ESPN Classic - By the Babe

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The Bambino

Lovable Ruth was everyone's Babe

About the Babe

Wednesday, November 19, 2003
By the Babe

Quotes By Babe Ruth

"Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world"
--Quoted in "The Babe Ruth Story"

"All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back in the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and and I tell them I don't know except it looked good."
--Quoted by Clifton Fadiman in "The American Treasury, 1455-1955"

"If I'd just tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around .600."
--Quoted in "Big Sticks"

"Hot as hell, ain't it Prez?"
--On being introduced to Calvin Coolidge on a hot day at the Washington ballpark, quoted by Robert Creamer in "Babe"

"I know, but I had a better year than Hoover."
--Reported reply when a reporter objected that the salary Ruth was demanding ($80,000) was more than that of President Herbert Hoover's ($75,000).

"Ballplayers should get all they can in the way of salary from their bosses, and there should be no ceiling on salaries."
--In 1948, the year he died

"I wanted to stay in baseball more than I ever wanted anything in my life. But in 1935 there was no job for me, and that embittered me."
--Quoted in "People of Destiny" by Kenneth Richards

"The termites have got me."
--To Connie Mack shortly before he died

"Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad. There's been so many lovely things said about me, I'm glad I had the opportunity to thank everybody. Thank you."
--April 27, 1947, at Yankee Stadium on Babe Ruth Day.

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