When Don Bradman met Babe Ruth, the Bradman of baseball

Two months after marrying his childhood sweetheart Jessie and four months before being the central attraction of the Bodyline series, in the July of 1932, Don Bradman set his foot on the America soil for the first time. Reports of the time say he was not too keen about the tour but his former colleague Arthur Mailey coaxed him into “going for an extended honeymoon trip.”

It was Mailey’s attempt to popularize the sport in US, which he thought would be a potential market. So Bradman and some of his legendary teammates Vic Richardson, Stan McCabe, Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, and Mailey embarked on ship Niagara for a tour of Canada and US, where they would play a few exhibition games.

In US, it was marketed as the meeting between the Don and Babe, Bradman meeting the Bradman of Baseball, Babe Ruth. The two would watch a game setting next to each other, a baseball game at the Yankees Stadium. The story goes that Ruth was amused by Bradman’s slight build. He reportedly told him; “From what they were telling me, I thought you were a husky (big) and strong guy.” Ruth was six feet two inches. Then, with his characteristic sarcasm, told Bradman: “But us little fellows can hit them harder than the big ones.’’ The American was surprised that “Sometimes you don’t have to run when you hit the ball.” Bradman apparently told him not to hit the ball in the air so often.

Don Bradman (Cricketing Legend) meets Babe Ruth (Baseball Legend) at a Yankees game in 1932 pic.twitter.com/iBtLTWKCvr

— Ken Buzzins ⚓☮️🕊️✌️ (@KenBuzzins) August 30, 2023

The Australian apparently impressed the American with his knowledge of Baseball lexicon and was offered to have a swing with the rounder ball. Don politely refused. But on his return home, he told the press: “In two hours the match is finished. Each batter comes up four or five times. Each afternoon’s play stands on its own. Yes, cricket could learn a lot from baseball … There is more snap and dash to baseball,” the Don said. He though earned baseball-related monikers like the “Dynamite Kid”, the Aussie Slugger (though he would have despised it) and Cricket’s Bambino, a nod to the Great Bambino, Ruth himself.

Before parting ways, Ruth promised to try his hand in cricket. Once in London he did, carting the net bowlers to all corners, but was unamused by the meagre pay package. “They tell me $40 a week is top pay for cricket, I will stick with baseball” he told reporters.

Bradman’s last stop in the USA was the Hollywood, where his team played against the Film Stars Eleven, arranged by cricketer-turned-actor Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, a former England captain. The opponents included some of the tinsel town luminaries such as Leslie Howard, Boris Karloff, Ronald Colman and Clive Brook. In his autobiography Farewell to Cricket, Bradman reminiscences the tour: “It had been far too strenuous, but nevertheless it was placid compared with the storm that lay ahead, and of which at that time we had scarcely heard the rumblings.” The Bodyline ordeal.

Ruth and Bradman never met again but in a wicked twist of fate, Ruth passed away midway through Bradman’s farewell Test.

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