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Saratoga, New York What is it about Babe Ruth? The guy's been dead nearly 60 years. He hit his last home run more than 70 years ago. His hallowed record of 60 homers in a season was broken by Roger Maris 45 years ago, and absolutely shattered by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in the 1990s. It's been more than three decades since Henry Aaron breezed past Ruth's fabulous career total of 714 homers. Yet this past spring, when Barry Bonds labored on painful knees to pass Ruth and move into second-place on the all-time home run list, there was no question about it – the Babe was still King of the Home Run. Newspapers ran boxes every day with photos of Ruth and Bonds side by side, with huge number showing Babe's 714, and how close Barry was to it that day. Magazines published stories. TV shows – news as well as sports – kept running black-and-white film clips of Ruth in his characteristic pussyfooting trot around the bases after hitting a home run. If you saw that old shot of the Babe's big face winking at the camera once, I'd bet you saw it a dozen times. Why? Bonds wasn't setting a new record by passing Ruth. All he was doing was moving into second place, still 50 homers behind Aaron. Barry's own TV show on ESPN, "Bonds on Bonds," bombed and was cancelled. Critics commented on Barry's lack of personal appeal. Yet there was Ruth, still everywhere, still center stage. A newspaper editorial cartoon titled "Curse of the Bambino," published after Bonds passed Ruth's mark, showed not Barry, but the Babe, unidentified in the cartoon but unmistakable anyway, muttering "#!$&*# steroid users." Sports columnists and talk show hosts chatted about Ruth, and even the sedate Antiques Road Show on PBS got into the act, appraising the value of a 60-year-old autograph Ruth had signed on a cloth laundry marker that was the only thing the autograph hunter had with him at the time for Ruth to write on.  Ruth changed baseball from a scratch-a-run contest to a homer-hitting, long-distance event. Photo courtesy Babe Ruth Birthplace & Sports Legends at Camden Yards What is it with this pot-bellied, moon-faced guy? What was and is his great appeal? What makes him remembered so vividly to this day? It was summed up best by an old teammate reminiscing years ago about the Babe. "He was a constant source of joy," the old man said. Joy, fun, delight. Sure, the Ruth we don't remember could be crude and stupid at times. He got in trouble. He ignored convention. An old-time sportswriter said, "He was uninhibited, the most uninhibited person I've ever known. He just did things." When he was a star pitcher with the Boston Red Sox in 1917, he got mad and punched an umpire he thought was making bad calls on balls and strikes. A few years later, he was suspended five different times in the same season for one thing or another. One year with the New York Yankees he was benched by the team and fined a huge amount of money, equal to an average player's annual salary, for insubordination (he was raising hell off the field and defying the manager on it). Overall, he gained a reputation, now frozen into unbreakable myth, that all he did off the field was drink and bed women. But he reformed, and – both before and after the reformation – triumphed on the field, had fun on and off it, and most of the time spread joy and pleasure wherever he went. He was fun to be around, fun to watch. For all the weight he put on, and for all the bad habits he was supposed to have, he was a complete ball player and a remarkable physical specimen. He lasted 22 years in the big leagues and surprisingly – along with his home runs – put in more seasons, had many more hits, runs, runs batted-in and extra-base hits than the Yankees' other worshipped heroes: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. Psychologists say we like heroes because of the vicarious satisfaction they give us. That's a good word, vicarious – "feeling as if one were taking part in the experience of another." People living 70, 80 or 90 years ago felt Ruth's home runs, were thrilled by them, reveled in them, marveled at their height and distance and number, their timing, their drama. No one had ever hit home runs like Ruth before, certainly not with his consistency.
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