This Date In Yankees History - June 13th (It's All The Babe)

[CalifYanksFan]

June 13, 2000

A day for Babe



Two months before his death, Babe Ruth used a bat as a cane as he observed the ceremonies.

On this date in 1948, Babe Ruth Day at Yankee Stadium drew 49,641 fans. New York retired Ruth's No. 3 and the Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians 5-3.

1921 -- Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees pitched the first five innings and hit two home runs in an 11-8 victory against the Detroit Tigers

[penguin4]

It's surprising they took so long to retire his number, of all people. I can understand that they weren't really in the "habit" of retiring numbers back then, but you wonder why they didn't do it even on Babe Ruth Day the year before. Random side thought.

[CalifYanksFan]

Even after they DID start retiring numbers they didn't do it right away. I remember somewhere that at least different players wore DiMaggio's number before #5 was retired.

Late,

[SanFrANSKY]

I think it's kind of like the 5-year manditory waiting period to get into the Hall of Fame. It allows a cooling-off period after which each player can be judged on merit rather than hype ... or so that the player can be judged in a different sociological climate.

If you look at the Yankees' retired numbers, lots of them were retired long after the players' careers were over: Yogi's was retired in 1972. Whitey Ford had to wait until 1974. Roger Maris and Elston Howard's numbers were not retired until 1984.

Fairly Easy Trivia Question: Who was the only player for whom the Hall of Fame waived the manditory waiting period?

[clipper]

Lou Gehrig was inducted in 1939, the year he retired.

Roberto Clemente was inducted in 1973, the year he died.

As Casey said "You could look it up"

[seahorse]

Leave it to Clipper.

[penguin4]

Yeah, Clip's right, as usual.

If I'm not mistaken, there was no five-yr waiting period when Gehrig was inducted, just a customary one-year. Don't know when they changed it to five years...I think, but am not certain, that it wasn't in place yet when Joe D retired because the writers were musing that it was shocking he didn't get in his first year of eligibility... could someone check when they changed the rule? (Or what the rules were, for that matter?)