On the east coast, some video footage showed up of Babe Ruth striking out, and looking mad about it. He then glanced at the umpire while leaning on his bat. He uttered something, but there's no sound. The legendary Lou Gehrig, who probably never had a nasty word to say to umps, awaited on deck, leaning on his bat as well.
Ruth walked away with his head down, and bat dragging through the dirt.
This footage, along with 8 seconds of never before seen stuff of Ruth playing in the outfield, is part of an 8 mm film bound by a New Hamphsire resident. It was in his grandfather's movie collection.
Surprising as it may seem, there isn't a lot of video of Ruth, as much of his career was before the TV age. And no video of him striking out has been seen before.
Major League Baseball took over some archives of all the footage of previous baseball stuff that's known to exist. That happened in the late 90s. Each year, that collection grows by 10,000 hours of footage. Of course, that means modern players. Stuff with the Babe doesn't usually pop up.
With Ruth in the outfield, hands on knees, they claim this is the only footage of him in the outfield, in over 2,200 games he played. The only previous footage showed him playing catch between innings.
They believe this was shot in 1928, as most of the Yankees had no numbers on their backs, which they started wearing the following year.
The seats in the stands are full, and a few archivists that took a look, believe it's opening day or the World Series. The archivists have their hands full, though. They're trying to find out the opposing team, by looking at grainy footage of their uniforms. And they're checking newspaper accounts to figure out weather reports and box scores, to see games that Ruth struck out in.
The holy grail of Ruth footage, would be clips of him pitching, when he was with the Red Sox.
I have no clue how much money this guy is going to make with this footage, as it's not as valuable as finding footage (with sound) of famous musicians.
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