Hbo Goes Deep With Ruth Show Program Tonight Takes Look At Baseball’S Original Slugger
As muscle-bound Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr. chase baseball’s cherished single-season-home run record, it’s a good time to fondly gaze back at the man, who as a thunderous slugger and mythic hero, dwarfed ‘em all.
McGwire and Co. may be zeroing in on the record 61 homers set by Roger Maris back in 1961. But it was Babe Ruth, not Maris, who established the aura of the major-league power hitter decades earlier. Tonight at 8, HBO maintains its lofty standard of sports documentaries with a commendable tribute to the Big Bambino, who died 50 years ago today.
“If Babe Ruth hadn’t existed,” says one of several historians quoted in the film, “it would have been impossible to invent him.” Remarks another, “He was Moby Dick in a goldfish bowl.”
In order to truly grasp the enormous weight of Ruth’s popularity, one must consider the climate of the country and the era in which he played. Ruth terrorized major-league pitchers during the 1920s and early ‘30s - a time when there were no TVs, video games and personal computers to divert America’s attention and stunt its imagination. Baseball was, without question, the country’s No. 1 sport and Ruth its marquee name.
And in an era of excess, Ruth was the king of excess. In several seasons, he clubbed more than twice as many home runs as his nearest pursuers. He lived large on the ballfield and was a monster off it - always pushing things to the limit. “You had scientists coming to examine him,” says author Donald Honig, “as though he came from another planet.”
The fact that Ruth’s life has been picked apart over and over in books and films is an obvious obstacle for any new analytical effort. To be sure, the HBO piece includes plenty of well-worn material. We’re told again of Ruth’s early days as an incorrigible kid growing up in Baltimore and how he honed his baseball skills after being exiled to reform school. We hear of his voracious appetite for food, booze and sex. And, unfortunately, we’re not spared the typical conjecture about Ruth’s famous “called-shot” in the 1932 World Series.
The documentary also tends to oversentimentalize things. Like the old-time sports writers who turned their eyes away from Ruth’s off-field transgressions, producer Rick Bernstein and his staff gloss over the slugger’s marital problems, but are more than happy to repeatedly stress how he loved children.
Still, there are enough rich details here to make the program shine. Remarkable home movies and rarely seen footage of Ruth’s majestic home runs are interspersed with insights from former Yankee teammates (Charles Devens, Bill Werber), relatives (daughter Julia Ruth Stevens) and admirers (writer Studs Terkel). Along the way, we’re treated to anecdotal nuggets like the story of a scorned Latin lover, who once confronted Ruth with a pistol and shot him in the leg.
The documentary truly strikes gold, though, when it focuses on Ruth’s life after he retired as a player in 1935. This is personal territory less traveled by even diehard fans and makes for fascinating viewing. Acquaintances tell of how Ruth slipped into near depression when no team showed an interest in making him a manager. Then came the throat cancer, which hollowed him out and made the man smaller than he should have been.
The film winds up with poignant footage of Ruth’s final gravel-voiced speech at Yankee Stadium in June of 1948 and then his massive funeral procession that drew thousands into the streets of the Big Apple.
It’s amazing to realize that, a half-century later, Ruth is still the best-known figure in baseball and a captivating subject. He was one of those rare athletes who transcended sports and actually lived up to his reputation.