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THE BABE:
HISTORICAL INNACURACIES IN
THE 1992 JOHN GOODMAN FILM
by David Pietrusza
As entertaining as "The Babe" may be (a highly dubious point),
baseball scholars may find the film as riddled with errors as a Mets
boxscore. The miscues include:

  • Portraying Babe Ruth as a chronically overweight kid. Perhaps
    they are confusing him with William Bendix.
  • Has Boston management mulling sending a poor-hitting Babe
    to the minors. Demoting a pitcher for that reason is pretty
    unlikely. Besides Ruth was demoted to Providence in 1914.
    That's left out of the film.
  • The owner when Babe joined the Sox was not the infamous
    Harry Frazee. It was Joe Lannin.
  • Ruth did not punch out an umpire when courting Helen
    Woodford in 1915—that was not until 1917.
  • "Jumping Joe" Dugan was never Ruth's Red Sox teammate.
  • Has the Babe being paid more than the President on joining the
    Yankees. That didn't happen until 1930.  Hoover was
    President, and Ruth sure did have a better year
  • Inexplicably ignores the "Bellyache Heard Round the World."
  • Totally garbles the chronology of Ruth's marriage to Claire
    Hodgson—marrying them while Helen was still alive and has
    Helen living until 1934. Helen died in 1929. The Babe would
    never considering marrying outside the Catholic Church.
  • Implies that Claire was responsible for getting Ruth a fair price
    for his endorsements, ignoring the role of his famous "ghost
    writer" Cristie Walsh.
  • Ruth was not released by Colonel Ruppert and forced to hook
    on with the Boston Braves. A deal was worked out. Then
    Ruth was released.
  • Ruth was not cut $125,000 on joining the Braves. He was
    trimmed from $35,000 to $25,000—still the club's highest
    salary.