Babe Ruth

Bill Werber, who was the oldest living former major league baseball player and a teammate of Babe Ruth, has died at age 100. Werber died Thursday morning of age-related causes after moving into an assisted-care facility in Charlotte, N.C., three weeks ago, his son Bill Jr. told the Associated Press. A third baseman who led the American League in stolen bases three times, Werber played with Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove in stints with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.

The game of baseball seemed grandly American in the 1930s. Players had cherubic names - Birdie and Schoolboy, sounding like characters from a Broadway musical. Beneath the good times, though, breathed an awful hatred. In his new book, "Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes," John Rosengren describes how the New York Yankees used to call up minor leaguers just to harass the Jewish baseball star from the bench. In the South, things were worse. "No one would ever let you forget it. You'd hear it from the stands all the time," Greenberg says of his early playing days, citing a torrent of anti-Semitic invective.

When you think of Babe Ruth, you might picture a newsreel shot of him bashing a home run in Yankee Stadium and then trotting around the bases on those surprisingly skinny legs of his. But one Southern California city also "had a part" in the Babe's colorful career, author Tim Grobaty points out. Long Beach arrested the Sultan of Swat on Jan. 22, 1927 -- for the crime of autographing baseballs for kids. There was more to it than that, of course. But not much more. As Grobaty tells the story in his book "Long Beach Almanac," Ruth was in town to perform three shows at the old State Theater near the Pike amusement park.

John J. Byrne, whose turnaround of auto insurer Geico Corp. led billionaire Warren Buffett to buy the company and call him "the Babe Ruth of insurance," died March 7 at his home in Etna, N.H., according to Robert E. Snyder, a family spokesman. He was 80 and had prostate cancer. In his letter to Berkshire shareholders reviewing 1980, Buffett credited Byrne's "managerial brilliance" with resuscitating Geico after his arrival in 1976. "There aren't many Jack Byrnes in the managerial world, or Geicos in the business world," Buffett wrote.

The Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Babe Ruth team defeated El Segundo, 21-3, Friday night in Culver City to advance to the final of the Babe Ruth state baseball tournament. Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks will face Culver City at 10 a.m. today at Culver City Park. Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks must defeat Culver City twice to win the double-elimination tournament.

Allow me to tell the jerk who described Babe Ruth in your column as a "fat dissipated slob" to first read the record books before insulting the memory of a great ballplayer who was paid for his on-field performance--not his looks or habits. BILL RETCHIN La Quinta

Outside of trying to drive Barry Bonds totally insane, why would a 2006 kids' movie choose Babe Ruth, a player whose best year was in 1921, to set up as the paragon of baseball perfection, idol of millions and unlikely ally of a plucky young kid named Yankee Irving? Probably because Ruth played in an era that now seems as simple and heroic as "Everyone's Hero" would like the world to be.

By now the scene must seem so familiar, so predictable. After all, it's been played out almost nightly at stadiums around the American League this season. There is Seattle's Ken Griffey Jr. standing at home plate. Here comes a pitch. It might even be a good one, one another hitter might flail at. But Griffey doesn't, sending it over the fence for yet another home run. It happened again Wednesday night at Anaheim Stadium.

Babe Ruth towered over baseball when he played. He is still casting his shadow--in the voting for player of the century. Ruth, an American hero when he led the New York Yankees to greatness in the 1920s and '30, was the overwhelming choice as the top baseball player in voting by a six-member panel of experts assembled by the Associated Press. Ruth received five of six first-place votes, getting 59 of a possible 60 points.

I loved the piece on Babe Ruth by Earl Gustkey. To us old-timers who lived in the Bronx during the '20s and '30s, the mighty Babe will always be the No. 1 sports personality of all time. A few years back, before our own Fernando Valenzuela became a millionaire, I thought he just might replace the Babe in the hearts of the fans. But that didn't happen and it probably never will. BERNARD SIEGAL Los Angeles

You can keep your fantasy baseball. I've seen a baseball fan's fantasy -- Peter O'Malley's office. The man whose family owned the Dodgers, of Brooklyn and of L.A., for nearly a half-century has, on one wall of his office, the bats from every championship Dodger team, bearing the names of every player on that team -- Koufax to Campanella. He has a framed 1947 letter to his father, Walter O'Malley, from Babe Ruth. The return address -- just "Babe Ruth, New York. " He has a model of Dodger Stadium, built before the real one by some studio craftsmen, a gift from director-producer Mervyn Leroy.

A true 'slugger' Pujols has led the National League in slugging percentage three times, and his career mark places him in heady company on Major League Baseball's all-time list: Rk.; Name; Years; Hits; 2B; 3B; HR; Slugging % 1.; Babe Ruth; 22; 2,873; 506; 136; 714; .690 2.; Ted Williams; 19; 2,654; 525; 71; 521; .634 3.; Lou Gehrig; 17; 2,721; 534; 163; 493; .632 4.; Albert Pujols; 11; 2,073; 455; 15; 445; .617...

The rivalry that has produced the Curse of the Bambino, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, David Tyree's catch and disagreeing forms of clam chowder — exposing the nastiness of arrogance and an inferiority complex along the way — has returned. In the Super Bowl, no less. New York and Boston's vitriol might not be on the level of Yankees-Red Sox as the New York Giants and New England Patriots prepare for Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis on Feb. 5, but the deeply ingrained disdain between the Eastern corridor metropolises is in play.

Wonder Girl The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias Don Van Natta Jr. Little, Brown: 404 pp., $27.99 So do you know who made the Top 10 when ESPN chose its 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century? Here they are: (1) Michael Jordan. (2) Babe Ruth. (3) Muhammad Ali. (4) Jim Brown. (5) Wayne Gretzky. (6) Jesse Owens. (7) Jim Thorpe. (8) Willie Mays. (9) Jack Nicklaus. (10) Babe Didrikson Zaharias. So do you know what this means? It means the Babe - the female one as well as the male - was a greater athlete than Joe Louis, Carl Lewis, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Montana, Mark Spitz, O.J. Simpson and Secretariat, all of whom placed back in the Top 50. So let's see, what else might you not know?

The mortars would be ringing his helmet, the gunfire would be climbing down his back, yet he would always hear the voice. "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.? " In the middle of the mountains of Pakistan, Jesse Vizcarra would close his eyes and listen to Vin Scully. "When you're laying there thinking about why you are fighting, your mind drifts back to the good things of home," said the former Army sergeant from Lancaster. "No matter what was happening, I could always hear the call of Kirk Gibson's home run. " The tiny naval ship would be rocking in waters so distant, on a mission so clandestine, the sailors had no idea where they were.

Torii Hunter is an aspiring general manager, and he's had several lengthy conversations with Tony Reagins in the last two weeks, so the Angels centerfielder knows how stressful the run-up to Saturday's trade deadline has been for the team's GM. "Do you hurt your future or do you try to get someone now?" Hunter said in the wake of Sunday's deal that brought ace Dan Haren to Anaheim and sent four players, including left-hander Joe Saunders and two highly regarded pitching prospects, to Arizona.

There has never been a worse sports movie than "The Babe Ruth Story," the 1948 film in which William Bendix portrayed baseball's Great Bambino. Not only was much of it fantasy, but Ruth swung bats bigger than Bendix. At least NBC's new "Babe Ruth" is an improvement over that, although hardly very distinguished. It airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 4, 36 and 39, with Stephen Lang performing credibly as baseball's epic slugger and pot-bellied party boy.

The Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Babe Ruth baseball team for 13-year-olds, beaten out of a chance to play for the national championship by a Pasadena team found to be using illegal players--including a pitcher who allegedly drove a car to one game--plans to take legal action to get the team into the tournament. Cindy Kramer, manager of the Valley team, said the team likely will seek a temporary restraining order early next week in an effort to halt the national tournament in Houma, La.

Nearing the 600-homer club Torii Hunter was 16 in the summer of 1992 when he first met Alex Rodriguez , then a star high school shortstop from Miami, at a Junior Olympics tournament in Boise, Idaho. "He was 6-foot-3, he was the only one using a wood bat — a taped-up wood bat, I'll never forget it — and he hit one 430 feet," the Angels center fielder said last week at Yankee Stadium. "I went back to Arkansas and told everybody, 'Hey, there's a guy named Alex Rodriguez who is going to be the best player ever.

Clint Hartung, a pitcher and outfielder with the New York Giants who became a bit player in one of the most dramatic moments in baseball history, has died. He was 87. Hartung was on third base when the Giants' Bobby Thomson hit a home run off the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ralph Branca in the third game of a 1951 playoff to win the National League pennant. Hartung died July 8 in Sinton, Tex., a spokeswoman for the Ritchea-Gonzales Funeral Home confirmed. No cause was given. Stardom had been predicted for Hartung when the Hondo, Tex., native came to the Giants in 1947.