball traveled hundreds of miles to get a glimpse of the Babe.
He was cheered wildly in every park — for rival fans, if Ruth smacked one out of the park, it hardly seemed to matter what the final score was. Sunday baseball became legal in New York in and the fan base changed forever.
Women and children came out regularly to the park. Everyone wanted to know as much about Ruth as possible. Nothing was too trivial. In the s, these giddy sportswriters were coming up with nicknames for Ruth nearly every day. His Boston nickname — the Colossus — morphed into the Colossus of Clout. The Yankees finished the season in third place with a record, only three games behind Cleveland. It was their best showing in 10 years.
They followed that up in by winning 98 games and their first-ever pennant. And somehow Ruth may have actually had a better year at the plate than he did in His batting average improved slightly. According to manager Huggins, Ruth was the second-fastest player on the team. Ruth also set new season records for runs scored , extra base hits , and total bases — three achievements that no player has yet matched. Ruth also pitched in two games. On June 13, he allowed four runs in five innings.
He also hit two home runs that day and finished the game in center field as the Yankees won, In September , Ruth underwent three hours of tests at Columbia University to determine his athletic and psychological capabilities. That his eyes are about 12 per cent faster than those of the average human being. That his ears function at least 10 per cent faster than those of the ordinary man. That his nerves are steadier than those of out of persons. That in attention and quickness of perception he rated one and a half times above the human average.
That in intelligence, as demonstrated by the quickness and accuracy of understanding, he is approximately 10 per cent above normal. The psychologists also discovered that Ruth did not breathe during his entire swing. They stated that if he kept breathing while swinging, he could generate even more power. Ruth cut his left arm which then became infected during a slide in the second game and wrenched his knee in the fifth game. Babe made only one pinch-hitting appearance in the final three contests.
The Yankees won the first two games, but the Giants took the best-of-nine series, five games to three. After the World Series, Ruth and some other Yankees went on a barnstorming tour to earn extra money.
The honor lasted less than one week. Ruth was again slow to get his bat started and after five games, he was hitting. On his way towards the dugout, he spied a heckler and jumped into the stands, ready to fight. Anyone who wants to fight, come down on the field! Babe was also suspended for three days in mid-June for his part in an obscenity-laced tirade against umpire Bill Dinneen. When Ruth got the news the following day, he challenged Dinneen to a fist fight—and the suspension was increased to five days.
On June 26, as some of his teammates argued with Dinneen, Babe merely sat down in the outfield grass and watched. Ruth played in only games in His batting average dropped to.
The Yankees and the Giants met in the World Series for the second straight year. After a three-year experiment as a best-of-nine, the series was back to being a best-of-seven, where it has remained to the present day.
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