"Well, I had tried out a few schemes of my own, until one day I began to watch Joe Jackson. He looked to me about the freest, longest hitter I had seen anywhere. He could take a good, natural cut at the ball without losing his balance and when he landed the ball usually kept going until it disappeared. If you will remember, he was the first to hit one over the right field stands at the Polo Grounds. So I said to myself: If that style works so well with Jackson, why not for me? And I began keeping my right foot well forward and my left foot well back. In the first place, being a left-handed hitter, this gave me a chance to get in a lot of leverage and to get my full weight back of the punch. It brought my body around in a half turn and as I stepped into the ball with my right foot I was turning in a natural way in the same direction my bat was traveling. I tried this idea out; it worked great—and I've stuck to it ever since."
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As quoted in "The Sportlight: Learning From Others" by Grantland Rice, in The New York Tribune (March 15, 1923), p. 14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth
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Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth (6 February 1895 – 16 August 1948) was an American Major League Baseball player from 1914 to 1935, named as the greatest baseball player in history in various surveys and rankings. His career record of 714 home runs stood for 39 years until surpassed by Hank Aaron with 755 home runs in 1974.
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