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0:00 June 13th, 1948. Yankee Stadium. A man in pinstripes walks onto the field. He's using a baseball bat as a cane. He can barely stand. He can barely speak. 53 years old, dying, and still the most famous athlete on Earth. Here's what almost nobody in that stadium knew. 46 years earlier, on that exact same date, June 13th, [music] a 7-year-old boy was dragged through the gates of a Baltimore reform school. His own parents had signed the papers. The legal word was incorrigible. That boy and this dying man are the same person. In the next 20 minutes, the priest who built a legend with a bat and a bucket of balls, the sale that cursed a city
0:46 for 86 years, and secretly cost the seller more than the buyer, a promise to a dying kid written on a [music] baseball, a house fire that became a national scandal, and the most famous home run ever hit, where I'll show you what the film footage actually proves. This is the real story of Babe Ruth. It starts with a boy nobody wanted. George Herman Ruth, Jr. was born February 6th, 1895 in Baltimore. His parents ran a saloon. They had [music] eight children. Only George and one sister survived childhood. Nobody had time to raise him, so the streets did. By seven, he was skipping school, stealing, chewing tobacco. His parents went to court and had their own son legally declared incorrigible,
1:34 beyond their control. On June 13th, 1902, his father walked him to St. Mary's Industrial School [music] for Boys and left him there. A working reform school. 800 boys behind walls. George would spend most of the next 12 years inside them. That should have been the whole story. One more forgotten kid. Except St. Mary's had a prefect [music] of discipline named Brother Matthias, 6'6", 250 lbs. The kind of man who could end a schoolyard riot by standing up. For reasons no one ever explained, Matthias picked out the loud, unwanted kid from the saloon and gave him what he'd never had, attention. He'd back George into a corner of the yard and bunt balls at him for hours, correcting
2:21 his hands, his feet. He put a bat in his hands. He shaped the swing. Decades later, in the last year of his life, Ruth wrote it plainly, "Brother Matthias was the greatest man he ever knew. He was the father I needed." Remember that line. In 1914, at 19, Ruth left St. Mary's the only way a boy could, with the brothers' blessing, a professional baseball contract. Within months, he was a Boston Red Sox. And here's what most fans have never sat with. Before Babe Ruth was the greatest hitter alive, he was one of the best pitchers alive. As a Red Sox left-hander, he went 94 and 46 with a 2.28 earned run
3:06 average, led the league in earned run average in 1916, >> [music] >> and won World Series titles in 1915, 1916, and 1918. The problem was the four days between starts. His bat was too dangerous to sit. Manager Ed Barrow made the call that changed baseball, move the ace to the outfield. In 1919, his first full year swinging, Ruth hit 29 home runs, breaking a single-season record that had stood since 1884. >> [music] >> So, naturally, Boston kept him forever. You know, that's not what happened. You probably don't know how much worse the truth is. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee was a Broadway producer drowning in debt, and
3:52 Ruth was demanding his salary be doubled. On December 26th, 1919, the day after Christmas, Frazee secretly sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Straight cash, no players back. $100,000, double the record for [music] any player sale in history. But that was only the public half. Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert also loaned Frazee $300,000, secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park itself. For 13 years, the owner of the New York Yankees held the mortgage on Fenway Park. And when historians ran the numbers, the interest Frazee paid on that loan ended up exceeding what New York paid for Ruth. In effect, the Red
4:37 Sox paid the Yankees to take Babe Ruth. The famous story that Frazee sold him to fund the musical, No, No, Nanette, myth. That show opened years later. He just needed money. Boston had won three of the previous five World Series. They would not win another for 86 years. They gave the drought a name, the Curse of the Bambino. New York gave Ruth a stage at the exact moment baseball was bleeding out. The Black Sox scandal, players caught throwing the World Series, had broken the public's trust in the sport itself. Into that moment walked a man who hit baseballs [music] like no human ever had. First Yankee season, 54 home runs. The old record, his own, was 29. Crowds that
5:26 had been walking away from baseball came sprinting back to watch one man swing. The Yankees built a colossus in the Bronx and opened it in 1923. Ruth hit the first home run in the building, and the press named it before he rounded the bases, The House That Ruth Built. >> [music] >> He was the most famous man in America. Which brings us to October 1926, a story you think you know because Hollywood filmed it. Hollywood got it wrong. The truth is better. Johnny Sylvester was 11, a die-hard Yankees fan, badly hurt in a horse-riding accident, and fighting a dangerous infection. His father got word to the Yankees during the World Series. Could they lift the boy's spirits? The movie showed Ruth
6:13 at his bedside, grandly promising a home run. Didn't happen, not then. What arrived was a package of autographed baseballs. On one, in Ruth's handwriting, "I'll knock a homer for you in Wednesday's game." Wednesday was game four of the World Series. Ruth didn't hit one home run. He hit three. Papers reported the boy improving almost immediately. After the series, Ruth quietly visited his bedside in person. Johnny recovered, graduated college, served in World War II, and lived to 74. His family said it for the rest of the century. The Babe's home runs helped Johnny find the will to survive. That was the magic. The darkness was right
6:58 behind it. 1927. Murderers' Row. Maybe the greatest team ever. And inside it, the first true home run race in history. Ruth against his own teammate, Lou Gehrig. All summer they traded the lead. Gehrig was actually ahead in late July. Then Gehrig went cold and Ruth caught fire. 12 home runs in 3 weeks. On September 30th, he hit number 60. 60 in a 154 game season. Most people alive believed it would never be touched. It stood for 34 years. Ruth was at the summit of American life. 3 months later, a phone call reached him. His wife was dead. Here's what the public hadn't known.
7:44 Ruth had married Helen Woodford in 1914, a 16-year-old waitress who, the story goes, served him breakfast on his first day in Boston. Fame wrecked the marriage. His drinking and his women were endless. As Catholics, divorce was off the table. So, by 1925, they simply separated and Helen vanished from view. She'd been living quietly outside Boston with a dentist named Edward Kinder. Neighbors knew her as Mrs. Kinder. On January 11th, 1929, the house caught fire. Helen didn't get out. She was 31. First reports [music] said a dentist's wife had died. Then an anonymous call reached police. Check the name again.
8:30 That woman is Mrs. Babe Ruth. It detonated into a national scandal. Investigators ruled the fire accidental, faulty wiring, though her family never fully accepted it. What's certain is this. At her funeral, witnesses watched Babe Ruth sob. Three months later, he married Claire Hodgson, who imposed the first real discipline his life ever had. He was 34, aging, written off yearly. His most famous moment hadn't happened yet. October 1st, 1932. World Series, game three. Wrigley Field. And the Cubs and Yankees hated each other over money. Mark Koenig, a former Yankee, had helped
9:18 the Cubs win the pennant and his new teammates voted him only a half share of series money. Ruth called them cheap. Chicago answered. All series, the Wrigley crowd cursed him, threw lemons, and by several accounts, spat toward his wife. Fifth inning, tied four to four. Ruth against Charlie Root, 40,000 people howling. Strike one, Ruth holds up a finger. Strike two, two fingers. Then he makes a gesture, pointing at center field or at Root or [music] at the Cubs bench. The next pitch leaves Wrigley toward deep center where no ball had ever landed. That evening a sports writer's headline coined it, Ruth called his shot. Did he? Film of the at bat exists and it proves
10:05 he pointed. It cannot prove what he meant. Root denied it to his dying day. Ruth himself told two different versions over the years, but Lou Gehrig, that same day, on the record, marveled at the nerve of the big man calling his shot and getting away with it. A mystery with footage. Believe what you want. But here's the detail that gets lost. It was the last home run Babe Ruth ever hit in a World Series. He ended his October career on the most debated swing in sports history. What he wanted next, he never got. He wanted to manage the Yankees. They wouldn't give it to him. The man who couldn't govern himself couldn't govern a clubhouse, the thinking went. They offered a minor league job. He refused and after 1934
10:52 they let him go. The Boston Braves signed him with grand titles that turned out to be ticket selling window dressing. He was 40, broken down, hitting under 0.200 except for one afternoon, May 25th, 1935, Forbes Field, [music] Pittsburgh. Ruth goes four for four, three home runs. The third clears the right field roof, the first fair ball ever hit out of that part of the park, estimates running past 600 ft. Number 714. He tipped his cap rounding the bases, played five more games without a hit, and retired. The numbers read like typos. 714 home runs, untouched for 39 years. 60 in a
11:40 season, 34 years. A 0.342 average and a 0.690 career slugging percentage no player has beaten to this day. In 1946, two things started. His voice went hoarse and a pain built behind his left eye. Doctors found a tumor at the base of his skull, a rare throat cancer. A death sentence then, they never even told him the word. He became one of the first patients ever given sequential radiation and chemotherapy. It bought time, not enough. April 27th, 1947, Babe Ruth day in every park in America. At Yankee Stadium, he stepped to the microphone and the voice that had filled
12:26 rooms came out as a rasp. The crowd strained to hear. Then June 13th, [music] 1948, where we began. The Yankees retired his number three forever. Too weak to walk unaided, he leaned on a bat like a cane. [music] A photographer behind him caught it. Number three, alone, bent, facing the field. One of the most famous sports photographs ever taken. June 13th. The same day that his father walked him through the gates of St. Mary's 46 years before. Bookends to the day. Two months later, August 16th, 1948, Babe Ruth died, 53 years old. His body lay in state at the main entrance of
13:12 Yankee Stadium, an honor given to presidents. For two days, the lines never stopped. Estimates ran as high as 100,000 mourners with tens of thousands more outside St. Patrick's Cathedral for the funeral, >> [music] >> standing in a summer storm. The kid from the reform school drew a bigger crowd in death than most men draw in a lifetime. And the last word belongs to him. When Ruth finally told his own story, he didn't open with home runs or fame. He opened with a 6-foot-6 brother at a Baltimore reform school bunting baseballs to [music] a thrown-away kid by the hour. He was the father I needed. Every legend starts somewhere. This one started on June 13th, twice. So, here's the question, and I want your
13:59 answer in the comments. Is there any argument left, or is Babe Ruth simply the greatest baseball player who ever lived? Make your case. If this story hit you the way it hit me, subscribe. Next on Legends of the Diamond, the strongest man in baseball, whose own hands stopped obeying him. You don't want to miss it.
