Babe Ruth

Even the free-spending Babe Ruth might have been astonished at the price his old uniform fetched. Exton sports auctioneer David Hunt, acting on behalf of an anonymous client, paid $771,095.70 in an online auction Thursday night for the uniform that the Bambino wore on a 1934 barnstorming tour of Japan. The seller also wanted to remain anonymous, said Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions Inc. The Japan tour, which took place after Ruth's last season with the Yankees, was the great slugger's only barnstorming trip outside the United States, Hunt said.

OK, xenophobes. This should get your pulse rate up. The New York Times reports that producers at Universal Pictures, now owned by the Japanese, have rewritten the script of a movie about an American baseball player who, cut by the Yankees, decides to try his luck in Japan. The new version is, to put not too fine a point on it, more pro-Japanese. A couple of World War II jokes have been eliminated, but, more important, the hero, played by Tom Selleck, eventually succeeds by adopting Japanese ways - intense training, respect for his teammates and a more mystical approach for meeting horsehide with hickory.

Johnny Sylvester, 74, who became a part of baseball lore when Babe Ruth hit three home runs in a World Series game on his behalf in 1926, died Monday of natural causes. He was the gravely ill boy who, before a World Series game against the St. Louis Cardinals, was promised a home run by Ruth. Ruth hit three for the Yankees in a 10-5 fourth-game win. The boy's doctors told reporters he made a sudden recovery after hearing from Ruth, and a legend was born. The incident was immortalized in newspapers, books and a movie.

Delco West pitcher Dan MacMillan said his slider wasn't working in the first inning of yesterday's Mid-Atlantic Region (16-18) Babe Ruth championship game against Mifflin County (Pa.). So he simply stuck to his fastball and change-up instead. That's all he needed. MacMillan struck out six and yielded only three hits, while Delco West (5-1) stopped Mifflin, 3-0, to win the double-elimination tournament at Radnor. The win sends Delco West to the Senior Babe Ruth World Series for the first time in 22 years.

Just as his successors are expected to do in another week or so, Babe Ruth stayed home when training camps opened in 1930. Having hit 46 homers in 1929, the final season of his three-year contract for $70,000 annually, he demanded $80,000 from the New York Yankees. "Why shouldn't I kick?" Ruth told the reporters who constantly trailed him, even during this holdout. "The Yankees made money, and I helped draw crowds as much as I ever did. . . . Even if I quit baseball today, I'm good for $25,000 a year the rest of my life.

Eric Schmertz has already directed scholarly three-day conferences on two Americans - Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan - whose lives had worldwide impact. Now he's planning his third, and the subject may be even more of a heavy hitter than the two former presidents. In fact, some might say, the original heavy hitter. Babe Ruth. The 100th anniversary of the Babe's birth is February 1995, and Schmertz, a lawyer and baseball fan, is planning to spend his spare time in the next year putting together a conference devoted to the life and folklore of George Herman Ruth.

On the day in 1960 when Maurice Richard ended his unforgettable 18-year career - an event marked by nearly as much grieving in Montreal as the hockey star's death on Saturday - a Canadiens official was asked if the popularity of the "Rocket" exceeded that of the Pope in the predominantly French-speaking Catholic city. "He is not the Pope," answered Camil DesRoches, the Canadiens' public-relations director. "He is God. " For American hockey fans, particularly those in places such as Philadelphia, where the sport is a fairly recent phenomenon, it is impossible to fathom Richard's monumental impact.

Yankee Stadium sits on 11 1/2 acres of hallowed ground on the western edge of the Bronx overlooking the Harlem River. It opened in 1923, the year the New York Yankees won the first of the team's 22 world championships. It is a place that has been consecrated by baseball's giants. Babe Ruth. Joe DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle. Swashbuckling and invincible, the Yankees seemed to embody the national spirit. In the 1920s, before the Empire State Building was finished, people came to New York to see the Statue of Liberty, and Yankee Stadium.

As baseball showcases its All-Stars tonight, there's no way to deny this: The game needs more fun. Baseball is beleaguered by too many black-eye issues: steroid use; domestic abuse; the bottom-line mentality of team owners; agents and lawyers with little or no regard for the game; and unstable teams full of here-today-gone-tomorrow players who are too often greedy and surly. Baseball needs to take a page out of its history. Remember Willie Mays playing stickball on the streets of New York with kids?

Besides fame, Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Jefferson have something else in common. Their autographs were among a cache of $36,000 in memorabilia stolen early Tuesday from a Bucks County boutique. "They (the thieves) did their homework, and were in and out," said Dan Mikletz, a salesman for the Heritage Collectors' Society. In the moments between the time the shop's alarm rang at 3:53 a.m. and the arrival of Buckingham Township Police at 4:02 a.m., thieves pried open a steel door, smashed a glass display case, and wrenched irreplaceable documents from the walls.

Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age By Allen Barra Crown Archetype. 498 pp. $27 Reviewed by Bill Lyon Once upon a time, though not so very long ago, there was delivered unto us from Mount Olympus two players of baseball. They ran like cheetahs and sent batted balls into the stratosphere and their throws trailed blue flame and very soon it became evident that the case could be made that these two were not just players of baseball but the two very best.

San Francisco may have a one-game-to-none lead over Washington in the teams' current series, but the Giants and Nationals are even-steven when it comes to broken right hands on righthanders. (The Nats, however, have an overwhelming edge in margin of stupidity, as we'll explain.) Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong, the pride of Octorara Area High, suffered two broken bones in his pitching hand fouling one off in the fifth inning of Monday's 8-0 win over the Nationals. He had surgery on Tuesday morning and is likely out for two months or more.

By Paul Jablow The phrase "hot stove league" speaks of a different era. With the baseball season over, fans around the country gathered to talk about what their team would need to get to the top next spring. Envision, for example, a group of guys in dripping work boots sitting around a stove in the back of a general store in rural Missouri, guessing whether the Cardinals' aging star pitcher had anything left, or whether the kid rightfielder who hit .325 in triple A could do that in "the show.

Robert W. Creamer, 90, a sportswriter whose richly researched biographies of Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel are considered two of the finest books ever written about baseball, died July 18 at a nursing home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He had prostate cancer, said his son, Tom Creamer. Mr. Creamer was in his 30s when he joined Sports Illustrated as a charter member of the magazine's staff in 1954. His name remains on the magazine's masthead 58 years later as a special contributor. He wrote about horse racing and track and field, and he worked as an editor, but he was best known as a baseball writer.

HEY MITT, you might as well concede the presidential election now — Charles Barkley says you don't have a chance. Barkley, a former Sixer turned NBA analyst and SportsWeek columnist, is already calling November's election in favor of President Obama. Barkley was part of TNT's broadcast team for Sunday's Celtics-Hawks game when the camera showed Romney, the Republican nominee, in the Boston Garden crowd. "Mitt Romney. Listen main man, we're going to beat you like a drum in November," Barkley said over-the-air.

BASEBALL has its Cy Young Award for best pitcher; football, the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the Super Bowl champs. There's a Bill Russell award for the NBA's most valuable player, and hockey has a Prince of Wales Trophy for whatever. So why not an award for political leadership? In this 24/7 scream-bite news cycle, in which bullying and divisiveness seem to have the upper hand and little gets done, let's recognize political leaders who speak softly but carry an effective stick. It would be passé to name it after Teddy Roosevelt.

Playing at: Reading (AA) Position: Catcher Height: 5-11. Weight: 181. Age: 27. Born: Aug. 17, 1983, in Freeport, Ill. Bats: Right. Throws: Right. How obtained: Selected in the 11th round in 2005. This season: Is hitting a career-best .282 (through Sunday) and is likely to set personal bests for home runs and RBI. He has eight homers and 42 RBI . . . Has hit two of Reading's four grand slams . . . Had a career-high six RBI against Akron on June 1. Career notes: Has been a non-roster invitee to Phillies' spring training each of the last four seasons . . . Was named the best defensive catcher in the Eastern League in 2010 . . . Hit .200 in 16 games at Triple A Lehigh Valley in 2009, the highest level he's reached.

NEW YORK - Because he had not yet officially signed with the New York Yankees, Brian Gordon had to throw a bullpen session on a field adjacent to the new Yankee Stadium upon his arrival Wednesday afternoon. It was on a patch of Bronx real estate where Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle once played the game, and a bystander was impressed by the anonymous righthander getting his work in on the hallowed ground where the original Yankee Stadium once stood. "No one recognized me, but one guy said: 'Hey, you have a good arm,' " Gordon recalled.

Playing at: Reading (AA) Position: Starting pitcher Bats: Right. Throws: Right. Height: 6-3. Weight: 205. Age: 25. Born: May 23, 1986, in Atlanta. How obtained: Drafted in the 15th round in 2009. This season: Is 6-3 with a 4.03 ERA in 12 starts . . . Is tied for second among Eastern League pitchers in wins, trailing only Harrisburg's Brad Peacock . . . Has gotten bounced around lately, surrendering 16 earned runs in his last 27 innings . . . Will start tonight at Bowie (Md., tickets: 301-464-4865)

A team that might look good in plaid As the region's blood pulses a little bluer with the equine extravaganza cantering on in Devon and the last hounds finding their way back to their estates after the Radnor Hunt, Low&Outside reader Sandy Sorlien (Putney School, Bennington, Roxborough? ) sends some suggestions for an All-Preppy/WASPy-Sounding American League team. These player selections have nothing to do with their skill, only their names. They also have nothing to do with their actual WASPiness - some are black and one is part Navajo.