Babe's Bats: Headin' Home to Everyone's Hero

Abstract

It is appropriate that Babe Ruth, Sultan of Swat, who transformed baseball from deadball era to big-bang era, often was depicted in various photos and films following through after a prodigious swing, cradling a few bats prior to choosing one, and sighting along its length as if looking down barrel of a gun. Babe maintained that heavier bat better results: My theory is that bigger bat, faster ball will travel. It's really weight of bat that drives ball. My bat weighs 52 ounces. Most bats weigh 36 to 40 ounces. ... The harder you grip bat, faster ball will travel. When I am out after a homer, I try to make mush of this solid ash handle and I carry through with bat. When I swing to meet baseball, I follow it all way around. (1) Babe's home runs and ebullient personality were instrumental in presenting him as a mass-media Achilles and a populist hero. (2) Ruth represented a common man who came out of nowhere to achieve prominence as a national and folkloric like Casey at Bat and Paul Bunyan, who performed well under pressure and attempted to help others. (3) Ruth's powerful persona as exemplified by his bat has been represented in three periods of film imagery. From 1920-48, golden period extending from his first year as a Yankee to his death, Ruth appeared in Headin' Home (1920); The Babe Comes Home (1926); Harold Lloyd's silent comedy Speedy (1928); five one-reel instructional baseball films for Universal Pictures (1932) entitled Slide, Babe, Slide, Just Pals, Perfect Control, Fancy Curves, and Over Fence; and The Babe Ruth Story (1948), in which his bat is magical, potent, and therapeutic. (4) These films fit image of Ruth as man with club, primitive but successful ..., who was victor over everything. Like Hercules, he satisfied feeling ... that there was ... nothing a man couldn't do if he was strong enough and had a big enough stick. (5) The second period (1984-92) of filmic imagery of Babe Ruth can be considered negative reaction to his earlier sacralization. The three films in this category, The Babe (1985), Babe Ruth (1991), and The Babe (1992), present a more embattled, unruly, and angry Ruth who uses his bat to hit prodigious homers as an assertion of his appetitive personality and as a weapon against those who attack him or prevent him from accomplishing his goals. The third period (1993 to present) represents a return to laudatory style of golden era, as Ruth is celebrated as hero, especially by children, who are encouraged by him or his spirit to keep swinging. Babe's bat becomes talisman that enables them to achieve their goals. The revival of Ruth's heroic image began in The Sandlot (1993), where Babe appears in Benny the Jet Rodriguez's dream, shrouded in a nimbus, to urge Benny, whose room is filled with Ruth memorabilia, to take his one chance at greatness. Dressed in his Yankee uniform and carrying his bat, Ruth declares that heroes get remembered but legends never die. Follow your heart and you'll never go wrong. Take chance to be great, he advises as he leaves with bat over his shoulder a la Paul Bunyan. As a result of dream and his subsequent heroism, Bennie earns a major-league career with Los Angeles Dodgers, wearing Ruth's sacred number 3. Everyone's Hero, first full-length animated film with a baseball plot, continues revitalization of Babe Ruth's heroic mythos through union of a boy, a bat, and a ball. The fact that film is animated enhances notion of a child's world and perspective being created. In such a world it is appropriate that ball and bat are alive and that Babe's bat holds central interest as object that everyone is trying to recover to restore his hitting prowess in 1932 World Series versus Cubs. The movie is built on idea of inclu-siveness as indicated in title: Babe Ruth is everyone's but so is little Yankee Irving, who goes on epic journey and recovers Babe's bat Darling in time for Yanks to win Series. …