Remembering Babe Ruth’s first major-league home run – 100 years ago
The date was May 6, 1915 – 100 years ago Wednesday. The Boston Red Sox are in New York to face the Yankees. It seems like just another regular game in the hundreds of thousands that have been played in baseball history, except for one thing – there’s a 20-year-old pitcher named Babe Ruth on the mound for the Red Sox.
It was Ruth’s seventh career major-league start, and he had just 17 at-bats at that point. When he came to bat in the third inning, few if any of the 5,000 fans in attendance at the Polo Grounds knew they were about to witness history:
“Ruth held the Yankees scoreless for two innings and came to bat for the first time in the third. He faced Yankee starter Jack “Chief” Warhop. A submarine-throwing right-hander, he was in his eighth and last season with the team…
Warhop, who had yielded two hits in the first inning, started Ruth with a low fastball, perhaps hoping the big fellah might be taking. The Babe wheeled on the pitch, sending it high into the second level of the right-field grandstand. Babe Ruth had hit his first major-league home run.”
The first of 714 for the Babe. There was very little fanfare about the home run in the papers, perhaps because of Ruth’s prowess as a pitcher. In that same game Ruth pitched 12.1 innings eventually losing 4-3 on a walkoff single in the 13th inning. That season Ruth went 18-8 – and hit four total home runs – as the Red Sox won the World Series.
“The New York Times reported Ruth homered with “no apparent effort.” The writer Damon Runyon, covering baseball for the New York American, gave his take: “Ruth knocked the slant out of one of Jack Warhop’s underhanded subterfuges.” …
In the Toronto Star the next day, there was a report on page 16 about how this game was the most exciting this year in New York and that Ruth “pitched well.” But there was no mention of what would become a milestone homer in his Hall of Fame career. The run was mentioned in the linescore but only the batterymates were reported, not who hit a home run.”
It’s hard to believe now, given the myth that surrounds Ruth, but through his first five professional seasons he only hit 20 total home runs. In 1919, the first year he appeared in more than 100 games, he burst out with 29 home runs, breaking the single-season major-league record of 27 set by Ned Williamson in 1884. The next year he was sold to the Yankees, hit 54 home runs, and the legend truly began.
In honor of the 100th anniversary, fall down the rabbit hole and have some fun exploring the Babe Ruth home run log, courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.
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Ian Denomme is an editor and writer for Yahoo Sports. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.
