[Big Six]

Boston Globe, editorial, August 8, 1934

Just over eleven years ago, the Boston Red Sox did the unthinkable. They traded away Babe Ruth, the greatest home run hitter the game had ever known.

The Babe had just completed a run of three consecutive seasons in which he had hit at least thirty home runs; no other player in the history of the game had hit that many even once. In exchange for this slugger nonpareil, the Red Sox obtained a callow first baseman, still a teenager, and a journeyman pitcher with a losing career record. Most baseball men believed Lou Gehrig, the young first baseman, might one day be a useful player, even a star. But he was being traded for Babe Ruth, for Pete’s sake…for the most powerful hitter the game had ever seen! The pitcher the Yankees threw in, a chap named Neal Brady, was almost universally regarded as a spare part, the sort of pitcher who could be plucked from the free agent pool whenever a team saw fit.

The Red Sox had last participated in a World Series three years ago, in 1920; for the fans of Boston, this represented a drought that was without parallel since the team began to win consistently a dozen or so years earlier. This was a team that was watching its era of dominance come to an end, a team for which the pendulum of fate was beginning to swing back toward mediocrity. Why would such a team trade its most valuable asset for a “might be” and a “hasn’t been?”

This writer was among the voices who had nothing positive to say about trading away the Babe. Eleven years later, this writer has changed his mind.

Trading away Babe Ruth just might have been the best move the Red Sox could have made.

There is absolutely no denying that Mr. Ruth is the greatest power hitter in the history of baseball. Ruth has hit 55, 60, even 70 home runs in a single season. As of today, he has hit 616 home runs in his career, which at age 39 might be on its very last legs. For ten consecutive years beginning in 1920, the Babe led the American League in home runs. For each of the first five years after his trade to New York, he was named the league’s Most Outstanding Batter. He has driven in more runs than any player in history. These feats will be remembered as long as baseball exists.

However, the fact remains that while the Babe was becoming the stuff of legend, the Red Sox team for whom he played was not winning pennants. Ruth participated in the World Series for the Red Sox twice, in 1919 and 1920. The New York Yankees have not taken part in postseason baseball since they acquired Ruth. In the meantime, the Boston Red Sox have played in five World Series. Perhaps it is too harsh to draw many conclusions from this fact, but the fact remains nonetheless.

Setting that bit of evidence aside, there is still ample reason to believe the Red Sox were the “winners” in this particular swap. Lou Gehrig, the teenaged first sacker they obtained for Ruth, is now a man of thirty-one, in his ballplaying prime. He blossomed into an All-Star performer in 1925, and has now earned a spot in the Midsummer Classic ten consecutive times. Gehrig has become a formidable slugger in his own right; he has hit over forty home runs three times, and with thirty to his credit already, should do so again this year. He has succeeded Ruth as the annual recipient of the Most Outstanding Batter award, winning it in each of the last three years.

Lou has hit 329 home runs in his career, and it is conceivable that he will join Ruth (and perhaps Oscar Charleston) as the only players to clout five hundred four-baggers in a major league career. If the Babe is the greatest slugger in the history of the junior circuit, Gehrig is the clear choice for runner-up.

And what of the pitcher whom the Yankees seemed all too ready to discard?

Until 1926, Neal Brady seemed destined to be a useful bullpen pitcher, who could occasionally spell a tired member of the Red Sox rotation. Late that season, Sox manager Bill Carrigan decided to give Brady one more chance to prove himself, and informed him that he would receive the ball every fourth day until season’s end. Brady won seven games, striking out nearly ten times as many men as he walked, and a star was born.

Since then, Neal Brady has won at least twenty games six straight times. With sixteen wins right now, he is almost a sure bet to extend that streak to seven. At age thirty-seven, Brady still has enough stuff on the ball to lead the American League in strikeouts. Despite the fact that he was thirty before he nailed down a regular spot in the rotation, he has won 260 games and might have a shot at three hundred wins. Even if he falls short of that milestone, Neal Brady should one day be enshrined at Cooperstown. Not bad for a “throw-in,” is it not?

There is one more consideration, too; the fact that Gehrig and Brady fit the Red Sox “style” far better than the Babe. Ruth is a flamboyant man who has always seemed perfectly suited for the bright lights of the Big Apple. It is no insult to Ruth, as a player or as a man, to say that his personality is much more in tune with the hustle and bustle of the nation's largest city than it ever was in Boston.

Gehrig and Brady are far less colorful; they are personable men who play excellent baseball and represent their team and city with distinction. In Boston, where a Puritan heritage of simplicity and hard work has never completely faded away, the understated style of players like Gehrig and Brady is appreciated in a fashion that New Yorkers might never have come to love so well.

We Bostonians have always preferred our heroes to be life-size. Take, for example, Patrick O’Farrell. Pat is without doubt the most beloved baseballist ever to ply his trade in our city, perhaps among its four or five most notable living citizens. For all his success and fame, he remains humble, genuine, and as approachable as the fellow next door.

Eleven years later, it’s now clear to me that Pat O’Farrell’s team has been far better off with stars on a more human scale—stars like Lou Gehrig and Neal Brady—then it would have been with Babe Ruth. And so has the city we call our home.