Immortal Sideshow

In the box was the one & only Big Train; at the plate the one & only Bambino, the greatest pitcher of all time v. the greatest swatter of them all. Between the first and second games of a war-chest doubleheader-- New York Yankees v. Washington Senators--Walter Perry Johnson (54) and George Herman ("Babe") Ruth (47) stepped out of the Hall of Fame this week to take one last crack at each other.

Walter Johnson--whose blazing antitank ball had won 413 games (113 shutouts) and struck out 3,497 batters in 21 years with the Senators--pitched his last game 15 years ago. Babe Ruth--whose magnificent coordination had chalked up 713 home runs in 22 years with the Red Sox and Yankees--retired seven years ago. Yet both managed to squeeze into their old uniforms last week. Pig raising on his Maryland farm has kept Old Barney's weight down. Rigid diet (to make his old playing weight for his part in the movie, Pride of the Yankees} has pared some of the paunch the Babe had acquired since 1935 in easy living.

To 70,000 fans it looked like the good old days. The Babe, swinging two bats, stepped up to the plate with choppy little strides of his matchstick legs. Farmer Johnson shuffled awkwardly around the mound, his long right arm winding up the historic sidearm delivery. The first pitch was low and inside, the second a called strike. Ruth popped the third into right field, the fourth was ball two. Then the crowd let out a mighty roar as the Babe walloped the ball up, up, up into the right-field stands. Fourteen pitches later, he clouted another, trotted around the bases and called it a day. Old Barney had got only three strikes on him.

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