Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth died of cancer 50 years ago this week, on Aug. 16, 1948. More than 63 years have passed since he made his last appearance as a player, in a Boston Braves uniform, yet he remains the purest original ever to have played big league baseball. For all that he did in his 22 seasons in the majors, surely nothing left a deeper imprint on the game than the force and flair he brought to bear in striking the ball.

In the late teens of [the twentieth century] Ruth was the best left-handed pitcher in the American League. As a member of the Boston Red Sox, he pitched 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play, a record until Whitey Ford broke it more than 40 years later. But Ruth's pitching feats are footnotes, gathering dust among his batting records.

The irony is that 1927 [Ruth's most memorable year] wasn't his most productive year. No player in history ever had a season like Ruth's in '21. In addition to his 59 homers, he batted .378 and led the league in runs (177), runs batted in (171) and walks (144, many of them intentional), and his colossal slugging percentage of .846 was just a tick behind his 1920 mark of .847, a record that still stands. Yet it's '27 that became Ruth's year, the enduring symbol of the man and his myth. By that season he had altered the balance of the game, raising the home run from its relatively modest role into baseball's most dramatic event and a significant force in determining the outcome of games. …

Unlike in 1920, when the Babe was just making his name as a power hitter, in '27 he was the Show. His home run quest was a one-ring traveling circus, the merriest entertainment in sport…

Source: Nack, William. Sports Illustrated, August 24, 1998, p.58.