[Ads-l] Babe Ruth Quote

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Fred and list members: Gerald Cohen initiated a thread on this
interesting topic in June 2013. At that time I shared a citation in
the New York Times dated December 16, 1947:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2013-June/127439.html

There was another article on August 19, 1948 by the same NYT
journalist Arthur Daley on the Babe Ruth/Hoover anecdote.
Interestingly, Daley switched the date of the anecdote to 1930 from
1932.

As Fred noted, the dates for these citations, 1947 and 1948, are quite
late. In 1930 (the supposed timeframe of the quip) Will Rogers in his
syndicated column told a joke in which Babe Ruth demanded more money
than President Hoover, but the punchline was different. This citation
was also given in my old ADS message.

My records indicate that I bcced Barry with the 1947 cite, and I sent
the 1948 cite to Barry but not the list. (Barry hasn't updated the
entry which is understandable. Multiple QI entries have not been
updated with superior/supplementary data now in my files,
unfortunately. Writing an entry on this topic is also on my gargantuan
ToDo list.)

Garson

On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 10:54 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Babe Ruth Quote
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> =0A=
> Can anyone shed any light on the origins of Babe Ruth's attributed quote ab=
> out "I had a better year than he did"?  It is curious that there seems to b=
> e no pre-1947 evidence for it, although it is said to have been uttered lon=
> g before that.  Barry Popik has written about this on barrypopik.com and di=
> dn't find anything pre-1948.  I haven't searched the Sporting News on paper=
> ofrecord.com because I don't have a subscription.=0A=
> =0A=
> Fred Shapiro=0A=
> =0A=
> =0A=
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org