Advice to young baseball players from Babe
Ruth:"Study the game. Remember that baseball is a profession as intricate in its own way as the law or medicine.
"Don't be afraid to accept advice. Other men can always give you good pointers now and then no matter how much experience you've had. And there's always something new to learn. No one man ever knows it all.
"Keep physically fit always. It isn't hard if you do it, but if you let yourself slip its doubly hard to come back.
"Most important of all --- and this goes not alone for baseball but for every other profession --- save your money! If I had saved from the start of my career I might have had a million dollars today. But I didn't. I'm not sorry for what has gone before. It was probably good experience for a young fellow who had never seen the world or known anything about the world's people until he went into baseball. But, boy, I'm glad I got wise to myself in time. From now on a part of my earnings each year go right down into the savings account.
"Ours is a short lived business. At the age when most men are just reaching their prime we're through and out. Grown old at thirty-five sounds strange to most men, but the statement is all too true to the ball player.
"We like the cheers when they come; we take the jeers as they echo. We try to give the best we can and once we're too old to carry on we all hope to step down gracefully to bow to the youngsters who succeed us. Youth, you know, is the life of baseball --- and we can't keep our youth forever."
---from "Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball," by George Herman Ruth, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1928, also available from Bison Books here (Amazon Books).