Posts tagged BabeRuth at FanHouse

Later today, the Red Sox will stroll out of the visitor's dugout and face the Yankees for the final time at venerable Yankee Stadium. There will be other goodbyes to the House That Ruth Built in the coming weeks, but with the Bronx Bombers a major longshot to play into October, this series seems to have taken on special significance.

Here are a dozen of the finest moments in the best rivalry in American sports, all of which took place at Yankee Stadium. Even Red Sox fans have to be feeling a little nostalgic about their team's final visit. After all, the franchise's finest hour took place there.

1. Oct. 16, 2003: The ghosts strike one last time. After Red Sox manager Grady Little leaves Pedro Martinez in well past the 100-pitch mark with a 5-2 lead in the eighth inning, the Yankees rally to force extra innings. In the 11th, Aaron Boone sends a deep fly into the Bronx night, sending New York to the World Series and crushing Boston's dreams of ending the Curse of the Bambino again.

As part of the All-Star festivities in New York this week, the folks at Hunt Auctions are selling off some old Yankees memorabilia before the team moves into the new stadium next season. These auctions are always fun, as more often than not, the money goes to charity and you can always get some pretty cool stuff.

For instance, you could have had a bat Babe Ruth signed for Broadway star Tessa Kosta for the low low price of $195,000. If that's a little out of your price range, you could have had Thurman Munson's Rookie of the Year Award for only $46,000.

Of course, for some of you I realize that these types of trinkets just aren't good enough. A signed bat? Please, it was probably never even used in a game! You want something you know was utilized in a real live baseball game. You want something with proof, like say, a hat Babe Ruth once wore stained by his sweat.

A baseball cap worn by New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth has been auctioned for a record $328,000 on Monday.

The sweat-stained cap from around the 1920s sold at an auction of Yankees memorabilia in New York.

Hunt Auctions says the cap is one of only three Yankees hats in existence worn by Ruth during games. It says a hat used by a player had never sold for more than $100,000.

I wonder if anybody told the guy who bought Ruth's hat that he could have just gotten one through the Yankees website for $32, and it would have come stain free. Though, I suppose that would have denied him the opportunity to fill Ruth's hat with water, squeeze it dry, and no doubt get as drunk as the Babe probably was during the game he played in it.

It was announced back in May that David Ortiz would take part in an on-field promotion for State Farm Insurance in which he'd "call his shot" during the Home Run Derby. Considering the Derby is taking place at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees were up in arms about a Red Sox player riffing on a on a piece of storied Babe Ruth lore.

As luck would have it, Ortiz won't be participating in the Derby because of his wrist injury, but it's interesting to note that the Yankees would have gotten their way, nonetheless. Major League Baseball changed the format of the promotion, so instead of just one player calling his shot, both of the finalists from the eight-man field will have their chance.

Granted, there's still a good chance that the sluggers who do call their shot won't be wearing pinstripes (especially with Alex Rodriguez declining an invitation), but at least Yankees fans can rest assured some bum from the Sawx won't be descreating the old ballpark. Because, you know, some things (that may or may not have actually happened and took place 76 years ago at Wrigley Field!) are just sacred.

One has to imagine that Micah Owings and the Arizona Diamondbacks take umbrage to Hank Steinbrenner's ludicrous rants about the National League needing to "grow up" and embrace the Designated Hitter rule.

After all, Owings has a career batting average of .302 and a career OPS of .890. Sure it's only 102 at bats, but he's also got five homers. All of which have garnered some really ridiculous comparisons, and maybe landed him a spot as the Snakes DH during interleague play.

"It's always an option," Melvin said.

Known just as much for his work with the bat, last season Owings won the Silver Slugger Award at the pitcher's position. Owings has slumped at the plate recently, but still owns a .302 career batting average with five homers and 18 RBIs in 102 at-bats.

"It's just not his best stretch going for him," Melvin said. "We'll monitor it going forward."

Yeah, what are you gonna do when one of your pitchers, who bats generally every fifth day, is in a slump. And how do you even know it's a slump with that much time off -- the guy's not supposed to be taterjackin' every time he gets to the plate.

Though we love it anyway, baseball is, and always will be, a sport of many historic flaws. Chief among them is its history of racial segregation and racism. (Though, to be fair, that racism was less a function of the game and more a reflection of 20th century American society.) Even so, the period before black players and white players were allowed to compete against each other is a blight on the sport's proud history.

SI writer Phil Taylor, in this interview (via BBTF), mentions a relevant double standard I'll confess to rarely having considered before: that we seem to accept the accomplishments of pre-integration white players readily while doubting those of the Negro Leaguers. Why?

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Arizona Diamondbacks (20-8) vs. New York Mets (14-12) - 9:40PM Est.

There's no doubt about it, if Sloth from The Goonies weren't a fictional character and lived in the real world, his favorite baseball player would be Diamondbacks pitcher/slugger Micah Owings. Owings has only been in the bigs for a little over a year now, but he's already garnering comparisons to the legendary Babe Ruth.

Obviously, the comparisons are extremely immature, but it's easy to see why they're being made. After all, not only is Owings 4-0 on the season with a 3.48 ERA, but he may be the best hitter on the Diamondbacks as well. In 79 career big league at bats, Owings is hitting .354/.373/.671 with five homers and 18 runs driven in. In the entire history of baseball, of players who have had 75 career at bats, there are only four who have a higher career OPS than Owings' current 1.044: Barry Bonds, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, and of course, Babe Ruth.

Most of your well-known baseball "curses" have developed organically. The Babe Ruth trade, the dismissal of a goat from Wrigley Field and the decision to build PNC Park in Pittsburgh on a haunted Indian burial ground (note: may not be true) weren't designed to bring bad luck upon their franchises. They were just decisions that backfired on the teams involved. An enterprising construction worker at the in-construction Yankee Stadium is trying a different route to jinx the Yankees once they move into the new ballpark.

He buried a Red Sox t-shirt inside the concrete used to build the visitor's clubhouse, the New York Post reports this morning, and some of his co-workers believe they may have helped doom the Yankees to 86 years of futility.

"I don't want to be responsible for sinking the franchise," said a second worker, who witnessed the sabotage. "I respect the stadium."

Everyone's mileage varies when it comes to superstition, but such a heavy-handed attempt to sway the baseball gods seems like pretty mild stuff. You might as well just use voodoo dolls of your rival team's best players, so long as your rival team's best player is Rich Harden or Carl Pavano.

UPDATE: The Yankees have issued a denial that anything is buried beneath Yankee Stadium.

When you're 97 years old you should probably be spending whatever limited amount of time you have left doing the things you love to do. Like playing shuffleboard, or watching Matlock. If you're John Wooden, that probably means spending some time around UCLA and its men's basketball team.

Unfortunately for the legendary Wooden, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that Wooden is the greatest threat to this country's youth (even more than bears). As the L.A. Times reports, the NCAA is after him.

Just before the start of this college basketball season, UCLA received a letter of inquiry from the NCAA, seeking information about possible illegal contact between a recruit and a person representing the interests of the university.

The recruit was Kevin Love, now the Bruins' star freshman center.

The person representing the interests of the university was John Wooden.

The NCAA has not disclosed who made the complaint.

Are you kidding me? The NCAA has decided to go after the man that helped make the game relevant in the first place? Did Congress subpoena Babe Ruth today as well for their steroid hearings?

A quaint story coming out of the Morning Sentinel in Maine today: a 93-year-old man shares his story about being born in the same freaking month in the same year as when Babe Ruth inked his contract with the Red Sox. And as our elders like to do, he regaled tales of yesteryear when everything seemed simpler and well, people were nicer.

He has strong opinions about Major League baseball today and the upcoming series.

"It's a lot of bunk. The real World Series is when two teams with the best records play each other -- the best team with the wins in the National League, the best team with the wins in the American League. That's the way it should be. That's the way to settle a World Series record. Now, they have wild card divisions and playoffs. A losing team can win the World Series.

"Today, everything is money. Speed and greed. That's the name of this generation."

Honestly, when I am an old man, I have no idea what I'll be complaining about. If we've evolved into a money-grubbing me first society over the 90-odd years this man has been ave, I fear for our future. Will robots be playing baseball and I'll reminisce about when humans used to play the game of baseball and how it was a simpler time? Yes, probably. I mean we're already heading that way, right?

Via BBTF.

Saber Bombs are MLB FanHouse's introduction to sabermetrics, those new and sometimes unwieldy metrics that are changing the way we think about baseball. Each post highlights a specific stat, player, team or media member either embodying that understanding, or missing the boat completely.

Just how excited is New England about Josh Beckett's performance last night? At least some people are ready to crown it one of the best Red Sox playoff performances of all-time. From the Hartford Courant:

We've seen the miracle of Curt Schilling's bloody sock in 2004. We've seen Pedro Martinez climb out of the bullpen with a strained muscle under his right shoulder blade in 1999 and pitch six innings of no-hit ball. We've seen Luis Tiant grunt, groan and sweat his mustache off on his way to a 163-pitch night in the 1975 World Series.

Yes, there may have been more dramatic pitching performances in Red Sox postseason history. But there have been no more authoritative than Josh Beckett's four-hit shutout of the Los Angeles Angels at Fenway Park.

Looking at the numbers, it's kind of hard to argue ... right? Well, just to make sure, I ran the numbers. Josh Beckett posted a Game Score last night of 87, so I did a search on Baseball-Reference for all Red Sox postseason pitching performances by a starter with a Game Score of 87 or greater.

And you know what? Beckett's may not be the best, but it's the best in the last 40 years. Jim Lonborg posted an 88 in 1967 by pitching a one-hit, one-walk shutout against the Cardinals in the postseason. Before that, only Babe Ruth (97 in 1916) and Bill Dinneen (90 in 1903) had a mark as high. So, yeah, believe the hype: Josh Beckett really did carve out a piece of history last night.