SHORT DESCRIPTION
In 1920 he out-homered fourteen of the fifteen other teams. He made everyone around him rich, and was never allowed to manage a single game.

SHOW NOTES
In his first season in New York, Babe Ruth hit fifty-four home runs. The next-best hitter in the American League hit nineteen. Ruth hit more home runs by himself than fourteen of the other fifteen entire teams in baseball — and he did it in the same year eight White Sox were accused of selling the World Series. One of those stories is why the sport survived the other.

This episode is the New York years and what came after: the records from 1921 that still stand, the ballpark his crowds paid for, the Columbia laboratory that measured his eyes, the suspensions, and the 1925 collapse that the papers turned into a joke about hot dogs and that was almost certainly something else. Then the comeback nobody expected — six seasons averaging fifty home runs at ages thirty-one to thirty-six — the called shot at Wrigley, and the long decline.

On the called shot, the episode uses what The Sporting News actually printed five days later: the finger-counting, wiping his hands, and pointing toward the distant bleachers. Then it gives the reasons to doubt it, including Charlie Root's denial and Ruth's own answer when asked — "It's in the papers, isn't it?"

And underneath all of it, the thing that never healed: after Miller Huggins died in 1929, Ruth asked to manage. The Yankees never seriously considered him, and no team ever did. The most famous man in American sport never managed a major league game.

Part two of two.

IN THIS EPISODE

• 1920: fifty-four home runs, and a sport in crisis
• Records from 1921 that have stood for over a century
• What Columbia University found when they tested him
• Landis, the lost captaincy, and the umpires he fought
• The bellyache heard round the world, and what it probably was
• The $5,000 fine that stuck, and the gym in Manhattan
• Why Gehrig may have been better in 1927
• Helen's death, Claire, and the 500th home run
• The job he asked for and never got
• October 1, 1932: what the trade paper printed, and why it still isn't settled
• Three home runs in Pittsburgh at forty, and then nothing
• August 16, 1948

BY THE NUMBERS

• 54 home runs in 1920 — 35 more than the runner-up
• 177 runs, 119 extra-base hits, 457 total bases in 1921 — none ever matched
• .393 in 1923; 60 home runs in 1927
• 1926–31: an average of 50 home runs, 155 RBI and a .354 average
• 714 career home runs; the last three in one afternoon at forty
• Dead at 53

SOURCES
The Sporting News, October 6, 1932 and August 25, 1948 (the seven-page Babe Ruth section, including Frederick G. Lieb's obituary). SABR BioProject. The New York Times, August 1948. Archives accessed through the Society for American Baseball Research.

DISCLAIMER
Baseball Hall of Fame Lives is an independent production and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

KEYWORDS
Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, called shot, 1932 World Series, Charlie Root, Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, Yankee Stadium, 60 home runs, Boston Braves, Cooperstown, baseball history