On the day that Yankee Stadium opened, Babe Ruth summed up his style with one sentence. “I’d give a year of my life,” he said, “if I could hit a home run on Opening Day of this great new park.” He did. No one knows if that one home run cost him a year of […]
Everyone strikes out now and then. It doesn’t matter if you play baseball or not. You can fail a test, get cut from the team, or lose money in a business. Striking out isn’t the issue. Your attitude about striking out is the issue. Hall of Fame slugger Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times in […]
Today my father and I drove through the neighborhood where he grew up. It reminded me of a story about his baseball cards. He had what nowadays would amount to a priceless collection, the product of growing up in an era of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, lefty Grove and other stars. As the youngest of […]
No one I know thinks of Babe Ruth as an intellectual giant. Ruth, born on this date in 1895, partied his way through life, going for all the gusto he could. He lived that way both on and off the field. “I hit big or I miss big,” he once said. “I like to live […]
In a town where Babe Ruth, Joe Namath and Willis Reed won championships, no one has ever performed with as much skill under pressure as Sully Sullenberger did three years ago today. In command of an airliner disabled shortly after taking off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Sullenberger put the craft safely into the Hudson […]
On this date 92 years ago, the Boston Red Sox sent the contract of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000. Boston owner Harry Frazee needed money to get out of debt. So he made the deal. We all know how the deal turned out. Ruth became a Hall of Famer, the Yankees […]
The other day we talked about the link between an athlete’s personality and behavior on the field. No one exemplified this more than Babe Ruth, who swung for the fences whether it was on the field, at the dinner table or in his social life. “I swing big, with everything I’ve got,” Ruth said. “I […]
Many thanks to David DeNotaris for inspiring today’s message. David offers a daily motivational hotline, called “Do You Have a Minute?” It’s at (206) 888-8121, and earlier this week it contained this quote: “No one ever built a monument to a critic.” What’s the difference between a critic and a coach? A critic is someone […]
The author of “Talent Is Overrated — What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” must consider the case of Babe Ruth. Ruth was the best baseball player of his era and perhaps of all time. He was not only a peerless batter, but a record-setting pitcher. The trouble for “Talent is Overrated” author Geoff […]
“He led no armies into battle, he conquered no countries, and he enslaved no peoples… Nonetheless, he exerted a degree of power the magnitude of which no warrior ever dreamed. His name still commands a respect as sweeping in scope and as world-wide as that of any other mortal …” — Said of Thomas Edison On this […]