Potus Geeks Summer Reruns: George H. W. Bush and Babe Ruth
Perhaps the most timeless and memorable name in baseball is Babe Ruth. George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. was a professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball lasted for 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. He was nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", but while he is best known as one of the greatest hitters in the game, he began his MLB career as a star left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. He moved to the outfield and was traded to the New York Yankees. Ruth is considered to be one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture. Many considr him to be the greatest baseball player of all time. In 1936, Ruth was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its "first five" inaugural members.
Ruth learned to play the game at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory where he was mentored by Brother Matthias Boutlier of the Xaverian Brothers. In 1914, Ruth was signed to play minor-league baseball for the Baltimore Orioles but was soon sold to the Red Sox. By 1916, he had built a reputation as an outstanding pitcher who also hit long home runs. Ruth was a member of three World Series championship teams with the Red Sox. He broke the MLB single-season home run record in 1919. Controversy ensued when Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees on January 5, 1920. The trade was controversial, angering Red Sox fans. It was followed by Boston's subsequent 86-year championship drought and popularized the superstition of the "Curse of the Bambino." In his 15 years with the Yankees, Ruth helped the team win seven American League pennants and four World Series championships. As part of the Yankees' vaunted "Murderers' Row" lineup of 1927, Ruth hit 60 home runs, a record that lasted until 1961 when it was broken by Roger Maris. Ruth's last season with the Yankees was 1934. He retired from the game the following year, after a short stint with the Boston Braves.
Ruth became known for his off-the-file exploits and almost as much as for what he did on the field. Stories of his drinking and womanizing are legendary and this is believed to have prevented him from managing a major league club. In 1946, he became ill with nasopharyngeal cancer and the disease would take his life two years later.
In 1945 a young veteran named George H. W. Bush had returned home from the war. Three years earlier, on his 18th birthday in June of 1942, Bush had enlisted in the United States Navy as a naval aviator. After completing a period of training, he was commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi on June 9, 1943, becoming one of the youngest aviators in the Navy. He served in the Pacific theater, where he flew a Grumman TBF Avenger, a torpedo bomber capable of taking off from aircraft carriers. Bush flew his first combat mission in May of 1944. On September 2, 1944, during an attack on a Japanese installation in Chichijima, Bush's aircraft was downed by enemy fire. Both of Bush's fellow crew members died, but Bush successfully bailed out from the aircraft and was rescued by the USS Finback. He was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the mission.
Bush had been accepted to Yale University prior to his enlistment in the military. When he returned home from the war, he took up the offer to attend the prestigious school, after his discharge and after getting married to the former Barbara Pierce. While at Yale he captained the Yale baseball team. He was a left-handed first baseman, and captained the team when it played in the first two College World Series. Bush was described in a Sports Illustrated article as a "slick-fielding first baseman". The team played in the first of college baseball's national championship at Hyames Field on the campus of Western Michigan in 1947. Bush told Associated Press in a phone interview: "I remember going out there and thinking, 'Well, we're pretty darned lucky as an Ivy League team to be in the big time here,' but there we were." President Bush, added "We thought about it a lot and talked about it in the locker room. A lot of us on the team were veterans and we had come back from the war, so maybe that made it a little less apprehensive. On the other hand, it didn't deduct from our enthusiasm and our desire to win, which we did not do."
But victory proved elusive for the Yale squad that year. Instead, the title went to the California team called the Bears. The first few innings were played in a steady rain. Yale led 4-2 before some strategy by the team's manager, a former major leaguer, backfired in the seventh inning. "We walked the eighth hitter to get to the pitcher, and it was Jackie Jensen," Bush said. "He hit one that's still rolling out there in Kalamazoo." That big hit tied the game, and the Bears scored twice more in the eighth before breaking it open with an 11-run ninth.
Yale rallied in the second game from a 7-2 deficit and tied it in the sixth inning, but the Bears went ahead to stay the following inning, scoring the winning run in an 8-7 victory, sweeping the best of 3 series, two games to none.
Yale found its way back to Kalamazoo the next year for the second College World Series in 1948. This time they were once again playing a team from California, this time from Southern California. They took the series to three games, but the California team won, with the final game ending on a triple play, with Bush on deck. Reflecting on the game years later, President Bush said: "It was a traumatic experience and letdown for Yale. All of us felt that way. You learn to go with the flow and get on with your life, and that's what all of us did."
Earlier in the 1948 season, on June 5, 1948, Bush, met a dying Base Ruth at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut. By then, Ruth was cancer-stricken and in the final months of his life. The Babe donated an original manuscript of his autobiography to Yale University. He presented the gift in an on-field ceremony at Yale Field, where he was greeted by the Yale Bulldogs’ baseball team captain, young George H.W. Bush. Ruth spent much of 1948 in and out of the hospital before passing away in August. Bush would later describe the meeting as “tragic.” He said:
I was the captain of the ball club, so I got to receive him there. He was dying. He was hoarse and could hardly talk. He kind of croaked when they set up the mike by the pitcher’s mound. It was tragic. He was hollow. His whole great shape was gaunt and hollowed out.
After he became president in 1989, Bush kept his baseball memories close by. Tucked in his Oval Office desk was his Yale first baseman's mitt. Former team mate Ethan Allen regarded Bush as one of the best defensive first basemen he had seen. But he was quick to point out to scouts that Bush was "all glove and no hit" - a label Bush resented. "I think it was grossly unfair because I think my average was about .240 or .250," he said with a laugh. "And I think if I were playing today in the bigs, I'd probably get about 8 million bucks a year for that." He was asked by a reporter if he might have had the bat to go with the glove had he used aluminum like today's college players, Bush said: "Hey, I might have. I hadn't thought about that." That glove is on display today at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. He brought it with him when, as President, he was asked to throw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game.