Carolyn
07-18-2007, 11:54 PM
Babe Ruth's kin would like his number retired
By Dan Champagne, Record-Journal staff July 19, 2007
DURHAM - Linda Ruth Tosetti never believed in "The Curse of the Bambino," but she does believe her grandfather is a legend. She is now trying to get that legend honored in every big league ballpark.
Tosetti, a Durham resident and the granddaughter of Babe Ruth, has asked Major League Baseball to retire Ruth's No. 3 in all 30 ballparks around the country. She launched a Web site, www.retirebabesnumber.com (http://www.retirebabesnumber.com), on Sunday to collect signatures for a petition she plans to send to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
"Babe should be given that honor," said Tosetti, the youngest of six children born to Ruth's daughter Dorothy Ruth Picone. "Babe's remembered every day. His name is mentioned every day and I deal with him every day. I
think it would be respectful to have him remembered in all the parks."
The petition can be printed out, signed and sent to Tosetti at P.O. Box 331, Durham, CT 06422. She plans to add electronic signature capability soon.
Tosetti will collect the signatures through the spring and hopes to have Ruth's number retired during the 2008 baseball season, which would be the 60th anniversary of his death. Ruth died on Aug. 16, 1948, at the age of 53.
Ruth's number is now retired at Yankee Stadium, where he played for the Yankees from 1920-1934, but it is not retired at Fenway Park, where he played for the Red Sox from 1914 to 1919. Players did not wear numbers until
the Yankees added them in 1929, so there is technically no number to retire at Fenway. Ruth also played for the Boston Braves in 1935.
"It would be the only way to get him retired in Boston," said Tosetti, an avid Red Sox fan.
Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier when he first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, is the only player with his number retired in every ballpark. Major League Baseball retired his No. 42 in 1997, but allowed players already wearing the number to keep it until they changed teams or retired. Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera is the only active player
with the number.
Tosetti said she understands why baseball retired Robinson's number and knows some people may be opposed to retiring Ruth's number, but added that she doesn't think everyone knows about what her grandfather did off the field.
She said Ruth went on barnstorming tours with Negro League players in the 1920s and encouraged Major League Baseball to allow black players in.
"A lot of people don't know that in the '20s, when it was unfashionable and very against protocol, that he hung with these guys and ate with these guys and sometimes took his life into his own hands when he went to the South," she said. "Babe was colorblind. He loved all humanity."
He visited a leper colony without seeking publicity and continually visited St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage in Baltimore where he spent his childhood.
"I would think that there would not be baseball as we know it today or maybe at all without Babe Ruth's coming along to save the game or to reinvent the game," said Michael Gibbons, executive director of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore.
"He is an American cultural icon and has transcended out of the sport and into the cultural landscape with the likes of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. He must have done something outside of the foul lines."
Even though Ruth is widely recognized for bringing people back to baseball following the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when members of the Chicago White Sox fixed the World Series, there are some who believe that Robinson's should be baseball's lone retired number.
While Dan Cohen, curator of the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in Louisville, agreed that Ruth was a better ballplayer than Robinson, he said Robinson's efforts transcended sports. The museum recently hosted an
exhibit, "Reel Heroes: Black Athletes on Film."
"I think Jackie's impact on the game and in society is more special than what Babe did," Cohen said. "I don't think you're stretching to say there were many players who on the field were better than Jackie, but what he did
to affect society was so important. Personally, I don't agree with retiring Babe's number. He saved baseball following the Black Sox scandal, but I find it hard to justify doing that."
Tosetti said she got the idea while attending a cultural affairs event in Carlisle, Pa., with Luis Clemente, the son of the late Roberto Clemente, and Sean Gibson, the great-grandson of Negro League star Josh Gibson. She said she has signed a petition to retire the No. 21 worn by Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder who was killed in a plane crash in 1972 while going to Nicaragua to help earthquake victims.
"Babe already is an icon," she said. "It's not so much that it would add to anything, but it would be a great honor for future generations to remember. He truly saved baseball. Baseball can pay him the respect that it really does owe him."
"I feel he was a great humanitarian, and I'm moving away from baseball now," said Ellen Ruth Hourigan, Tosetti's sister who lives in Wallingford.
"I think it would be a great honor for all he has done. He's our grandfather and he's always going to be our grandfather. Nothing's ever going to change that. I just think it would be a great honor for him."
Ruth's great-granddaughter, Robin Ruth Hettrick, also lives in Wallingford with his great-great-grandchildren Caitlin Ruth Hettrick and Daniel Ruth Hettrick. Caitlin and Daniel had attended Holy Trinity School, but will
transfer to the Independent Day School in Middlefield in the fall.
Tosetti has already sent a letter to Selig requesting that her grandfather's number be retired.
"As much as Jackie epitomized integration, pioneering the social progress the game so desperately needed, the Babe symbolized its growth into the national institution it is today on a number of different but significant levels," she wrote. "He was an icon then. He remains an icon today."
Selig responded with a letter to Tosetti dated July 6.
"We retired Jackie Robinson's number for a myriad of reasons, but its sociological importance is obviously very critical to us," he wrote, adding that he would share Tosetti's letter with his colleagues.
"I think the commissioner felt at that time we were honoring Jackie Robinson," Pat Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, said Wednesday afternoon. "The breaking of the color barrier was probably baseball's most important moment. I think he felt that was absolutely the right thing to do not only to honor him as a person, but to honor everything he symbolized."
Tosetti said many people only know about her grandfather's off-field personality by what they read in books, but she said he was a "perfect role model."
"They already know about his partying and his ball playing, but they should know about the other parts of his life," she said. "A lot of people may think he wasn't a good role model because of his carousing, but he didn't do any more than they do now. The difference was he was the only story in town for 20 years. I think Babe was a perfect role model because when he was with
kids, he showed kindness, he showed caring and he gave back."
Ruth's status as a role model is something Tosetti takes very seriously. When Major League Baseball asked her to be in attendance when San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds broke her grandfather's mark of 714 career home runs last year, she declined because of Bonds' alleged steroid use. Bonds has 751 career home runs, four shy of Hank Aaron's all-time record.
"He was a man who was suspected of doing steroids," Tosetti said. "When he gets this record, I don't care if he's not doing them now or not, I believe it was with the help of steroids so I think it should not count. It goes back to the role model stuff.
"I just couldn't do it," she said of being at the game. "I just couldn't shake his hand. If I was there shaking Barry's hand as he came over the plate even though I don't believe in steroids it would be like I was condoning it. I just couldn't be anywhere near it."
Tosetti said she knows the only thing that will convince Major League Baseball to retire Ruth's number is thousands and thousands of signatures from fans. She has already gotten a few pages of comments on her Web site from fans agreeing with her campaign.
And if the fans speak loud enough and Major League Baseball listens, Tosetti knows what she'll be doing when No. 3 gets retired around the country.
"I can guarantee I'll be talking to my grandfather and my mother," she said. "I would look up, just like I always do when something happens, and say 'Grandpa, this is for you.' "
By Dan Champagne, Record-Journal staff July 19, 2007
DURHAM - Linda Ruth Tosetti never believed in "The Curse of the Bambino," but she does believe her grandfather is a legend. She is now trying to get that legend honored in every big league ballpark.
Tosetti, a Durham resident and the granddaughter of Babe Ruth, has asked Major League Baseball to retire Ruth's No. 3 in all 30 ballparks around the country. She launched a Web site, www.retirebabesnumber.com (http://www.retirebabesnumber.com), on Sunday to collect signatures for a petition she plans to send to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
"Babe should be given that honor," said Tosetti, the youngest of six children born to Ruth's daughter Dorothy Ruth Picone. "Babe's remembered every day. His name is mentioned every day and I deal with him every day. I
think it would be respectful to have him remembered in all the parks."
The petition can be printed out, signed and sent to Tosetti at P.O. Box 331, Durham, CT 06422. She plans to add electronic signature capability soon.
Tosetti will collect the signatures through the spring and hopes to have Ruth's number retired during the 2008 baseball season, which would be the 60th anniversary of his death. Ruth died on Aug. 16, 1948, at the age of 53.
Ruth's number is now retired at Yankee Stadium, where he played for the Yankees from 1920-1934, but it is not retired at Fenway Park, where he played for the Red Sox from 1914 to 1919. Players did not wear numbers until
the Yankees added them in 1929, so there is technically no number to retire at Fenway. Ruth also played for the Boston Braves in 1935.
"It would be the only way to get him retired in Boston," said Tosetti, an avid Red Sox fan.
Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier when he first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, is the only player with his number retired in every ballpark. Major League Baseball retired his No. 42 in 1997, but allowed players already wearing the number to keep it until they changed teams or retired. Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera is the only active player
with the number.
Tosetti said she understands why baseball retired Robinson's number and knows some people may be opposed to retiring Ruth's number, but added that she doesn't think everyone knows about what her grandfather did off the field.
She said Ruth went on barnstorming tours with Negro League players in the 1920s and encouraged Major League Baseball to allow black players in.
"A lot of people don't know that in the '20s, when it was unfashionable and very against protocol, that he hung with these guys and ate with these guys and sometimes took his life into his own hands when he went to the South," she said. "Babe was colorblind. He loved all humanity."
He visited a leper colony without seeking publicity and continually visited St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage in Baltimore where he spent his childhood.
"I would think that there would not be baseball as we know it today or maybe at all without Babe Ruth's coming along to save the game or to reinvent the game," said Michael Gibbons, executive director of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore.
"He is an American cultural icon and has transcended out of the sport and into the cultural landscape with the likes of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. He must have done something outside of the foul lines."
Even though Ruth is widely recognized for bringing people back to baseball following the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when members of the Chicago White Sox fixed the World Series, there are some who believe that Robinson's should be baseball's lone retired number.
While Dan Cohen, curator of the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in Louisville, agreed that Ruth was a better ballplayer than Robinson, he said Robinson's efforts transcended sports. The museum recently hosted an
exhibit, "Reel Heroes: Black Athletes on Film."
"I think Jackie's impact on the game and in society is more special than what Babe did," Cohen said. "I don't think you're stretching to say there were many players who on the field were better than Jackie, but what he did
to affect society was so important. Personally, I don't agree with retiring Babe's number. He saved baseball following the Black Sox scandal, but I find it hard to justify doing that."
Tosetti said she got the idea while attending a cultural affairs event in Carlisle, Pa., with Luis Clemente, the son of the late Roberto Clemente, and Sean Gibson, the great-grandson of Negro League star Josh Gibson. She said she has signed a petition to retire the No. 21 worn by Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder who was killed in a plane crash in 1972 while going to Nicaragua to help earthquake victims.
"Babe already is an icon," she said. "It's not so much that it would add to anything, but it would be a great honor for future generations to remember. He truly saved baseball. Baseball can pay him the respect that it really does owe him."
"I feel he was a great humanitarian, and I'm moving away from baseball now," said Ellen Ruth Hourigan, Tosetti's sister who lives in Wallingford.
"I think it would be a great honor for all he has done. He's our grandfather and he's always going to be our grandfather. Nothing's ever going to change that. I just think it would be a great honor for him."
Ruth's great-granddaughter, Robin Ruth Hettrick, also lives in Wallingford with his great-great-grandchildren Caitlin Ruth Hettrick and Daniel Ruth Hettrick. Caitlin and Daniel had attended Holy Trinity School, but will
transfer to the Independent Day School in Middlefield in the fall.
Tosetti has already sent a letter to Selig requesting that her grandfather's number be retired.
"As much as Jackie epitomized integration, pioneering the social progress the game so desperately needed, the Babe symbolized its growth into the national institution it is today on a number of different but significant levels," she wrote. "He was an icon then. He remains an icon today."
Selig responded with a letter to Tosetti dated July 6.
"We retired Jackie Robinson's number for a myriad of reasons, but its sociological importance is obviously very critical to us," he wrote, adding that he would share Tosetti's letter with his colleagues.
"I think the commissioner felt at that time we were honoring Jackie Robinson," Pat Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, said Wednesday afternoon. "The breaking of the color barrier was probably baseball's most important moment. I think he felt that was absolutely the right thing to do not only to honor him as a person, but to honor everything he symbolized."
Tosetti said many people only know about her grandfather's off-field personality by what they read in books, but she said he was a "perfect role model."
"They already know about his partying and his ball playing, but they should know about the other parts of his life," she said. "A lot of people may think he wasn't a good role model because of his carousing, but he didn't do any more than they do now. The difference was he was the only story in town for 20 years. I think Babe was a perfect role model because when he was with
kids, he showed kindness, he showed caring and he gave back."
Ruth's status as a role model is something Tosetti takes very seriously. When Major League Baseball asked her to be in attendance when San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds broke her grandfather's mark of 714 career home runs last year, she declined because of Bonds' alleged steroid use. Bonds has 751 career home runs, four shy of Hank Aaron's all-time record.
"He was a man who was suspected of doing steroids," Tosetti said. "When he gets this record, I don't care if he's not doing them now or not, I believe it was with the help of steroids so I think it should not count. It goes back to the role model stuff.
"I just couldn't do it," she said of being at the game. "I just couldn't shake his hand. If I was there shaking Barry's hand as he came over the plate even though I don't believe in steroids it would be like I was condoning it. I just couldn't be anywhere near it."
Tosetti said she knows the only thing that will convince Major League Baseball to retire Ruth's number is thousands and thousands of signatures from fans. She has already gotten a few pages of comments on her Web site from fans agreeing with her campaign.
And if the fans speak loud enough and Major League Baseball listens, Tosetti knows what she'll be doing when No. 3 gets retired around the country.
"I can guarantee I'll be talking to my grandfather and my mother," she said. "I would look up, just like I always do when something happens, and say 'Grandpa, this is for you.' "