1986 Sportflics Decade Greats Babe Ruth

 Time for a new series here at this blog. I've fallen in love with the Sportflics Decade Greats set so much I've decided to make a post for each card in the set. I love vintage and I love Sportflics, so I guess it shouldn't be surprising. This set actually has some really good photograhy; Sportflics often used photos of the greats that are lesser-known, at least these days when card companies rehash the same photos over and over.

I'm not going to re-hash the careers of these players, which are (or should be) well known to most readers. I'm also not going to debate whether each player really was the best at their position in their decade. I just want to celebrate these cards for what they are.

For each card I will show a GIF of the card with all three photos. In the more modern cards there were many cases where Sportflics was able to get two photos of the same play like they did in their contemporary sets. I will comment on the photographs as best as I can. I will also try to find some fun trivia on each player, and note the extent of my collection of that player (playing days cards only, so it will be just about all zeroes until we get into the '50s).

The first card in the set is legendary Yankees slugger Babe Ruth.

Two action photos and a headshot, as in the main Sportflics set. All black-and-white but the set will transition to color as it moves on to more modern players. 

I found a larger version of the follow-through photo - looks like it is Griffith Stadium in Washington, where Ruth ran to a wall and knocked himself unconscious in 1924.

The photo where he is starting his swing I don't recognize, and couldn't find online.

On-the-field trivia: Ruth was a renowned slugger, hitting more home runs than most MLB teams in several seasons. However, he was an excellent hitter beyond just the power - his .342 career average is 7th-highest since 1901. That high average came despite 1,330 strikeouts. When Ruth retired he was the all-time leader in that category - now he is not in the top 100. Ruth was considered an above-average fielder, but in 1922 he lost a fly ball in the sun, and after that refused to play in the sun field, playing either right or left depending on where the sun was shining that day.

Off-the-field trivia: The son of a German immigrant, Ruth spoke only German as a small boy, before going to a boarding school in Baltimore at the site of what is now Oriole Park at Camden Yards. An internationally-famous celebrity, Ruth appeared in ten movies as himself, most notably 1942's Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig. Ruth was diagnosed with cancer in 1946, and was one of the first cancer patients in the world to be treated with radiation and medication, a process which caused improvement in Ruth for a short while before he succumbed to the disease in 1948.

My collection: I do not have any playing-days cards of Ruth. Ruth's last solo card as a contemporary player was in the 1934 Goudey set.