In 1992 I was writing my novel Gift of the Bambino, which is about a young boy and his grandfather, and how they are connected by baseball. The novel has a lot to do with Babe Ruth and baseball in the old days. While doing my research, I attended a reunion of the Lizzies, which was an organization of boys’ baseball and basketball teams in Toronto throughout the first half of the 20thcentury. My own father was a member of the Lizzies in the 1930s.
Perhaps 200 men attended that dinner reception, most of them old-timers. I sat down at a table, and began talking with the man next to me, who immediately asked what someone my age was doing at the reunion. The Lizzies, after all, had disbanded in 1946. The man was none other than Goody Rosen, who would pass away a couple years later, but to this day I am eternally grateful for that chance meeting with him.
Rosen was the first Canadian to play in a major-league All-Star game, which happened in 1945 when he hit .325 for the New York Giants and was the third leading hitter in the National League. He had arrived in the majors in 1937 as a rookie with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The first-base coach for the Dodgers that year was George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth.
The Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the greatest power hitter baseball has ever known, had retired as a player in 1935, but two years later the Dodgers brought him back as their first-base coach. And Goody Rosen proceeded to tell me all about Babe Ruth, who believe it or not had the locker right next to him in the Dodgers’ dressing room.
I whipped out a pen and started taking notes, and believe me, I couldn’t write fast enough. Rosen told me he had been entrusted with keeping Ruth’s humidor, which encased the Babe’s precious cigars.
“I understand he was quite a rabble-rouser,” I said.
“Yes he was,” said Rosen. “He was a good person though.”
And he was. When you write historical fiction and spend far too many hours doing research, you learn a lot about your subject. Today, I consider myself something of a Babe Ruth aficionado.
Ruth hit his first pro home run as a minor-leaguer with the AAA Providence Grays in Toronto on September 5th, 1914, and that home run was central to my novel. A couple years ago, I organized an event at Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto islands to unveil a plaque commemorating that achievement. The New York Yankees were in town to play the Blue Jays, and both teams were represented at the unveiling. We also had Ruth’s grandson Tom Stevens on hand.
I remember when Hank Aaron passed Ruth in 1974 to become baseball’s career, home-run champion. Ruth finished his career with 714 round-trippers, and Aaron would finish with 755. Hank Aaron has always been a consummate gentleman, a humble superstar who hit 30 or 40 home runs every season for over 20 years. It was an ugly stain for baseball when Aaron, a black man, received death threats because he dared to best the most famous record in sport. But he handled that the way he handled everything – with guts and class. Still, as good as Aaron was, he couldn’t come close to Ruth as a power hitter; witness the extra4,000 at-bats it took for him to better Ruth’s mark.
I have done many interviews about Babe Ruth and baseball, and like to say how Ruth was a man who hit all those home runs withperformance-diminishing substances. Like alcohol. It’s true. For most of his career, he smoked, drank too much, never paid attention to all the junk he ate, and wasn’t one for the gym. Indeed, one wonders how many home runs he might have hit had he taken care of himself. And maybe he wouldn’t have died at 53.
Today, baseball is badly diseased. It might even be terminal. Alex Rodriguez, better known as A-Rod, was until recently seen as the great hope who would one day replace the stigma of Barry Bonds as baseball’s all-time, home run king. But as everyone knows now, Rodriguez has admitted that when he was with the Texas Rangers he was on steroids. He had to admit it, because it’s been established that he did, in fact, take them.
No one has ever accused Alex Rodriguez of being a class act. He’s not. He’s just another in a long line of spoiled, obnoxious athletes. They seem to come off an assembly line. Perhaps zillion-dollar contracts have that effect.
Barry Bonds is another. He passed Aaron in 2007, and wound up with 762 homers. From my vantage point as a sports fan and writer, this man is unquestionably the most obnoxious athlete I have ever seen. The son of former San Francisco giants star Bobby Bonds, he spent his boyhood hanging around the likes of Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, which isn’t a shabby start if you want to be a ballplayer.
Bonds was to appear in a U.S. court on March 2nd, but his trial has now been postponed at least until July. He may wind up behind bars for lying about his alleged steroid use when appearing before a Grand Jury, and I for one won’t lose any sleep if he goes to jail. But if perjury is the crime, it better be a big cell. He could one day be joined by Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and even a few pitchers with names like Roger Clemens.
What is the (sports) world coming to? When my son was growing up, he idolized Wayne Gretzky. If #99 had ever been connected to drugs, the kid would have been crushed. During his heyday with the Edmonton Oilers, Gretzky once volunteered to be the official spokesman for an anti-drug organization. He said he would gladly take a drug test every day of the week. I wrote a newspaper column about that, and praised him. A couple weeks later a letter arrived from the Edmonton Oilers. It was from Gretzky, who thanked me for the article.
Babe Ruth and Goody Rosen wouldn’t be impressed with what is going on now. Something tells me Hank Aaron isn’t either. There are really only two kinds of pro athletes – class and ass. Today there are too many of the latter.
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