Perhaps, Babe’s Karma Has Lifted the Yankees

The individual most responsible for the dynamic start of the New York Yankees was not listed on the spring-training roster. He isn’t even on the payroll of George Steinbrenner, or whoever vouches for the checks these days. But no one associated with the franchise has been the subject of greater interest or more publicity this spring than the historical-mythological figure of George Herman Ruth.

A year ago, when the focus was on the Boss standing trial in Manhattan, the team lost its first three series en route to a forgettable season and another managerial dismissal. In 1992, with attention turned toward the Babe coming soon to a theater near you, the Yankees swept their first two series. Credit better karma generated by what Tommy Lasorda, had he been reared in pinstripes, might have referred to as The Big Yankee in the Sky.

For some time we’ve been inundated with tales of the Red Sox blaming everything from Jim Lonborg’s ski accident to Darrell Johnson’s curious decision to pinch hit for Jim Willoughby to Bill Buckner’s imitation of a wicket on the sale of Ruth to the Yankees. “The Curse of the Bambino,” it has been called, and the charge even appeared between covers in a book of the same name authored by Dan Shaughnessy. All the while, of course, the Babe was in his grave in Valhalla, minding his own business.

But some recent developments have resurrected the spirit of the man, if not the bloated body so familiar to millions who never saw him play. First, there was the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the new Baltimore ballyard erected on the site of a former saloon owned by Ruth’s father. Its location spurred a lobbying effort to hoist the name Babe Ruth Stadium atop the structure when it opened last week. Although it was not selected, the controversy encouraged study of the man’s life and career and gave a boost to the Babe Ruth Museum nearby.

Now comes the “The Babe,” a release from Universal Pictures that opened in New York and environs Friday following a big promotional splash. It is a major vehicle for John Goodman, the actor who goes from big to bigger-than-life with a swing of the bat he had to learn to tote left-handed. It also has been a boon for the Yankees, who suddenly are being viewed in the prism of their rich playing history rather than their tawdry front-office shenanigans.

What has happened in the first week of a new season might well be trumpeted as “The Reverse of the Bambino.” It wasn’t only that the pennant-hopeful Red Sox lost their first two games behind former Cy Young Award winners Roger Clemens and Frank Viola, but that the Yankees beat them twice. Then New York tested its unexpected success in Detroit and added three more victories. Another triumph followed in Toronto before the Blue Jays won on Tuesday night, curtailing the streak of the last undefeated team in major-league baseball.

In a sense, that was appropriate. Ruth never played an official game in Canada and he never played in a domed stadium. His influence may be limited to traditional baseball settings.

But the team is home this weekend, back at the House That Ruth Built, for a series against the old-line Indians.

Of course, if the Babe were to be sold by the Red Sox in 1992, we might never have been treated to his prodigious displays of power and the Yankees might have remained tethered to their lease at the Polo Grounds. This edition of the team is so deep in outfielders that it has to employ one as a designated hitter and can’t find room for either of its top prospects, both named Williams. But pitching, ah, that’s another story.

It’s true the Yankee staff was surprisingly efficient over the course of the first six games, but its fragility was apparent in the 12-6 blowout on Tuesday night when Jeff Johnson, a left-handed starter, failed to survive the second inning. Recall that Ruth was an outstanding left-handed pitcher, his principal role in Boston. In fact, when last the Red Sox won a World Series (in 1918), the man batted .200 with one triple in five at bats. But he won both his starts and stretched his World Series record of consecutive scoreless innings to 29 in a six-game conquest of the Chicago Cubs.

Think he wouldn’t be welcomed into this rotation? At the very least, Ruth’s presence on the mound would ease the pressure on management to rush the development of Brien Taylor, who made his first start at Fort Lauderdale this week. Alas, it would be a stretch even by Hollywood standards to envision the Sultan of Swat hurling for the Yankees. During his 15 years with the team, he appeared in only five games as a pitcher. He won as many as two games only once, in 1921, an achievement somewhat overshadowed by the 59 home runs he hit while engaged as a right fielder.

It’s the slugging Ruth who is celebrated in the movie and in the collective memory of America, the one with the huge appetite, the mighty swing and the almost dainty home run trot. “The Babe” doesn’t answer the question about whether the man was gesturing to the bleachers in Wrigley Field before a home run in the 1932 World Series any more conclusively than “JFK” specified the president’s assassins. Perhaps, in this latest re-enactment, he merely was pointing his team, the Yankees, in the right direction.