Triumph
and Sadness:
Opposites in Ourselves and in
Nat Fein's Photo of Babe Ruth's Farewell
By Michael Palmer
This photograph, "The Babe Bows Out," taken by Nat
Fein of baseball's legendary George Herman "Babe" Ruth is one of the
most famous and most cared for in all of sports. It won a Pulitzer
Prize in 1949.
I'm moved each time I see
it because it has great feeling--a man returning to the scene of his greatest
successes, saying goodbye for the final time. The way triumph and
sadness, pride and humility are one in this photograph give it a meaning
that goes far beyond the story it tells as a newspaper illustration.
Through the education Aesthetic
Realism, I came to understand why I care so much for this photograph,
and its meaning for my own life. Eli
Siegel, American poet, critic, and founder of this education, defined
beauty and showed its relation to the lives of every person. "All
beauty, " he stated "is a making one of opposites, and the making one of
opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."
I once had a way of seeing the world that was against beauty.
Mr. Siegel explained that along with our deepest desire "to like the world
on an honest basis," there is another drive that is in every person--to
have contempt. People have felt their distinction will come in being
better than others, having victories over people, thinking they're deeper
and more refined than others. I felt this. Contempt, defined
by Mr. Siegel as the "addition to self through the lessening of something
else," can seem like a triumph, but in fact it makes for a feeling of separation,
a dullness, a sadness. Aesthetic Realism shows that the only genuine,
lasting triumph comes from our respecting the world--being in a true relation
to it.
That is what we see
in this photo of Babe Ruth. In its technique it puts together opposites
people are trying to make sense of in their lives.
Triumph
and Sadness, Pride and Humility
This photograph was
taken at Yankee Stadium on a special day for the Yankees and Babe Ruth--the
25th anniversary of the Stadium. Ruth, who had left the Yankees as
a player 14 years earlier, was having his famous number 3 uniform retired.
The idol of millions whose homerun hitting, personality and flair literally
built Yankee Stadium and made him baseball's greatest figure, Babe Ruth
here was a very sick man who had barely two months to live.
Nat Fein, a staff photographer for the New York Herald Tribune,
was looking for a picture that would convey the meaning of that day.
He left the other photographers and went to the back of Ruth where he saw
the elements of the story in one composition--Ruth in relation to his former
teammates, to the Stadium, to the fans. He saw Babe Ruth in a moment
of great triumph and in a tremendously sad moment as well.
Though it was an overcast day, Fein took the picture without a flashbulb
because he believed what he learned from his picture-editor, Richard Crandall
to be true-- "natural light catches the mood of the occasion." The
mingling of light and dark captures accurately the mingled feelings of
that moment. Ruth himself is light and dark--his light uniform set
off by the dark socks and hat and dark pinstripes on the uniform.
Light crowns his dark hair. The fans in the distant Stadium seats
are also light and dark--the persons in the visible seats are illuminated,
while darkness shrouds those sitting farther back. That accents the
poignancy felt by people on that day.
In the publication Afternoon Regard for Photography, Eli Siegel
discussed a photo similar to this--a Dutch actor seen from the back, bowing
in his farewell to an audience in Amsterdam. What he said I think
explains a central reason I and so many other people have been affected
by the Ruth photo. He said:
"Pride is in
the fact that he is the hero of the evening, he is acknowledging applause...[and]
this man is an object of sadness--as in every farewell. We are trying
to put our triumph and our sadness together."
This, I have learned, is
what art does. People often see the world in two different
ways. I did. There is the world in which your team wins the pennant,
and there is another world, as I saw it, in which everything comes to a
sad ending. I would say cynically to myself, "A hundred years from
now what will it all matter." Dividing the world in this way is inaccurate;
it is contempt. It is the same world, I have learned, that gives
us triumph and tears, and it is one world.
In this photograph Ruth is tall, the largest figure in the picture.
Yet he is humble too, slightly stooped at the shoulders, his hat at his
side. And above Ruth's head, flags fly on tall poles atop the Stadium.
The pennant banners blowing in the wind rise, while they also have uncertainty.
The facade on the upper deck on the right, crossing behind the figure of
Ruth, sweeps up, giving his hunched shoulders an upward motion.
Though very young, I was at the Stadium that day in 1948 and I remember
being both thrilled at seeing Ruth in uniform and saddened by the obvious
weakening his illness had made for. Ruth, in his final words to the
fans, said he was grateful for having been part of something whose large
meaning goes beyond the playing field. This can be felt in the way
he stands. He is both the center, being honored, but is also honoring
something outside of himself, looking out to the encircling stands and
to the open spaces, the infinite beyond the Stadium. He is bowing
slightly, his cap to his side. There is a truly religious feeling.
We
Are an Individual and We Are in Relation
In his book Self
and World, Mr. Siegel describes the large question of a person--how
to be oneself as individual, and, at the same time, be in the best relation
to what is not oneself. What he writes seems to describe the very
body and thought of Babe Ruth:
"We are alone
in our blood and our bones and our thoughts. It seems we are separate
if we want to feel that way. And yet we can look out. Not a
thing fails to act on us, once we think about it." [NY: Definition Press,
1981, p. 102]
Babe Ruth, alone here in
the center of the Stadium, is shown looking out, and through the composition,
not a thing fails to act on him. His body joins the playing field
and the three decks of the right field stands--the very area where he hit
so many of his homeruns. The curving, horizontal facades of the lower,
middle and upper decks cross the vertical of his body. The vertical
figure of Ruth is alone and also at one with Stadium and fans.
I was the kind of person who felt "alone in my blood." Though
I acted affable, I felt very separate from other people. Early on,
I didn't like doing many things other children did, such as going to parties,
dances, summer camp. I preferred taking long walks by myself, and
when I went to a ballgame, I usually went alone, sitting by myself, way
on top, away from the other fans. Being "above" people seemed pleasing
at the time, but made for a feeling of great loneliness. This attitude
fortunately changed through the education I received in classes I attended
taught by Eli Siegel. In one class, Mr. Siegel said to me:
"A human being,
according to Aesthetic Realism, has an indefinite possibility of conscious
relation. That can be felt in the line from Tennyson's "Ulysses":
"I am a part of all that I have met." But Ulysses could also say,
"I am a part of all that I haven't met." Do you want to come into your
heritage? Your heritage is all reality besides yourself as seen by
you."
I wish Babe Ruth could
have studied Aesthetic Realism—knowledge he so needed in his life.
In this photo, Ruth is shown in many ways in relation to the world.
The bat he is holding and leaning on almost seems a part of his body.
The vertical stripes of his uniform are related to the vertical lines of
the middle deck facade and the vertical poles of the Stadium throughout.
The field and the baselines link Ruth to former teammates and other Yankee
players. You feel Ruth is "a part of all that he has met and all
he hasn't met."
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