Recently, on Facebook, I saw somebody compare Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, the greatest of all popular singers; to George Herman "Babe" Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, the greatest of all baseball players.
Actually, the Babe and Elvis are very comparable:
* Both were both very poor, yet got very rich.
* Both totally changed their respective professions for the better.
* Both were ridiculed by their predecessors as the best in the business; but, in each case, those predecessors swallowed their pride, acknowledged, the men's greatness, and became friends with them: The Babe with Ty Cobb, and Elvis with Frank Sinatra.
* Both had royal nicknames. The Babe had several.
* Both became better known for their workplaces than for their hometowns: Babe, Baltimore to New York; Elvis, Memphis to Las Vegas.
* The Babe played some preseason and postseason "barnstorming" games in Elvis' hometown of Memphis.
* Both made some bad movies. Both were better off playing, essentially, themselves: Ruth in the Harold Lloyd silent comedy Safety Last! and the Lou Gehrig movie The Pride of the Yankees; Elvis as singers Deke Rivers, Vince Everett and Danny Fisher in, repsectively Loving You, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole.
* Both were renowned for their comebacks: Elvis in 1923, 1926 and 1932; Elvis in 1960 and 1968.
This photo, taken at a war bond drive game
at Yankee Stadium in 1942, is colorized, but otherwise real.
* Babe had 2 daughters, Elvis 1. Neither had any sons -- which may have been for the best: Being Babe Ruth Jr. or Elvis Presley Jr. might have been too much pressure. After all, Mickey Mantle Jr. never got out of the low minors, and he and Joe DiMaggio Jr. both became alcoholics.
* Both struggled with their weight, gaining it, losing it, and regaining it.
* Both died too young, due to substance abuse, and on an August 16: Babe from nicotine at 53 in 1948, Elvis from abuse of diet pills at 42 in 1977.
* Both were essentially "managed" by their wives after their deaths, making more money than they did while they were alive: Babe by Claire, Elvis by Priscilla.
* And Babe's birthplace, a rowhouse in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, and Elvis' home, the Graceland mansion south of Memphis (actually closer to the Mississippi State Line than to downtown), have been museums and major tourist attractions.
There were, of course, some significant differences. Perhaps the biggest is that the Babe is seen as a figure of his time, the Roaring Twenties, 100 or so years ago, an era whose films are in black & white, and silent; while Elvis is a product of post-World War II America, whose career was based in sound, and lived as part of the transition of popular culture from black & white to color. We've seen him on clear color videotape. He feels recent, even though it's been almost half a century since his death; while the Babe seems like a long-ago figure. He seems like a guy our grandparents rooted for. Elvis seems like a current friend.
From the "Comeback Special," 1968
And yet, kids today know who Babe Ruth is, just as they know who Elvis Presley is. "Is," not "was." Though they are long dead, they still live within us. Because they were the best there's ever been at what they did.
To both of them, I give Elvis' words: "Thank you very much."
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