Caught by the Babe
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Baseball almost never gives you an ending this clean.
September 30, 1927, Yankee Stadium, next to last day of the season. Tom Zachary gives up Ruth's 60th in the eighth. An inning later, with two outs and Zachary's spot due up, Bucky Harris sends Walter Johnson to hit for him. The Big Train flies out to right field. Babe Ruth catches it. That is the last thing Walter Johnson ever does in a major league uniform.
Mark the date
September 30, 1927
Ruth's 60th home run in the eighth, Walter Johnson's final at bat in the ninth
Think about the arc of that. Johnson debuted in 1907, when a season's home run leader might hit eight. He threw 110 shutouts, a record nobody is going near, and won 417 games for a Washington club that spent most of his career going nowhere. He was the best argument the deadball era ever made. And his final act as a player was a ball settling into the glove of the man who made that era obsolete.
Nine years later they went into the Hall of Fame together, in the first class ever elected, along with Cobb, Wagner and Mathewson.
