Babe Ruth

This 1991 NBC-TV movie aired six months before John Goodman's big-screen version of the life of Babe Ruth came out. For my money, there is no comparison between the two. The TV production isn't perfect but it presents the Babe's story with more depth and complexity than Goodman's one-dimensional telling. I especially enjoyed the film's depiction of the complex love-hate relationship Ruth had with Yankee manager Miller Huggins, who always understood his star player's brilliance and also kept trying to point out why Ruth's own character flaws would never let him become a manager or leader of players. The TV-movie rightly notes how Ruth never fulfilled his dream of managing the Yankees because of his flaws, while the horrible Goodman version tries to push the falsehood that Ruth was denied what should have been his for the taking.

This film makes a great companion piece to "Eight Men Out" since the story starts with Ruth's arrival in New York in 1920, one year after the Black Sox Scandal and when his home run exploits literally saved baseball from ruin. Indeed, the continuity between the two films is even accentuated with John Anderson reprising his "Eight Men Out" role as Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The scene where Ty Cobb was interviewed was supposed to take place in the dugout. However because Pete Rose who portrayed Ty Cobb in this movie had been expelled from Major League Baseball the MLB commission would not allow him to appear in an MLB uniform so the scene had to be changed. Ty Cobb was instead interviewed in his hotel room wearing a suit and tie. Indeed it was most interesting how Pete Rose's ban from professional baseball effected production of that movie scene. However otherwise this movie did indeed seem to be an accurate docudrama, all things considered. BTW the 1948 William Bendix BABE RUTH biopic was filmed when the Babe was still alive. He saw it and enjoyed it.

I love this movie because I had a small non-speaking roll. I was the father listening to a game on the radio with my wife and son. I was brilliant, but IMD will not add me as an uncredited roll. But it's me, watch the movie and you will see. I have a pipe and everything. Martin J. Newcott (father listening to the radio)

If you've seen either the sappy, sanitized 1948 THE BABE RUTH STORY with the woefully undersized William Bendix as the Babe; or THE BABE with the consistently over-sized John Goodman (Ruth was never that large)...you owe it to yourself to watch this take.

An honest effort has been made to depict the Babe with all his colorful sides and darker, less likable shades to his character. it's nearly an impossible task to portray a larger than life, legendary personage, but Steven Lang does a more than credible job.

Great care has been taken to depict the era, styles and mindsets of all the principals in Ruth's life and Ruth/Lang is on side the cheerful, over the top big kid and also the greedy, petulant, spoiled brat who feels he should always get his way, even when he knows he's dead wrong.

There's a clever cameo in mid film by Pete Rose, the current all time baseball career hit leader, as Ty Cobb (who's record he broke).

Sadly, life in regards to how Ruth dealt with his two wives and daughters didn't come to him as easily as baseball did. Here he doesn't fare as well as he did on the babeball diamond. The film touches on all this and his desire to be a big league manager, despite his failings to manage himself are also dealt with

honestly.

This movie portrays Ruth as a womanizing, hard drinking, gambling, overeating sports figure with a little baseball thrown in. Babe Ruths early life was quite interesting and this was for all intents and purposes was omitted in this film. Also, Lou Gehrig was barely covered and this was a well know relationship, good bad or indifferent, it should have been covered better than it was. His life was more than all bad. He was an American hero, an icon that a lot of baseball greats patterned their lives after. I feel that I am being fair to the memory of a great baseball player that this film completely ignored. Shame on the makers of this film for capitalizing on his faults and not his greatness.