A hundred years ago in 1925, Babe Ruth was one of the biggest celebrities in America.
George Herman Ruth made the major league as a pitcher at the young age of 19 which helped to give birth to his nickname. After four seasons of pitching with the Boston Red Sox, the young lefty won 93 games and was a 20-game winner twice. In 1916 he posted a 23-12 record with a low earned run average of 1.75. The following season he won 24 games while losing 13 with another low ERA of 2.01.
As good as he was as a pitcher, he was even better as a hitter. Management decided he should be an everyday player and moved him to right field for the 1919 season. Ruth responded by batting .322, hitting 29 home runs, and proving that he could outhit and outpower most players. Boston traded their young star to the New York Yankees prior to the 1920 season and Ruth became the king of New York and the baseball world. He batted .376 and slugged 54 home runs. He was even a better batter in 1921, batting .378 and hitting 59 homers.
After two more great seasons, the 30-year-old Ruth readied for 1925 trying to shed some of his 260 pounds through spring training workouts and boarded the team train going north. A hundred years ago most teams would stop in towns and cities along the way north and play a game giving fans in minor league towns a chance to see the big leaguers they read about. The Yankees pulled in to Asheville, North Carolina, and Ruth collapsed. Unconscious, he was taken to a hotel as the team played. Ruth’s condition was reported around the country as an “enormous bellyache,” as Ruth often gorged down many beers and hot dogs.
Asheville fans jammed the ballpark for the exhibition game between the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers expecting to see Ruth as rumors swirled around the grandstands and the streets. Ruth was able to take the train to New York but still didn’t feel well, and was hospitalized. The most famous patient in America had surgery for an intestinal abscess and spent six weeks in the hospital.
A week after exiting the hospital, Ruth was back in the lineup on June 1, for his first game of the season. It was a subpar season for Ruth and the Yankees. Without the Babe in April and May, the Yanks were close to the bottom and finished the season in seventh place in the eight team American League. Ruth wasn’t happy with his .290 batting average and 25 home runs for the season. Most players would have been happy being considered stars with those numbers.
Meanwhile, in the National League, Rogers Hornsby was easily the best all-around player. The right-handed batting second baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals had a super season in 1925 by batting .403 and hitting 39 home runs. It was the sixth consecutive season Hornsby led the league in hitting and amazingly, the third time he batted over .400 in those six years.
For the past four years, Albert Einstein had been raising funds for the proposed Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Einstein traveled to several Jewish communities around the world, visiting the United States for the first time in 1921. It was there that he heard Jewish baseball fans talking about Babe Ruth and saw kids playing baseball. When the University opened in 1925, Einstein was on its Board of Governors and became founding chairman of the Academic Committee.
