The Last Swing: Babe Ruth's Three Final Home Runs
On May 25, 1935, a fading 40-year-old Babe Ruth hit three home runs at Forbes Field — including No. 714, the first ball ever to clear the park's right-field roof.
By the spring of 1935, Babe Ruth was running on fumes. The most famous athlete on Earth was 40 years old, overweight, and watching his batting average sink below .200 for the Boston Braves — the team that had signed him as a free agent after the Yankees declined to make him their manager. In the season's first month he had managed just three home runs. Nobody, least of all the Babe, knew what was left in the tank.
On May 25, 1935, the Braves visited the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field, and the old Sultan of Swat gave the game one last staggering show.
It was only the second three-homer game of Ruth's 22-season career. He went four-for-four on the day, adding a single to his trio of long balls. The homers kept getting bigger: the first sailed into the lower right-field deck, the second into the upper deck — and the third, career home run number 714, did something no ball had ever done at Forbes Field. On a 3-and-1 pitch in the seventh inning, Ruth launched it clear over the 86-foot-high right-field grandstand roof, the first ball to clear the roof in the park's 26-year history. Contemporary estimates put the blast at around 600 feet, among the longest ever hit.
The Pittsburgh crowd, which had come to root against the visitor, rose to its feet. "The way he smacked it, you knew it was gone. The crowd just roared," remembered eyewitness Paul Warhola, brother of the pop artist Andy Warhol. After rounding the bases in his old familiar trot, Ruth tipped his cap — then sat down on the Pirates' bench and told rookie pitcher Mace Brown, "Boy, that last one felt good!"
The Braves lost the game 11-7. But nobody remembered the score. Eight days later, Ruth retired, ending the greatest career the sport had ever seen. His 714 home runs would stand as the major-league record for nearly four decades, until Hank Aaron broke it in 1974.
Why it matters: athletes almost never get a perfect ending. Ruth's farewell had been shaping up as a sad one — a creaking legend hanging on for a managerial job that never came. But on one May afternoon in Pittsburgh, the magic came back for four at-bats, and baseball got to watch its first true superstar go out with a swing for the ages. The number 714 is still shorthand for Ruth himself.
Photo: Goudey Gum Co., public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).
