Lights! Camera! Action! Happy Babe Ruth Day!
Happy Babe Ruth Day! Today, April 27th, in ballparks everyone players and fans are celebrating Babe Ruth!
Babe Ruth is all of those names and more. He is the greatest baseball player of all time!
Pro players are still chasing records he set almost a century ago!
The King of Swing!
“New York City hosted the first National Babe Ruth Day on April 27, 1947, soon after Ruth's cancer diagnosis. Ruth attended ceremonies at Yankee Stadium to 58,339 fans. In the House that Ruth Built, fans cheered as dignitaries surrounded the Bambino, including Francis Spellman, Commissioner A. B. Chandler, A.L. President Will Haridge, and N.L. President Ford Frick.”—National Day Calendar
“He [Babe Ruth] was an original in every way. He had a librarian’s legs, an oversized head, wrists thick as pipes and a moon-shaped face so ugly it was lovable.”—SportsCentury
While everyone—and I mean everyone—knows the name Babe Ruth, and many know he was a baseball player, I realized lots of us—most of us—me included, aside from movies, have never seen him in action. And so, to celebrate Babe Ruth today, I dug up a gloveful of Babe Ruth movies
“The Babe’s first motion picture, Headin’ Home (1920) in which Babe played a character similar to himself, was filmed mostly at night on at Biograph Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
On August 22, 1920, action scenes were filmed at a ball field made up to look like the Polo Grounds. A crowd of 2000 movie extras as “fans” were in the stands.
While the cameras rolled, Babe Ruth’s character (also called “Babe”) used a bat he supposedly whittled out of a tree trunk to blast balls out of the park and into neighboring houses and yards.
After filming that day, Babe raced back to the real Polo Grounds for a Yankees’ game against the Detroit Tigers. During the “real” game, in 3 at bats, Babe didn’t get any hits, but he did manage 2 BB; the Yankees lost 9-11.”
—excerpt from the book I’m working on now….who’s it about? I’ll bet you can guess…
