There's lots of Babe in Woods
By BERRY TRAMEL
The Daily Oklahoman
He was Jack, playing a game the rest of the field knew not.
He was Michael, commandeering the Nike spotlight. He was Wilt,
sending rule-makers scrambling. He was Jackie, exorcising the
ghosts of racism.
But Tiger Woods was none of them when he walked up Augusta
National's 18th fairway last Sunday evening, the world in his
hands.
He was Babe Ruth.
Has ever there been two people so different so much alike?
Tiger is cultured; Babe was bawdy. Tiger respects authority; Babe
defied it. Tiger was nurtured by loving parents; Babe grew up
on the streets of Baltimore. Tiger went to Stanford; Babe to the
nearest saloon.
So different, but so alike. From swing to smile, we've found
a match for the matchless Babe.
Both hit the ball beyond comprehension. "Babe Ruth could
hit a ball so hard and so far, it was sometimes impossible to
believe your eyes," pitcher Sam Jones said. "We used
to absolutely marvel at his hits." Same thing the world's
best golfers did last week end at the Masters.
Both lit up a crowd. The lights will never go out in Georgia
as long as Tiger flashes the smile he did walking up to his 3-foot
putt on the 18th green Saturday. Babe was at home with the masses,
who loved him like no other.
Both had the magic of a name better than fiction. What novelist
has created a character more aptly named, what poet has penned
lyrics to equal Tiger Woods or Babe Ruth?
Both do/did everything well. At Augusta, Tiger was much more
than a sober John Daly. He putted, he chipped, he scrambled, he
thought. Babe could do more than hit; he pitched, fielded, threw,
ran. Forget the bloated image of Ruth near his retirement; he
did it all. "He never made a wrong move on a baseball field,"
said contemporary Rube Bressler. "He was like a damn animal.
He had that instinct."
Both were legends before their time. Tiger's coronation was
Sunday, but he already was a mythical figure. He was Sports Illustrated's
Sportsman of the Year for 1996, with exactly no major titles to
his credit. Babe was a legend even before he hit New York; he
set the major-league home run record and World Series pitching
records before he became a Yankee in 1920.
Both transcend sports. Tiger Woods has just joined the Elvis
Club - his public life is gone. No more malls, no more movies,
no more walks in the park.
It was the same with Babe. Former New York sportswriter Richards
Vidmer recalled a road trip with the Yankees, circa 1930. The
train stopped at a small Illinois town. It was 10 p.m. and raining
like heck.
"It couldn't have been a town of more than 5,000 people,
and by God, there were 4,000 of them down there standing in the
rain, just waiting to see the Babe," Vidmer said.
Both were/are mortal. Babe Ruth was not a freak. He was not
superhuman. He didn't do things that others couldn't have done.
He didn't do things others didn't do. He just did them first.
In 1919, Babe hit more homers than most teams and four times
in the '20s hit at least 50. But soon Jimmie Foxx and Hack Wilson
were doing the same. Babe simply showed what could be done.
Same with Tiger. He's 150 pounds, for crying out loud. All
he's doing is making golf look itself in the mirror, and that
mirror will change.
For Tiger is that rare comet: an American original. Has there
been another since the Babe?
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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