Talk:Babe Ruth/Archive 1

General Notes

This is my proposed revision of Babe Ruth. If you have the time, please compare it to the current article and leave any feedback on this talk page. The page is still longer than Wikipedia guidelines suggest (It's down from 87kb to 63), but I think most of the content is essential. When rewriting a quality article which other editors have obviously spent a lot of time on, I think it's best to tread lightly and get a consensus before making large scale changes. I just want the best article possible, and don't mean any disrespect to other editors who've contributed.

I've included a section-by-section description of my edits here, in case anyone is interested. If I don't mention a section, it's because I only made cosmetic changes. Here are a few things I'll state up front, so I don't have to continually repeat them:

• I trimmed most of the World Series descriptions, but added links to those Series' respective articles.
• Grammar/style cleanup (insertion of pronouns, deletion of adjectives, etc.).
• Deleting summary or descriptive sentences that added color, but not content.
• Removed redundant wikilinks, unlinked common nouns.
• A few NPOV edits, although generally this wasn't a problem.

Early years, Red Sox, Ruth the Yankee

Most of the edits I made in the early sections of the article were either stylistic or grammatical. They remain mostly intact. I took out a few redundant phrases. Where I did remove entire sentences, it's either because they provided a context that I didn't find necessary for an encyclopedia article, or because they were descriptive passages more appropriate for a magazine article. An example of the former would be the link I added to the 1918 World Series, in place of a paragraph discussing the circumstances surrounding the Series. The edits I made to the last paragh of the section "Ruth the Yankee" are an example of the latter.

Beginning of the live ball era

I removed this section, but certainly not because there was a problem with the content. Actually, the discussion here was better than the article, Live Ball Era, and I incorporated much of the section into that article. However, the section had very little to do with Ruth. While it would certainly warrant inclusion in a biography, in my opinion the information was too peripheral to include here. I did add a sentence stating that Ruth's 1920 season marks the beginning of the live ball era, and I also mentioned it in the section, "Impact on baseball.

Increased attendance

The rationale is the same as with the "live ball" section. While Ruth's effect on attendance deserves a mention, I felt that the section as a whole was beyond the scope of the article. I added a reference to attendance at the end of "Ruth the Yankee."

"The House that Ruth Built"

Deleted periphary information, cleaned up the prose. Same as above, mostly.

"The Bellyache Heard Around the World"

It's still longer than I'd like, but the information is all valuable. I took out some of medical jargon, as well as a more detailed discussion of the rumors that Ruth had a venereal disease.

Return to the top

I shortened the description of game seven of the World Series, and deleted the final paragraph, which only summarized information that is discussed more thoroughly later.

1927: a team for the ages

I took a good deal out of this section; however, much of it has ended up elsewhere on Wikipedia. I took a paragraph about the team and integrated it into Murderer's Row. I also trimmed the World Series description.

1928 & '29

Took out a description of the Philadelphia Athletics.

"The Called Shot"

This is the one section I added to. The play was mentioned but wasn't actually described.

Personal Life, Impact on Baseball

I moved both of these sections from the middle of the article to the end. I took out a paragraph about the death of Ruth's first wife. I removed almost all of "Impact on Baseball," not because it wasn't good information, but because most of it is either covered elsewhere or beyond the scope of the article. Also, I moved the entire section, "The Home Run Asterisk," to "Impact."

Retirement and later years, Illness

Moved paragraph on staistical legacy to "Impact on baseball. Deleted a speculative paragraph on tobacco.

Trivia

Quite simply, I took out the facts I don't think pass the "WP is not an indiscriminate collection of information" test. For instance, a bit about Orson Welles birthday and the fact that the money made by auctioning Ruth's contract went to a particular charity.

Images

I standardized the thumb sizes. Also, I deleted the following images:

• a Ruth postage stamp, which was displayed directly above a larger, image of the photograph used for that stamp.
• on second thought, I took out the big picture too. It's iconic to be sure, but the image looks like it's a photograph of a photograph (the flash is visible). Unfortunately, I don't have a higher quality image, and I think there's enough here already without including substandard scans.
• a photo of Red Sox owner Harry Frazee.
• a team photo of the 1927 Yankees. However, I added this image to the article, Murderer's Row.
• Ruth at his first wife's funeral, Ruth with his second wife. Good images which I could have been convinced to keep, but I felt the page was too crowded near the bottom.

Comments

Article looks good and has featured article potential but may need sources of quotes etc to make that status. Thanks for your hard work on this issue. Capitalistroadster 20:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Good job. I like the way you managed to pull out good information and incorporate it into other articles. One thing I would like to see restored: I like the postage stamp as evidence of Ruth's impact (i.e. he was so good, they issued a stamp for him), so how about putting the stamp image under "Impact on Baseball", which doesn't currently have a picture? Jwolfe 22:52, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

One suggestion: the fact that Babe's father died in a tavern brawl when he was only 23 seems something more than "trivia." I'd move it to a line in the Early Years section.

Other thoughts:

• Under the "Sold to New York" heading: "But because of World War I, Red Sox attendance, as in every other major league city, fell off badly." is poorly worded. Consider "At the same time, World War I had led to declines in attendance across the major leagues.", which ties together the concepts of Frazee's overpaying players and the ultimate trade of Ruth.

I'll be reading through the revision, and I'll try to provide a healthy set of notes, but so far it seems much more "encyclopedic" and less kitchen sink. kthejoker

I've taken all of these suggestions and incorporated them into the article. --djrobgordon 00:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The following comments were originally posted on User talk:Djrobgordon:

Yes it looks good. I wrote about 80-90% of the article, but have not had the time or committement to do a rewrite to shorten it, so I appreciate you taking the time. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. In the 1921 season, it is mentioned Ruth went to Columbia for a series of tests part. This entire paragraph can be deleted. I did not add it, and it was not referenced, so it can be deleted. I added all the book references in the article, since no part of the article had any references other than random external links before I started working on it.

2. In 1932, after "the called shot" line, there are two paragraphs that you probably do not need, as in the separate called shot article also goes into detail on this.

3. Near the end, the two paragraphs that mention the Maris asterisk in 1961, the records books, etc., both of these paragraphs can be deleted since they were not referenced. The Maris asterisk information belongs more on the Roger Maris article.

4. Just a grammatical suggestion, the first paragraph in the 1922 season is long, so you will want to split this up. The line beginning with "While Ruth..." should start a new paragraph.

5. My personal preference is the death should be the last main section of any article, as I just think it looks better. Of course many references, Encyclopedia Britannica, and some Wikipedia biographical articles sometimes deviate from this, so it certainly is no rule. You added personality and impact sections after the death section, so let me address those sections and why I put them where I did.

I put the personality section after the 1928 season because it breaks up the monotony of the article, that is, the year by year analysis of Ruth's baseball seasons is probably too much for many readers. Putting the personality section in the middle gives the reader a break from all the baseball talk and baseball numbers, and some readers probably are more interested in Ruth the man than anything he did on the field. It also fits chronologically; Ruth's first wife died in 1929, and he married his second wife later in 1929. If I ever add more information to this article, it will be about his personality, as this part I wrote seems now sketchy and incomplete to me.

Ruth's impact on the game was immediate, so this section, in my opinion, would neccessitate it being mentioned when Ruth was dramatically changing the game, which was the early 1920's. This part you cut down, but I would tend to keep the great majority of the section because the effect he had on the game was as important as his individual accomplishments. With all the other parts I suggested we can delete, this will not add any length to the article.

Try my suggestions and then see how the article looks, as I think it would give it just the right fine tuning. Other than that the article looks fine to me, nice work djroggordon. --LibraryLion 21:40, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Pictures in the article

Is there any way that it can be decreased a bit? Fair use pictures are fine to use, but this one has an overabundance of them. Otherwise, it looks good. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 05:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that the number of pictures is excessive. There is no more than one picture per section. Pictures are more visually appealing than a monotonous block of text. Jwolfe 01:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Moving over to the main article

So, when is this going to be moved over to the main article? Jwolfe 22:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll do it before the weekend's up. --djrobgordon 06:20, 19 February 2006 (UTC)