[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio]
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
I hope some day that some of the young fellas that's coming into the game will know how it feels to be picked on the Hall of Fame.
I know the old boys back in there, we were just talking it over. Some have been here long before my time. They got on it. And I worked hard and I got on it.
And I hope that the coming generation, the young boys today, that they’ll work hard and also be on it.
And as my old friend Cy Young says, “I hope it goes another hundred years and the next hundred years will be the greatest."
You know, to me, this is just like an anniversary myself, because 25 years ago yesterday I pitched my first baseball game in Boston -- for the Boston Red Sox.1
So it seems like an anniversary for me too, and I’m surely glad, and it’s a pleasure for me to come up here and be picked also in the Hall of Fame.
Thank you.
1 Babe Ruth pitched his first regular season major league game for the Boston Red Sox on 11 July 1914 -- 24 years and 11 months prior to delivering this speech. Moreover, Ruth was officially elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on 2 February 1936. Several years later on 12 June of 2009 professional baseball held its first official Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony during which time Ruth delivered the speech above. [Source: Baseball Hall of Fame (online)]
Also in this database:
Babe Ruth's
Farewell to Baseball Speech
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