The Great Bambino - Contemporary Impact

Contemporary Impact

Ruth was the first baseball star to be the subject of overwhelming interest by the public. Baseball had seen star players before, such as Cobb and "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, but both men had uneasy relations with fans, in Cobb's case sometimes marked by violence. Ruth's biographers agree that he benefited from the timing of his ascension to "Home Run King", with an America hit hard by both the war and the 1918 flu pandemic longing for something to help put these traumatic events behind it. He also resonated in a country which felt, in the aftermath of the war, that it took second place to no one. Montville notes that as a larger-than-life figure capable of unprecedented athletic feats in what was the nation's largest city, Ruth became an icon of the significant social changes which marked the early 1920s. According to Creamer, "Babe Ruth transcended sport, moved far beyond the artificial limits of baselines and outfield fences and sports pages". Wagenheim stated, "He appealed to a deeply rooted American yearning for the definitive climax: clean, quick, unarguable." Reisler notes that recent sluggers who surpassed Ruth's 60 home run mark, such as Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, generated much less excitement than when Ruth repeatedly broke the single-season home run record in the 1920s; Ruth dominated a relatively small sports world, while Americans of the present era have many sports to choose to watch.

According to sportswriter Grantland Rice, a contemporary, only two sports figures of the 1920s approached Ruth in popularity—boxer Jack Dempsey and racehorse Man o' War. One of the factors that caused Ruth to gain his broad appeal was the uncertainty that surrounds his early life and his family. It allowed Ruth to exemplify the American success story, that even an uneducated, unsophisticated youth, without any family wealth or connections, can do something better than anyone else in the world. Montville notes that "the fog will make him forever accessible, universal. He will be the patron saint of American possibility." Similarly, the fact that Ruth played when a relatively small portion of his fans had the opportunity to see him play in the era before television coverage of baseball allowed his legend to grow through word of mouth and the hyperbole of sports reporters.

Ruth's penchant for hitting home runs altered how the game is played. Prior to 1920, home runs were unusual, and managers tried to win games by building a run by getting a runner on base, and bring him around to score through such means as the stolen base, the bunt, and the hit and run. Advocates of what was dubbed "inside baseball", such as Giants manager McGraw, disliked the home run, considering it a blot on the purity of the game. According to sportswriter W. A. Phelon after that season, Ruth's breakout performance in 1920 and the public response in excitement and attendance, "settled, for all time to come, that the American public is nuttier over the Home Run than the Clever Fielding or the Hitless Pitching. Viva el Home Run and two times viva Babe Ruth, exponent of the home run, and overshadowing star." While a few, such as McGraw and Cobb, decried the passing of the old-style play, teams quickly began to seek and develop sluggers.

One long-term survivor of the craze over Ruth may be the Baby Ruth candy bar. Although the original company to market the confectionary, the Curtis Candy Company, maintained that the bar was named after Ruth Cleveland, daughter of former president Grover Cleveland, Ruth Cleveland had died in 1904 and the bar was first marketed in 1921, at the height of the Ruth craze. The slugger later sought to market candy bearing his name; he was refused a patent because of the existence of the Baby Ruth bar. Corporate files from 1921 are no longer extant; the brand has changed hands several times and is now owned by the Nestlé company. Due to a marketing arrangement, in 2005, the Baby Ruth bar became the official candy bar of Major League Baseball.