Life — April 19, 1928 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Babe Grows Older ECHNICALLY speaking, a home run is a fast ball that has been killed in a collision or a curve ball that, under furious compulsion, has decided to go straight. Among the manufacturers of home runs a certain Babe Ruth is facile princeps, which is a Scandinavian phrase meaning “a large, stout gentleman with ears.” The only reprehensible point about this popular personage is that he has reformed. This sad defection from the ranks of the wicked has some- what dimmed the lustre of the dia- mond and has even detracted from the gaicty of nations. If he wasn't the “bad man” of baseball, he was at least the enfant terrible of the world of sport. ONSIDER a few of his adven- tures. Having been lodged in a city jail for finishing second in a race with a motorcycle cop, he used his cell as a boudoir, sent for his baseball uniform, donned it while still in durance vile and gave a bril- liant coming-out party at the Polo Grounds twenty minutes after he left the prison. He was reported dying of influenza at Hot Springs in 1923. A few intimates were permitted to enter the darkened room and they found the proposed corpse expiring very comfortably with a big, black cigar in his mouth. He recovered but the smoke from the cigar nes killed the doctor. BY way of making the Lord High Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Landis, feel perfectly at ease in his office, the Babe invited him to take a running dive into Lake Michigan. It was a public invitation, with ge tures. He made a practice of snap- ping contemptuous fingers under the outraged nose of Miller Huggins, his immediate overlord. He defied diet- ary and disciplinary laws. He tripped the light fantastic at for- bidden hours in hidden places where, as Cyril Egan put it, you go in with a whisper and come out with a shout. He considered one dozen hot dogs and six bottles of pop just a light snack between meals. He threw dust on the sacred mantle of many umpires. He chased a New York Gorrer: Will you make up a twosome with me? Girt: Certainly not! Central conductor from the Polo Grounds part way to Albany. Stricken with acute indigestion on a training trip, he treated his com- plaint with hot applications of beef- steak, smothered with onions, with the result that he fell senseless off a Pullman seat and landed on the front pages of all the newspapers in the country. Ber now he is a changed man. He no longer does his roadwork on the primrose path of dalliance. He is affable with his employer, Tue Lass Wxo Loven an Aviator I don’t believe in these modern substitutes for marriage. Colonel Ruppert, and genial to his commanding officer, Manager Hug- gins. He curtseys to the umpires. He puts money in the bank. He has a book (“David Goes to Green- land”). He has taken out life insur- ance. Deadly respec y no further. The bligl ation has fallen upon the Playboy of the Baseball World. He has reformed. Worse still, he has made it pay. Under his own reform administra- tion he set a new home-run record last year and now he is drawing the largest salary of his career. As Sir John Falstaff put it: “This is enough to be the decay of late-walking through the realm!” John Kieran. Contrast (A man buying a five-hundred-dol- lar car, paying one hundred down and the balance on.) “per on anything in the line of accessories that don’t come with the car. I'll stand the expense.” (Ad man buying a_five-thousand- dollar car and paying cash.) he So-and-So Agency wouldn't give me any inducement to buy their car. Now if you'll give me a spare- tire cover free of charge and throw in a rear-view mirror perhaps we can do business.” B.S. comicbooks.com