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Babe Ruth (1895-1948)
The year 1976 brought many changes in professional baseball-from renovated and totally new stadiums to the advent of the free agent, which promised to send some player salaries soaring. For its story on these developments, Time carried on its cover this caricature of all-time Yankee great Babe Ruth perched atop his old home stadium. The imagery was largely inspired by the recent modernization of Yankee Stadium, which practically since its opening in 1923 had been known as "the house that Ruth built." But there was yet another reason for Ruth’s presence on the cover. If any baseball great of yore could have benefitted from the new free agentry, it was the "Sultan of Swat," and as he sits here scratching his head, he is doubtless wondering why the free-agent era could not have dawned some fifty years earlier.
Jack Davis (born 1926)
Watercolor and ink on board
Time cover, April 26, 1976
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine
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