The Pecan Park Eagle

As Time Goes By, It’s Still the Babe

Sooner or later, I always go back in baseball history to the guy who even now seems like Superman to this ancient fan. Babe Ruth was the man all right, even his portrayal by WIllim Bendix in the 1948 biopic “The Babe Ruth Story” did nothing but enhance the heroic imagery I had embraced of him from my earliest readings of his exploits on the field. These too were only amplified by the stories my dad told me of him. I was eleven years old in 1948, the year the Babe died, and I remember just being devastated by the news. I knew that he had been sick for a while, but I didn’t really expect him to die. Not the Babe. But he did.

In the Babe’s honor, The Arms of Ruth’s Summer are the 33 fine pitchers who served up the Bambino’s 60 record homers in 1927. When it happened, many people, including Ruth, harbored thoughts that the mark might stand forever. It didn’t, but it stood fro 34 years, long enough to be carried into every battlefield in World War II in the minds of every young American soldier who also grew up loving baseball and the Babe.

Thanks to the graphic help of Baseball Almanac, here is the path that Babe Ruth took through the Boys of His Summer back in 1927:

Babe’s 60th home run came in the next to last game of the 1927 season before only 6,000 home fans at the cavernous Yankee Stadium. The Yankees had much earlier wrapped up the pennant and, even though Ruth had cruncher homers 58 and 59 only a day earlier, there apparently was little interest among fans in the idea of coming to watch him try for 60.

Ruth finally nailed number 60 with one out and one on in the bottom of the 8th off lefty Tom Zachary of the Washington Senators. It was a mob he hit down the right field line, but things were briefly tense as everyone waited to see if the fall would remain fair. It cleared by no more than six inches, giving Ruth the record and the Yankees a 4-2 win. The date was September 30, 1927.

Tom Zachary gave up 3 of Ruth’s record homers, as did six others. Milt Gaston of the St. Louis Browns and Rube Walberg of the Philadelphia Athletics were the other pitchers to surrender 4 homers each to Ruth;s 1927 record bag. – 7 other pitchers gave up 3 homers each to Ruth that years and the Babe also tagged 17 pitchers for one long ball each.

Milt Gaston
1924-1934
5 AL Clubs

 A Milt Gaston Sidebar; When Gaston turned 100 years old on January 27, 1996, I sent him a baseball and asked for his autograph. By this time, Gaston was living in a nursing home in Maine and I wasn’t sure if he could even still write, but I could resist trying. I also included a few bucks to cover his mailing and also help supply him with some loose change. I also told him in a note that I wished I could go back in time and watch him pitch one more game.

I never heard a things. Weeks passed and I had pretty well written off the contact effort to Milt’s age and inability to deal with a request from a faraway fan in Texas,

The one day i picked up the paper and learned that Milt Gaston had died in his Barnstable, Massachusetts nursing home setting on April 26, 1996, The new saddened me greatly. I figured that was it for sure for the last hope of ever hearing from the old pitcher, Then, two or three days later, about April 29-30, 1996, I went to the mailbox and found the shock of my life,

It was a small box wrapped in brown paper, addressed to me from Milt Gaston, and all in this large all over the place blue-ink handwriting, I side the box, Milt had signed the ball I sent him and also had enclosed an autographed signed picture of himself, The ball is now in secure storage. The player photo shown here s a copy of the one Milt sent to me. The original is in storage with the ball.

I’ve compared my Gaston signature with others I’ve seen and am convinced he did it, but I have no idea if had help wrapping the ball for the mail. That handwriting appeared to be his, as well, but I must have either absent-mindedly thrown out the wrapping or stored it separately somewhere I’ve forgotten – which is most probably what happened.

That’s OK. What matters to me is the fact that I know it happened exactly as I’m telling you here. And I have been in contact with, and own a signed ball from one of Babe Ruth’s Arms of Summer. It’s in a bank box because of its sentimental value to me. It’s no big money deal. It’s just that I know that one of Babe’s boys sent that ball and picture to me as one of his last acts on earth. And that makes me a very lucky guy.