Near the end of the 1919 season, Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee decided to sell some of his best players to the New York Yankees. George Herman Ruth, who was also known as "Babe," was one of them. Ruth's career shows how the game was changing at this time, with hitting becoming more important than pitching.
Babe Ruth was known as one of the toughest left-handed pitchers who ever took the mound. Ruth became the most famous and successful player in Boston after it was found that he was also pretty good with a bat. He was almost like a tradition. When people in Boston woke up on January 6, 1920, and looked at their morning newspapers, they were sad that a Boston landmark had been sold to New York. The Baby had left.
Boston didn't seem to be able to get over this disaster until the 2004 World Series, when the "Curse of the Bambino" was finally broken after 86 years. From the time the Red Sox were founded in 1903 until 1920, they played in and won all five World Series.
Babe Ruth set a record in the 1916 and 1918 World Series, but it wasn't for hitting home runs. Instead, it was for pitching. He had an ERA of 0.87 and threw 29 and 2/3rds innings without giving up a run. This record for the most innings without a run would last for 43 years. Ruth hit 29 home runs in 1919, which was the most by any player ever at the time. The Red Sox finished the season in sixth place, which was too bad. This was a disaster for a club that usually does very well.
Frazee responded by selling players, including Ruth. This was the start of Boston's time of rebuilding. The plan didn't work, and for the next 18 seasons, Boston came in last place nine times. Not until 1948 would they win another pennant.
When Ruth moved to New York, the Yankees had never even won the American League pennant, let alone been to the World Series. The first time they won the pennant was in 1921, and the first time they won the World Series was in 1923. In 1920, when baseball was just coming out of its Dead Ball Era, Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs, which is hard to believe. Yes, this was a new time, and it was an exciting time with a lot of offence and style on and off the field.
The next year, Ruth hit 59 home runs, and he was shown off in the World Series. Babe Ruth may have had the best year at the plate of any player ever in 1921. He played in 152 games and hit.378. He had 204 hits, 44 doubles, 16 triples, 59 home runs, 177 runs scored, 171 RBIs, 144 walks, 119 extra-base hits (still a record), an.846 slugging average, 457 total bases, and a slugging percentage of.846 (another standing record).
Ruth led the league in home runs every season but one from 1923 to 1931. In 1927, he hit 60 round trippers, which was his best year and a record that would stand for 34 years. Some people still say that the Yankees' "Murderers Row" team from 1927 was the best offensive team that has ever played baseball.
In 1927, the Yankees' sheer number of wins speaks for itself. The Curse of the Bambino might have been a nightmare for Boston Red Sox fans, but Ruth was the messiah of a very worried and downtrodden sport to the rest of the baseball world. The 1919 White Sox (there were eight of them) had just thrown the World Series. This made people doubt the fairness of the game and make them lose interest in it.
Ruth lived with a lot of energy, and when he got to the media capital of the world, he seemed to become a living legend right away. When he started hitting monster home runs, baseball became exciting again, and fans who had stopped going to games because of the White Sox gambling scandal started coming back. He was "bigger than life," and he was the drummer who led America into "the Roaring Twenties."
He was always in the news and made a lot of noise. Some sports reporters thought that the Sultan of Swat "might" hit more home runs in one season with the Yankees than his single-season record of 29. Year after year, Ruth broke home run records, which made Yankee fans very happy. When he kept raising the expectations of fans everywhere, baseball was brought back from the depths of despair and corruption to a time of hope and excitement.
