The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A Vote for the Babe I have just finished watching those handsome, jolly, triumphant New York Yankee athletes come rollicking arm-in-arm over...
...At this school he had the good fortune to fall into the hands of Brother Mathias, a giant of a man who understood the lad and also had a yearning toward baseball...
...For almost a full week, my house was filled with the clamor of the baseball crowds which gathered from all over the land in Ohio and New York...
...Yet for old-timers like myself there can be no question of Maris replacing Ruth as our chief sports hero...
...Babe never turned away from a request like that...
...The super-sluggers like Maris and Mickey Mantle are the game's showpieces...
...His father ran a bar and the Babe spent his early years in and out of a Catholic school for wayward youths...
...So much fever was generated by the debate that you would have thought the welfare of the nation was involved...
...Before, during and after the games, newspapers, television and radio centered upon the enterprise...
...It seems to me, though, that this business of the importance of the home run and the possibility of Roger Maris' replacing Babe Ruth as our number one baseball champion is a matter worthy of discussion...
...Ruth holds his rank because he possessed qualities which cannot be counted or listed or set down in any record book...
...In schools, clubs and gatherings of all sorts—even in many churches—the chief subject of conversation was the likelihood of Roger Maris' displacing Babe Ruth as a national hero...
...He saved the boy by teaching him the game...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A Vote for the Babe I have just finished watching those handsome, jolly, triumphant New York Yankee athletes come rollicking arm-in-arm over the well-beaten lawns of Cincinnati's Crosley Field...
...Second, there is the matter of Maris' usurping Ruth's position in the baseball hierarchy...
...True, Maris might easily have hit another home run or two within the limits of a 154-game season, and this would have put him unqualifiedly at the top of the record books...
...He visited Johnny and, as he was leaving the stricken boy, Johnny said, 'Babe, hit one for me today, please...
...He obviously deserved the Most Valuable Player Award given to him by the sportswriters last year...
...In her charmingly straightforward book, The Babe and I—unspoiled by an obvious worship of her husband and his prodigious feats—Mrs...
...Now I want to emphasize that Roger Maris is a top-notch, clean-cut athlete who talks little and always with good sense...
...In the first place, the home run as such is far from being as important an element in the national pastime as the popular imagination believes...
...Probably nothing but a Presidential election attracts greater country-wide interest than the annual World Series...
...This year, more than ever before, the Series was a national affair...
...But great heroes who produce 50 or 60 skypiercing clouts in a season create but a fraction of baseball's spectacular plays...
...And taking into account the total homerun production, the number produced by Maris is comparatively unimportant...
...Ruth begins her account of her distinguished husband as follows: "Babe Ruth is the stuff of which juvenile delinquents are made...
...His doctor asked Babe to visit the boy...
...And Johnny got well...
...Soberly considered, the home run is a dramatic display rather than a decisive contribution to the workaday operations of the game...
...Mrs...
...Games are won, in the main, not by the home runs, but by the players who make their way from first base to home plate by way of singles or doubles, bases on balls, stolen bases and other carefully worked out and precisely calculated devices...
...They don't so much win the contest as bring in the customers...
...Take this little story, for example, which has become an American legend: "Johnny Sylvester had been operated on and was dying...
...Babe Ruth manages to give a solid sense of the man's personality...
...But it would not have gained him the Babe's place in the American heart...
...I realize, of course, that a homer is a run, and that it may drive in two or three or, even, four runs...
...He hit one...
Vol. 44 • October 1961 • No. 35
