Quotes about Babe Ruth
"To say 'Babe Ruth' is to say 'Baseball'."
-- ex A.L. President Will Harridge
"No one hit home runs the way Babe did. They were something special. They were like homing pigeons. The ball would leave the bat, pause briefly, suddenly gain its bearings then take off for the stands."
-- Lefty Gomez
"...and no player has held onto the nation's affection longer. George Herman 'Babe' Ruth - who mixed a batsman's steely gaze and a happy-go-lucky lifestyle - tops a USA TODAY reader's poll as the greatest sports star of all time."
-- Mel Antonen
"... I've seen them; kids, men, women, worshippers all, hoping to get his name on a torn, dirty piece of paper, or hoping for a grunt of recognition when they said, 'Hi-ya, Babe.' He never let them down; not once. He was the greatest crowd pleaser of them all."
-- Waite Hoyt, teammate
"...in today's marketplace, Ruth could command a $10 million annual contract without even blinking an eye."
-- Ron Shapiro, baseball agent
"Some twenty years ago, I stopped talking about the Babe for the simple reason that I realized that those who had never seen him didn't believe me."
-- Tommy Holmes, sportswriter
"He hits the ball harder and further than any man I ever saw."
-- Bill Dickey, teammate
"He has created an expectation of hero worship on the part of the youth of this country, and it was a most fortunate thing that Ruth kept faith with the boyhood of America because they loved him."
-- Branch Rickey, ex-Manager of Brooklyn Dodgers
"Every big leaguer and his wife should teach their children to pray, "God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, and God bless Babe Ruth."
-- Waite Hoyt
"Sometimes I still can't believe what I saw," said Harry Hooper, a Boston teammate of Ruth's. "This 19-year-old kid, crude, poorly educated, only lightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization, gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and the symbol of baseball the world over - a man loved by more people and with an intensity of feeling that perhaps has never been equaled before or since."
"To understand him you had to understand this: he wasn't human."
-- teammate Joe Dugan
"He came up again in the ninth. I was a little mad. I told my catcher, Tommy Padden, he was not good enough to hit my fastball. I came through with a fastball for strike one. I missed with the second. The next pitch I nodded to Tommy. I was going to throw the ball past Mr. Ruth. It was on the outside corner. As he went around third, Ruth gave me the hand sign meaning 'to hell with you.' He was better than me. He was the best that ever lived. That big joker hit it clear out of the park for his third home run of the game. It was the longest homer I'd ever seen in baseball."
-- Guy Bush of the Pittsburgh Pirates on giving up Ruth's last home run (it was the first to clear the rightfield grandstand at Forbes Field and some estimated the distance at 600 feet.) Quoted in Bush's "Sporting News" obituary after his death.
"Ruth made a grave mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week, he might have lasted a long time and become a great star."
-- Tris Speaker on Babe Ruth's future, 1921
"He wasn't a baseball player. He was a worldwide celebrity, an international star, the likes of which baseball has never seen since."
-- broadcaster Ernie Harwell
