"Babe Ruth joined us in the middle of 1914, a nineteen-year-old kid. He was a left-handed pitcher and a good one. Ruth had never been anywhere, didn't know anything about manners or how to behave among people. Just a big, overgrown green pea. Lord, he ate too much. He'd stop along the road when we were travelling and order half a dozen hot dogs and as many bottles of soda pop, stuff them in one after another, give a few belches and then roar: "Okay, boys, let's go." Off the field he was bigger, louder, more excitable than his teammates. Ruth used other people's toothbrushes, ran the elevator up and down, and got married to Helen Woodford, a sixteen-year-old coffee shop waitress he met on his very first day in Boston. Everybody called him 'Baby', then just the 'Babe'. I saw it all happen, from beginning to end. But sometimes I still can't believe what I saw: This nineteen-year-old kid, crude, poorly educated, only lightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization, gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and the symbol of baseball the world over. A man loved by more people and with an intensity of feeling that perhaps has never been equalled before or since. I saw a man transformed from a human being into something pretty close to a god. If somebody had predicted that back in 1914, he would have been thrown into a lunatic asylum." Harry Hooper speaking of his young Red Sox teammate, Babe Ruth.

"Now in those days, the Yankee dugout was behind third base; Not first base as it is now and as I'm passing Ty Cobb on the way in, he says to me: "You get in my way again, you fresh gusher, and I'll step on your face." I hadn't said a word to Cobb, and I still didn't. Hell, this is Ty Cobb. But Ruth, who was coming in from left field, wanted to know what Cobb had said. "Well kid," Ruth said, he called everybody kid: "The next time he come to bat call him a penny pincher." I'd never heard that word before, but just from the way everybody on the bench started to laugh I had a pretty good idea what it meant. What I didn't know was that Cobb had a reputation for being a very tight man with a dollar and had been ready to fight at the drop of a "Penny pincher" for years. Well naturally I can't wait for him to get up again so I can go to work on him and holy cow, he turns in the batter's box, pointing his finger, and the umpire has to restrain him. Now the game is over and the umpires don't have a care any more. Both clubs have to use the third-base dugout to get to the locker room, and Ty Cobb races over to cut me off. He's out to kill me, and I'm looking for a place to run because I am not about to tangle with Mr. Cobb. Finally, Babe came running in and put his arm around Cobb and he's kind of grinning at him and settling him down. "Now what are you going to do Ty? You don't want to hit the kid, do you?" And while Babe has his attention - boom - I'm up the stairs like a halfback and into the locker room." "Nice Guys Finish Last." Leo Durocher. Leo Durocher was a shortstop on two of the most famous World Series winners in history: The "Murderers’ Row" Yankees of 1928 and the "Gashouse Gang" Cardinals of 1934. Leo did not get along with Yankee great Babe Ruth. By the time Leo Durocher had broken into baseball, he was skilled at cheating in cards, hustling people and collecting debts. In 1925 he was playing in the minors with the Hartford A league club when Hartford Manager Paddy O’Connor caught him red handed with marked bills that he suspected his young shortstop would steal. Reports of missing money from other ball players pointed towards their young and brash shortstop. With his teammates wanting to beat him to a pulp, O’Connor insisted the Durocher remain with the club until the pennant race was over, with the promise that he’d get rid of him once the season ended. Hartford won and O’Connor kept his word, selling off Durocher to the Yankee organization for $12,000. Leo hated and humiliated Ruth and called him a dummy. Ruth claimed that Leo stole his watch, and bench jockeys for years would harass Leo by asking what time it was. "Jesus Christ why would I take a few bucks from him. If I was gonna steal from the fat guy, I would have stolen his Packard." Leo Durocher. Ruth called the good-field/no-hit Durocher the “All-American Out” and suggested that Leo become a switch hitter so he could bat .400, two hundred from each side of the plate. "Losing Leo Durocher was like losing either an old friend or an old enemy. You could take your pick." Bob Broeg at the time of Durocher’s death in 1991.