Babe Ruth was FAT in His Prime

Peter Wynn Thompson (The New York Times)

Imagine being a huge baseball history buff and stumbling across a cellar with 8 reels of 16-millimeter film with never before seen footage of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Jackpot, right? This just happened to RC Raycraft. An amazing find with 3 minutes of footage of Babe and Lou being candid with a group of people. What’s also amazing? Three days after The New York Times posted an article about your amazing find… some 92 year old dude named Phil Donohue, (no, not that Phil Donohue, although he looks 92) comes forward and says he’s in the video riding a pony, and it was filmed in his backyard when he was 9 years old.

Here’s the part which had to make RC Raycraft’s, recent owner of this “never before seen footage”, blood boil. That same footage he just purchased was already released and seen on two HBO documentaries in the 1990s. Whoops. Prolly overpaid a bit for those film canisters, eh RC? I don’t know how much he paid, but I bet it’s more than he should’ve. The New York Times has altered the original piece that came out last week, and issued a corrective article with all of their new discoveries. Long articles with too many details for me to go through here, but I thought they were pretty cool, so if you’re bored, give ’em a read. In the articles, watch the video, and as you watch… keep this in mind… this footage was taken right after the New York Yankees swept the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 1927 World Series title. Yep. 1927. Ring a bell? Murderer’s Row? Arguably the best team in MLB history? 60 Home Runs for Ruth? Yeah, that year. That means you’re looking at a fatass Babe Ruth in the prime of his career. Crazy. I always kinda thought that Babe was crushing bombs before he got all fat. Guess not.

-bp

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