Babe – A Baseball Nickname
This article was written by Bill Nowlin
This article was published in The Babe (2019)
George Herman Ruth did have other nicknames than Babe — “Jidge,” for instance, and was given some other monikers such as “The Sultan of Swat.”
But he was more widely known as Babe Ruth than by his real name.
He was far from the only player, before or since, known as Babe. A quick perusal finds these prior Babes:
And Dan Sherman, who started in 1914 – the same year as Mr. Ruth – and also attracted the nickname Babe.
Some Babes who overlapped or followed, include:
- Babe Ellison (1916-20)
- Babe Pinelli (1918-27)
- Babe Twombly (1920-21)
- Ollie Klee (1925)
- Babe Herman (1926-45)
- Babe Ganzel (1927-28)
- Elliot Bigelow (1929)
- Babe Phelps (1931-42)
- Ed Linke (1933-38)
- Babe Dahlgren (1935-46)
- Babe Young (1936-48)
- Babe Barna (1937-43)
- Woody Davis (1938)
- Phil Marchildon (1940-50)
- Russ Meers (1941-47)
- Ed Butka (1943-44)
- Ed Klieman (1943-50)
- Babe Martin (1944-53)
- Del Wilber (1946-54)
- Mario Picone (1947-54)
- Babe Birrer (1955-58)
- Tex Nelson (1955-57)
- Phil Roof (1961-77)
It seems that around a half-century ago, the nickname Babe went out of fashion.
Baseball-Reference.com lists nine Negro Leagues players nicknamed Babe, as well as more than 40 minor leaguers and seven “other players and scouts.”
There were, of course, variants. Ted Williams was known as “The Kid.” There are more players with “Kid” as their nickname, or part of their nickname, than there are Babes.
BILL NOWLIN was elected as SABR’s Vice President in 2004 and re-elected for five more terms before stepping down in 2016, when he was elected as a Director. He has specialized in Red Sox research since he turned to writing and research in the late 1990s and has written, edited, or co-edited more than 75 books and more than 750 articles, many of which are Red Sox-related. He is one of three founders of Rounder Records, one of America’s most successful independent record labels. A member of the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, he has also traveled widely, visiting more than 125 countries to date, and has occasionally taught courses at Boston-area universities on “Baseball and Politics” and Sportswriting. He was the 2011 winner of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.