BEFORE: Just a few days ago, the final bits of the old Yankee Stadium, "The House That Ruth Built" were demolished. The stadium, and Ruth's records, lasted a good long time, much to the chagrin of Red Sox fans such as myself...
THE PLOT: Babe Ruth becomes a baseball legend but is unheroic to those who know him.
AFTER: Well, I don't know too much about the man's personal life, but based on what I just read on Wikipedia, the film got most of the baseball stuff right. Of course we all know that Babe Ruth was a drunkard, a womanizer, an overeater, and generally a contemptible human being - but he was also the first celebrity who could get away with all of that and still be respected. Because he produced on the ballfield, and nothing shuts people up like the crack of the bat on a home-run hit.
See, kids, if you excel at something and you're at the top of your game, you can cheat on your wife, or drink illegal beer during Prohibition, and if you have enough money, you can just buy your way out of any trouble you get into. Is that the lesson here?
Ruth was also the first player to be traded for what seemed like an obscene amount of money (at the time) - $125,000, reportedly so that the Red Sox owner could produce the play "No, No, Nanette" on Broadway. Not much is mentioned in this film about the "Curse of the Bambino", since the Red Sox didn't win another series after he was traded in 1919, until 2004 of course.
The movie touches on the famous baseball moments like Ruth's "called shot" in the 1932 World Series, and his visiting a sick boy in the hospital, and promising to hit two home-runs for him in the next day's game. I'm guessing that he must have visited a lot of kids in the hospital, and odds are that he promised a lot of home runs to sick kids - and there were probably days where he didn't deliver. But this was just one of the more publicized home-run promises.
We're just days away from the 75th Anniversary of Babe Ruth's last home-runs, the day he hit 3 homers in Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in 1935. As depicted in the movie, he was the first player to hit a home run in that park - but he was in failing health, and he had a pinch-runner take over for him once he reached first base.
He tried for years to get a manager's job in the majors, but was unsuccessful. Though he was the greatest home-run hitter of his day, his social skills were lacking, and you've got to kiss ass if you want to get ahead. The team owners figured - how could he manage a team if he couldn't seem to manage his own life? Maybe that should be the real lesson of the film...
The Yankees owner offered him a job managing the Newark Bears, but Ruth apparently was too proud to manage in the minors. Did he not realize that this was probably a test, and that if he managed the Bears well, they might give him a shot managing the Yanks?
This is a tour-de-force for John Goodman, as the baseball player who grew old but never really grew up. I didn't buy Goodman as a 19-year-old, they really should have found a young look-alike to play Ruth at 19, but he seemed like a dead ringer for Ruth in the later years.
Also starring Kelly McGillis, Trini Alvarado, Bruce Boxleitner, James Cromwell.
RATING: 5 out of 10 stolen bases
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