Quote of the Day (Babe Ruth, on Baseball, ‘The Only Real Game in the World’)

“The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball.”—Baseball Hall of Famer Babe Ruth (1895-1948), speech to the crowd at Yankee Stadium on “Babe Ruth Day,” April 27, 1947

Seventy-five years ago today, for only the second time in history, all clubs in major-league baseball honored a single individual: Babe Ruth. The event was deeply poignant, because the mighty slugger had come down with cancer.

The center of activity that day was, appropriately enough, Yankee Stadium. Though The Babe had left the Bronx Bombers with his managerial ambitions unfulfilled, the stadium remained indisputably “The House That Ruth Built,” the site of his major feats as an everyday player.

“Babe Ruth Day” would not be the last time Ruth would visit the stadium—he’d be back a little over a year later, when his number was retired—but many of the more than 58,000 in attendance in April 1947 sensed that the end was drawing near for their hero, as the once-powerful hitter was helped to home plate.

If there was any doubt about his condition, Ruth removed it quickly. It remains shocking, if you click on the above link, to hear him rasping, “You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad.”

But then, Ruth started speaking about the two things that had brought out the best in him as a player: youth and the game of baseball.

A classic at-risk youngster, Ruth credited his life being turned around after he’d been taught the fundamentals of baseball by Brother Matthias of St. Mary’s Industrial Training School, a Baltimore educational institution primarily for boys with behavioral issues. "If it wasn't for baseball,” he once said, “I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery."

And now, Ruth told the crowd—and the lords of baseball—the right way and time to instruct youngsters in the game:

“As a rule, people think that if you give boys a football or a baseball or something like that, they naturally become athletes right away. But you can't do that in baseball. You got to start from way down, at the bottom, when the boys are six or seven years of age. You can't wait until they're 14 or 15. You got to let it grow up with you, if you're the boy.”

Over time, I’m afraid, baseball has forgotten the lesson that The Babe was trying to teach that day. There are so many other sports today competing for attention. How can young fans become attached to baseball when so many games are held at night and last so long?