Video of the Babe

The New York Times reports today on the discovery of rare film footage showing baseball great Babe Ruth in 1927. Found in a basement in Illinois, the film shows Ruth "in his prime and shot from close range, sitting atop a pony while wearing a child’s cowboy hat and muttering into a home movie camera." 

Ruth was the first celebrity in American professional sports.  He was a larger-than-life personality, and far ahead of his baseball peers in terms of accomplishments. But he lived in an era when film was not in widespread use. "There are so few moving images of Babe Ruth that even Major League Baseball’s monstrous archive contains less than an hour’s worth," says the Times.

Today I stumbled across this fascinating and fun film (see above) of driving through New York City, made in 1928. By coincidence, about 1:45 minutes into this clip, we see none other than... The Bambino himself.