Babe Ruth at Sing Sing

(crowd cheering) (film projector clicking) (jaunty music) (game announcer) All the way at the wall... thats going, going, going, and up and back... (lively jazz music) (narrator) On July 12th, 2011, a baseball memorabilia auction held right before the All-Star game in Phoenix, Arizona, generated a frenzy of publicity.

The most coveted prize up for sale was a bat that was used by the legendary Babe Ruth to hit a towering home run on the afternoon of September 5th, 1929.

The auction opened with a flurry of online bids which rapidly brought the highest bid for the Louisville Slugger to $68,600.

But that was just the beginning.

During the live section of the auction, wealthy bidders stepped forward.

In the end, the bat sold for $126,500.

(spirited jazz music) Ruths home run did not come in a pennant match or in a World Series game.

That day, the New York Yankees traveled to Sing Sing prison on the Hudson River to play an exhibition game against an inmate team comprised of some of Americas most dangerous criminals.

Sing Sings 1500 inmates gathered under the eyes of machine gun-bearing guards to watch the game.

Watching in the stands was the man who orchestrated the Yankees visit to Sing Sing.

Warden Lewis E. Lawes did not bring baseball to Sing Sing, but shortly after arriving in 1920, he upgraded Sing Sings field to professional caliber and installed seating for up to 3,000 spectators.

(Roger Panetta) I think its a remarkable moment of popular culture.

Americas team visits Americas prison, in which we are surrounded by mythologies.

The Sing Sing inmate, even the mythologies surrounding the career of Lewis Lawes, Babe Ruth.

These were enormous figures, great public interest in them, and they suggest at a kind of electric moment.

(narrator) Ruths style had helped transform the game of baseball in the 1920s and through exhibition and barnstorming games, he brought the national pastime to small towns and cities throughout America.

(Roger Panetta) It is a window into many facets of the culture.

It tells us something about what Americans think about prisons, about the connection between sports and prisons, and about the way, ironically, in which Sing Sing itself has become a celebrity like Ruth was in his own time.

(narrator) As warden of Sing Sing, Lawes was de facto Americas warden and his views on penology were widely covered in the press and on a popular radio show.

He really did see it as part of his rehabilitative program.

You know, baseball is a team sport, requires cooperation and all that and commitment and trust.

These were all really important to Lawes program of rehabilitation.

(narrator) The Bambino did not disappoint at Sing Sing.

In the second inning, he smashed an inmate fastball with such a force that the ball cleared the prisons imposing 40-foot walls, prison watchtowers, and railroad tracks before landing on a bluff.

The food is lousier than our team, Babe!

(narrator) ...exclaimed one of the inmate infielders who had ten years to go on a 25-year sentence.

(soft piano music) Lewis E. Lawes was born in Elmira, New York, in 1883.

Penology was part of the landscape of his childhood.

The Elmira Reformatory for young men aged 16-30 was a focal point of his hometown.

With an eye toward marrying his hometown sweetheart, Kathryn, he took the Civil Service exam in 1905 and began his career at New York States Dannemora Prison in Clinton, New York, which is remotely situated near the Canadian border.

The world of corrections that Lawes entered as a 22-year-old prison guard reflected in many ways practices that had been in place since the mid 19th century.

(Ralph Blumenthal) There wasnt much of a science of penology in those days.

It was very cruel.

Punishment was retribution.

You had to make the prisoners suffer.

They had to march in lockstep, they were routinely beaten, cells were tiny, freezing cold.

There was no plumbing.

Obviously the men used slop buckets.

It was really a terrible time for penology.

(narrator) At the time, the striped uniforms the prisoners wore was a way for guards to see how many offenses each inmate had committed.

Second offenders donned two stripes, third time offenders three, and inmates with four stripes, the most difficult, were called "zebras."

George Herman Ruth was born in 1895 in a working-class neighborhood along the Baltimore waterfront.

Ruth grew up on the streets and was considered one of the toughest and most incorrigible youngsters in what was a rough neighborhood.

("Babe Ruth") Many people thought I was born an orphan, but my folks lived in Baltimore and my father worked in the district where I was raised.

We were poor, very poor, and there were times when we never knew where the next meal was coming from.

But I never minded.

I was no worse off than any other kid with whom I played and fought.

(Father Gabriel Costa) It was rough.

In his own autobiography, Babe Ruth says that stuff like he was ten and he was chewing tobacco, seven and he was swearing and all of these things.

So Im sure he had a tough childhood.

(narrator) At age seven, when his parents felt they could no longer control him, Ruth was sent to St.

Marys School, a combination reformatory and orphanage, where he would remain until he was 19.

(Father Gabriel Costa) Ruth was listed as an incorrigible.

Some people have written that he was an orphan but thats not true.

And I think the father and the mother were just as happy to have Babe Ruth go there in terms of consistency, in terms of a roof over his head, in terms of discipline.

("Babe Ruth") As I look back on it now, I realize I must have been a real problem to the brothers.

But Brother Gilbert stuck with me.

I owe him a lot.

More than Ill ever be able to repay.

It was Brother Gilbert who finally struck upon a thing to hold my interest and make me happy.

It was baseball.

Once I had been introduced to school athletics, I was satisfied and happy.

(jaunty piano music) (narrator) His Major League debut came on July 11th, 1914, at Fenway Park in Boston as the starting pitcher in a game against the Cleveland Naps.

In his first six innings of pitching, the 19-year-old Ruth held the Naps to just five hits.

The Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, but in 1919 they finished sixth, prompting Harry Frazee, the teams owner, to sell many of his best players to the New York Yankees including, to the shock and dismay of Boston Red Sox fans, Babe Ruth.

Lawes was accepted into a prestigious six-week course on penology and sociology at Columbia University.

Through these courses, he learned more about the reform movement in criminology and how progressive-minded intellectuals and policymakers were trying to better understand the root causes of crime, with an emphasis on rehabilitation and more enlightened youth development to prevent children from becoming criminals in the first place.

("Lewis E. Lawes") What sends an offender to prison is character.

Whatever helps build and strengthen character, whether its religion or athletics or the discovery of an ability in some craft, and the development of that ability cuts down the number of crimes and the number of potential offenders.

(Roger Panetta) The progressive reform movement really focused on several key ideas: education, reformation, the possibility of reformation, the notion of recreation and play-- this is the era of the playgrounds, when we begin to do that-- expertise, and a greater recognition that we have to find ways to take the marginal populations and begin to integrate them.

So we end the uniforms that we know with the stripes, we end the lockstep behavior, we begin to introduce recreation.

The idea was to reintegrate the prisoner into the life of the community because as Lawes said, at some point, they would all be released, so you had to prepare them for the life outside, not just, you know, punish them.

The idea was to attack the roots of crime.

Lawes always said that crime was a sickness in society.

(narrator) Beyond what he learned in his courses, Lawes made connections with several important leaders in the criminal justice field.

One such person was Katharine Bement Davis, a social worker and the founding superintendent of the Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills.

Davis was appointed as the first woman to head the New York City Department of Corrections.

Soon after taking her post, she asked Lawes to become the overseer of a facility of juvenile delinquents at Harts Island, located in the Long Island Sound in the Bronx.

As the primitive housing lacked adequate heat, the young inmates endured freezing temperatures during the winter of 1915 to 16.

These experiences, combined with the spirit of reform that was in the air, prompted Lawes to make a bold move.

Aware that the State of New York had purchased 600 acres in Orange County, New York, Lawes asked if he could move the reformatory to the vacant site.

The new corrections commissioner pointed out that there were no fences or walls on the property, to which Lawes said that fences would not be needed.

He would vouch that his boys would not leave the property.

When asked by a prominent older warden how he could maintain a reformatory without walls, Lawes responded... ("Lewis E. Lawes") We have morale, sir.

Its more effective than your strongest walls.

(lively piano music) (narrator) 1920 would mark the first season that Ruth would don the Yankee uniform.

He would comfortably break his 1919 season of 29 home runs with Boston by hitting 54 home runs for the Yankees in 1920, followed by 59 home runs in 1921.

(Bill Jenkinson) It would be as if perhaps LeBron James pulling up at half court to shoot three-pointers If something like that happened, we would be incredulous and it would be difficult to wrap our cognitive arms around it and to conclude that this is actually happening.

Well, thats the way it was when Ruth did what he did back in 20 and 21.

(narrator) Once, when describing how he hit home runs, Ruth said... ("Babe Ruth") I swing the bat as hard as I can and try to swing right through the ball.

I swing big with everything I got.

I hit big or I miss big.

I like to live as big as I can.

It didnt excite everyone.

A lot of people liked the more primitive way that the game was played in the dead-ball era.

Moving the runners with sacrifices and with bunts and with ground singles through the infield, building runs base by base.

But clearly, Ruths home run explosion just excited the nation and really got everybody interested in the long ball.

(soft piano music) (narrator) Lawes work at the New Hampton Reformatory in Orange County was generally regarded as a success and he was seen as a rising star within the New York State corrections system.

By the end of 1919, Sing Sing was in dire need of stable leadership.

When asked by New York State governor Al Smith to take the job at Sing Sing, Lawes accepted.

He reported for duty on January 1st, 1920.

("Lewis E. Lawes") I went to Sing Sing because Sing Sing, being what it was with the eyes of the world on it, offered me a pulpit.

As Sing Sings warden, I would command attention as I could not command it as superintendent of New York Citys reformatory and there was so much I had to say.

(narrator) The New York State prison at Sing Sing was established in 1825 on 130 acres along the Hudson in Westchester County.

Perhaps because it was near New York City, Americas newspaper capital, Sing Sing quickly became the most famous prison in the country.

(Roger Panetta) It begins in the 19th century with the very extensive coverage by The New York Times, for example.

Thousands of stories in the 19th century on the developments at Sing Sing.

Pulp fiction, film, all of those begin to pick up on the seeds laid by that 19th century coverage and Sing Sing becomes this enormous theater, filling the public imagination with what a penitentiarys supposed to be.

(narrator) In the 19th century, visitors would pay a fee to look through peepholes at inmates toiling away in Sing Sings workhouses.

(Roger Panetta) The numbers are astonishing.

In the early 1840s and 50s, the records at Sing Sing indicate over a thousand people came in a single year, paying about a quarter apiece.

Most of the visits were into the factory, into the workshops, and there were walls arranged with peeping holes so they could look in and observe that.

And there was a deep concern, ironically, about women fainting, that they would see this horrific scene.

So you have to look at this with a kind of jaundiced eye.

(solemn piano music) (narrator) The death penalty had been a fixture at Sing Sing almost from the beginning.

Lawes experiences at Sing Sing would make him a vocal opponent of the practice throughout his 21 years as warden.

At the same time, as it was his duty to follow the decisions of the courts, he presided over 303 executions at Sing Sing between 1920 and 1941.

Despite his many years working in the corrections system, the first execution he presided over was a harrowing experience.

It took a full 13 minutes for the inmate to die in the electric chair.

In his 1928 book, Life and Death in Sing Sing, he discussed his evolution from a supporter of the death penalty to leading opponent of capital punishment.

("Lewis E. Lawes") Capital punishment is a punishment for revenge, for retaliation, not for protection.

There is no opportunity for correction of mistakes.

As a punishment, the death penalty will always remain a failure.

(somber music) (narrator) The Mutual Welfare League gave prisoners the right to organize their own recreational activities at the prison.

The idea behind the League was to give inmates experience with independent self-governance and responsibility.

By the time Lawes arrived, the program had gotten out of hand, including alcohol and drugs being smuggled into the prison.

He immediately moved to curtail the Mutual Welfare Leagues power.

The many inmates who had enjoyed their perks were enraged at the new policies.

(foreboding piano music) The most tangible way that Lawes demonstrated his trust was by moving into the wardens mansion on the grounds of Sing Sing with his wife and three young daughters.

He had inmate trustees as childcare givers.

I mean, they were babysitters.

He trusted the men enough that the man who shaved him in the morning with a straight-edged razor had been in prison for cutting somebodys throat.

(narrator) Far from being shocked by these facts, Lawes wife, Kathryn, wanted to live in the wardens mansion with her children and would be an important partner for Lawes during his tenure, as well as a beloved figure for the inmates.

She referred to the inmates as "the boys."

Upon learning that a convicted murderer was blind, she personally taught him Braille and she arranged for a deaf inmate to receive instruction in sign language.

(Ralph Blumenthal) She was very devoted to the prisoners.

She gave them a lot of chances, she kept their secrets, which they recognized right away that if they told her something she wouldnt snitch to her husband.

She would bring flowers to the graves of prisoners who died.

They had a potters field.

So she was seen as a patron saint of Sing Sing, their mother.

A lot of them didnt have mothers, lost their mothers, they didnt have wives, girlfriends, so she was a stand-in for the feminine presence at Sing Sing.

(narrator) Inmates on death row whose execution date was nearing were granted a wish of a final meal before their execution date.

Kathryn would often take it upon herself to drive into Ossining to buy the special item, such as strawberries, for these final meal requests.

(fife and drum music) Although college football had been Americas most popular sport in the early 1900s, throughout the 1910s, baseballs popularity grew rapidly.

In the 1920s, baseball would be the undisputed king of American sports.

In 1912, the New York Highlanders, soon to be called the Yankees, played an exhibition game at the Polo Grounds against the New York Giants to benefit families impacted by the Titanic disaster.

The New York Giants played at Sing Sing prison at various times in the 1910s and 20s and the Yankees would later play at West Point in the 1920s.

(Marty Appel) These in-season exhibitions were kind of a holdover from the days when many cities had Sunday baseball outlawed because of the feeling that that was the day to go to church.

What would happen would be the teams would leave the city proper, go to Long Island, go to New Jersey, go to Westchester, and play exhibition games there.

You might have a Major League team pull in on a bus on a Sunday afternoon and wow, the crowd would go crazy for seeing these bona fide Major League players in their presence.

(narrator) In the spirit of the progressive prison reform era, both the workshops where inmates would spend their days crafting products such as harnesses for horses and recreational activities such as baseball, would grow in prominence as part of an effort to focus on how prisoners could be reformed and eventually reintegrated into society.

At the same time, businessmen and workers complained that the goods inmates were producing in the prison workshops competed with the products of legitimate businesses.

Consequently, in some states, laws were enacted to curtail prison shop production.

This, in turn, had the effect of aiding the growth of prison baseball as prisoner time needed to be filled with something.

Inmates, I think, had to work with each other, it got their focus off of themselves and on to each other and on to a common goal that they would all have to work towards.

(narrator) Like most institutions in America in the 1920s, Sing Sing was racially segregated and this appears to have been the case with the varsity Sing Sing baseball team.

Photographs of the Mutual Welfare League teams from the 1920s show all-white teams.

Throughout the 1920s, the prison population at Sing Sing was nearly 80 percent white.

At the same time, the absence of any black players on the varsity team likely reflected in intentional policy.

However, this photograph from 1933 indicates that the Sing Sing varsity team was desegregated at least 14 years before Major League Baseball was.

As the public seemed to have a fascination with what was going on within Sing Sings walls, there was no want of visiting teams that were willing to travel to Sing Sing to play against the Mutual Welfare Leagues varsity team.

League schedules from the era list visiting teams from the New York Stock Exchange, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the Underwood Typewriter Company, the Yonkers Herald Statesmen, and many teams fielded by local fire departments from all around the New York City area.

1920, the year Lawes started, was also a good year for the Mutual Welfare League.

In winning 95 percent of its games, it was considered one of the best prison teams in the nation.

(dramatic piano music) Advocates for Prohibition, which was instituted in 1920, contended that outlawing alcohol would bring down the crime rate.

Many sociologists now believe Prohibition had the opposite effect as it led to an underground economy and violent crimes among warring organized gangs.

Overall, violent crimes such as murder, battery, and assault went up by 13 percent in the decade of the 1920s.

This, in turn, led to more people being incarcerated.

The high public profile that Lawes cultivated and his progressive views did incite some critics who believed that Sing Sings recreation programs, as well as the view of progressive prison reformers more broadly, were undermining societys goal of making prison time a punishment.

(Roger Panetta) The progressive prison reform movement leads to a backlash of critics who begin to use that favorite word of all those people opposed to prison reform: theyre "coddling" the inmates.

(narrator) These views were crystallized in a 1922 talk by New York City police commissioner, Richard Enright.

("Richard Enright") There are no longer shaved heads.

Prisoners no longer wear prison garments and perform hard labor.

Instead, they have the best food, the best treatment, medical attention of the highest order, baseball, lawn tennis, motion pictures every day, drama often, and sometimes grand opera.

(narrator) Lawes, who was a master at cultivating his own public profile, hired a news clipping service that kept track of all that was being said about him and Sing Sing in the media.

Lawes complained that Enright, nor many other critics, had actually ever visited Sing Sing.

("Lewis E. Lawes") Six-cent meals, a three-and-a-half-foot unventilated hole to sleep in, and one-and-a-half cents to save up for the future.

These are the fundamental facts of coddling prisoners at Sing Sing.

(David Goewey) I think Lawes was incredibly confident in himself and had such a public personality, had such a highly rated radio show, you know, best-selling book, and he was a star, and I think he may have felt that he had that prerogative.

That he knew best, he knew what was coddling and what was rehabilitation.

(narrator) Ruth blazed through the Roaring 20s as the undisputed "Home Run King," both in terms of the number of home runs he hit and the unbelievable distances some of his homers traveled.

In 1921, Ruth led the League with 59 home runs.

His next closest rival had less than half of Ruths home runs with just 24.

He reached his high-water mark in 1927 when he hit 60 home runs in the season, a record that would not be broken until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.

Ruth famously joked... ("Babe Ruth") Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

Few understood the showmanship aspect of baseball better than Babe Ruth did and if it was a big crowd and an important game, hed rise to the occasion.

(narrator) The distances of Ruths home runs also broke records and helped usher in the term "Ruthian" which in common language came to mean "a home run that was of a caliber beyond normal human ability" or "any action that was of a superior quality."

On July 18, 1921, Ruth hit the longest home run in baseball history to that point.

He blasted a fastball at Navin Field in Detroit that not only left the ballpark but crossed the adjacent street.

Researchers have pegged that home run at about 575 feet.

On August 16th, 1927, another of Ruths epic home runs cleared Comiskey Park in Chicagos right field roof and traveled an estimated 520 feet.

(Bill Jenkinson) Babe scheduled a game in Long Island at the American Rubber Company and it had been decided in advance that they were going to measure his longest drive.

So there was a specific batting exhibition that day for Babe Ruth only.

And there is very specific coverage in the local papers that the measurement of the longest drive on that particular occasion turned out to be 538 feet.

Now, why does that matter?

It matters because there isnt anybody in the game today who can do it.

(narrator) Outside of Major League stadiums, local lore would grow up around the memorable homers that Ruth hit in dozens of small towns across America during his traveling exhibition games.

Today, more than a few small towns claim to be the site where Babe Ruth hit his longest home run.

(Father Gabriel Costa) I think Ruth going to these places was like a carnival atmosphere.

I think it was Waite Hoyt who said people came in wagon trains, they came on the prairies.

(Bill Jenkinson) It was common, usual in fact, for those cities to declare half holidays.

The banks would close, the schools would close, everyone wanted to maximize their opportunities to rub shoulders with Babe Ruth.

(jaunty piano music) Well, in terms of getting along with the inmates, remember, Babe grew up in an orphanage in Baltimore which was also a place where people sent incorrigible kids.

Now, Babe was only seven when he went there, how incorrigible could he have been?

But those were his friends, those were the people he grew up with, so there may have been some connection there to St.

Marys home for orphans.

(Roger Panetta) He could identify with them, his simplicity, the sense in which life had given him a break, and the sense in which these men in Sing Sing really had not gotten a break or had had bad breaks.

So I think that intimacy of experience, that sense of the precariousness of life, is something that they could relate to.

(David Goewey) Thats another thing I think Lawes did was humanize prison and mainstream it.

You know, the Yankees, you cant get much more mainstream than that, and bringing them to Sing Sing I think was probably a really positive cultural event.

(suspenseful piano music) Hey boys, what time is it?

Its 1:30, Babe!

Eh, what does it matter to you?

You aint goin anywhere anyways!

(laughter) -Strike!

-Thats a ball.

Youre a robber.

Hey, you dont have to get personal.

(laughter) (lively jazz music) (narrator) The 1927 Yankees are often referred to as the greatest team in baseball history.

Ruth was joined by sluggers Bob Meusel and Lou Gehrig who had joined the Yankees as a 20-year-old in 1923.

(Father Gabriel Costa) Imagine having Ruth and Gehrig.

I mean, for crying out loud.

How were you gonna win?

But Gehrig seemed to-- Id have to check this out-- In virtually every game, Im sure, 1927, he batted fourth, Ruth batted third, and of course in 1929, when the Yankees had the numbers on their backs, Ruth was 3 cause he batted third, Gehrig was 4 because he batted fourth.

Well, Ruth had 60 home runs in 1927.

That means Gehrig got up 60 times with the bases empty at least.

He had 175 RBIs and records might have even changed, it might be 176 now.

I mean, how do you do that?

How do you do that?

Ruth and Gehrig, no way, no way.

Its just unbelievable.

(jaunty music) (narrator) Off the field, Ruth was known as someone who enjoyed life to the fullest.

He stayed out late, drank too much, and kept company with the ladies.

The American public did not hold these traits against him and in some ways, loved him all the more because of them.

Most saw in Ruths roguish ways someone who was a big kid at heart: playful and sometimes naughty, but also innocent, honest, and well-meaning.

This may be the reason that children especially took to Ruth and Ruth took to them.

Ruth always made himself available to sign autographs for young fans or participate in charity events.

(Bill Jenkinson) I believe his greatest attribute was his ability to give hope to his fellow man.

Now, I have to acknowledge that none of this would have been possible if he hadnt been a transcendent athlete.

That was his platform.

(narrator) Under new rules instituted in the early 1920s, players were also barred from wearing their Major League uniforms in games against Negro league teams during barnstorming games.

At a time when segregation was institutionalized across America and many white Major League players refused to play against the Negro league teams, Ruth embraced the Negro leagues and was a popular figure with the African American community.

(Bill Jenkinson) When he structured his barnstorming tour after the 20 season, he scheduled five games against the African American teams and it got a lot of attention.

A lot of people didnt like it.

He didnt care, he did it anyway.

(solemn music) (spirited horn music) From my desk within the walls of Sing Sing I see daily the constantly increasing numbers of boys and young men who are committed to prison.

A very great proportion of these boys could have been made into law-abiding, resourceful citizens.

Here is a group I would like you to scrutinize.

You may be shocked by their youth, yet they are typical of the small army of young men that make up a major portion of the population of our prisons.

Why havent we some plan for youth that will take our young people off the row?

(narrator) Some of his critics held that a warden should not be so interested in public relations and argued that beyond using his notoriety to promulgate his views, Lawes simply enjoyed the limelight.

(newsreel announcer) Author, warden, heres Lewis E. Lawes in 1930.

Just about time head of New York States most famous penal institution was being hailed as author of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing.

(narrator) Lawes 1927 book, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, would be turned into a Hollywood movie in 1932, starring Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis, and the Broadway play Lawes wrote in the 1930s titled "Chalked Out" would later be adapted into a film titled "You Cant Get Away with Murder" in 1939, starring Humphrey Bogart.

(David Goewey) He was a famous author, he had, you know, a famous movie made from his book, he had a radio show.

He hit all the nightclubs, all the night spots, he and his wife.

He had a real public reputation to uphold and, you know, he certainly was showbiz bit.

(narrator) At the same time, accusations that Warden Lawes was too lenient were the outgrowth of a growing public frustration with crime and criminals.

When the number of homicides throughout the U.S.

reached a record high in 1926, writer Frederick Hoffman voiced a prevailing sentiment as he complained... ("Frederick Hoffman") Our murder rate of approximately 12,000 persons each year is the most serious indictment of American civilization and evidence of lawlessness which has no counterpart in any other country in the world.

(narrator) Throughout the country, calls for tougher laws met with widespread approval.

In New York State, one approach for cracking down on crime took the form of new legislation.

Enacted in 1926, Baumes Laws caused unrest in the prisons as they lengthened the date of parole for many inmates and added to a sense of hopelessness.

(Ralph Blumenthal) Four felonies and some of them were pretty minor-- drinking, stealing a car you know, could be aggravated loitering, a fight-- it wasnt hard in those days, especially for black people who were the butt of a lot of very strict enforcement, to accumulate three felonies and then a fourth would land them in prison for life.

(narrator) The ways in which Baumes Laws limited parole, coupled with the increasing crime and incarceration rates, meant that all of New York States prisons had become dangerously overcrowded by the end of the 1920s.

For example, when Warden Lawes took charge of Sing Sing in 1920, the inmate population stood at 1,096.

By the summer of 1929, newspapers announced a record-breaking inmate population of 1,850, an increase of nearly 70 percent in less than a decade.

These volatile conditions represented a powder keg that only needed a spark for the situation to explode.

The hottest days of the summer at the end of July and early August of 1929 provided that spark.

On July 22, 1929, in Dannemora State Prison in Clinton, New York, 1,300 prisoners charged the prison walls in a frenzied attempt to escape.

Two buildings were set ablaze and watchtower guards opened fire with machine guns, killing three inmates.

In the melee, several guards were stoned and beaten.

The inmates only surrendered when state troopers and a local infantry division arrived with an arsenal of heavy guns, tear gas, and grenades.

It was the deadliest and most destructive riot that Dannemora had ever seen.

(somber music) Governor Roosevelt toured through the smoking grounds of the prison from his limousine shortly after the fighting had stopped.

Six days later, at Auburn State Prison in Cayuga County, inmates sprayed acid in a guards face and gained access to the arsenal.

Auburns 1700 inmates rioted, setting fire to workhouses.

Four inmates escaped over the wall and two prisoners were shot dead.

Four officers were wounded in the five-hour battle before reinforcements arrived to put down the riot.

It was not lost on Roosevelt, who was urgently hoping to avoid any further conflagrations and get the prison system under control, that the states other maximum security prison, Sing Sing, had managed to stay calm during the unusually violent summer of 1929.

Governor Roosevelt sent Warden Lawes a confidential memo and survey, asking for his views on the controversial Baumes Laws, as well as what other reforms might be needed in New York State prisons.

Despite the publics perception that Sing Sing was an oasis of calm amidst the storm, the reality was quite different.

One prisoner had escaped on August 2nd.

Guards also discovered a tunnel that inmates were in the process of digging.

Somehow, the inmates had managed to dig the tunnel and dispose of seven truckloads of dirt without the dirt being discovered.

These incidents, as well as news of the violent eruptions at the other prisons, added to the tension.

Rumors of riots percolated through Sing Sing and Lawes brought certain inmates in for questioning.

A riot at Sing Sing could not only be deadly but coming on the heels of the other riots would shatter public confidence in the ability of the state to control the prison population.

Inmate morale was low and something was urgently needed to change the atmosphere.

(bright piano music) The short but miraculous announcement that none other than Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees were coming to Sing Sing on September 5th cast a beam of light through the despair that enveloped Sing Sing in August of 1929.

The effect on the inmates was immediate.

A 1929 article in Baseball Magazine recounted that the inmates were choked with joy and intoxicated with delight on hearing that Ruth and the Yankees were coming.

In an interview during the period, athletic director Gerald Curtin underscored the importance of the national pastime to the prisoners.

("Gerald Curtin") It is impossible to overestimate what baseball means to these men.

It is their chief link with the outside world and their main interest here.

(narrator) The wardens secretary added... ("secretary") Youd be surprised at the interest that these men have in baseball.

Why, even the inmates in the death house have asked the wardens permission to listen to the broadcast of the World Series games.

(narrator) For the inmates, September 5th couldnt come fast enough.

Ruth understood he was the star attraction that day and performed his role to perfection.

Maybe he didnt articulate this, but he realized, "There but for the grace of God, I could have been one of these guys."

(narrator) At the same time, the brief tour of the prison before the game included a stark reminder of the gravity of crime and punishment.

During his tour, Ruth sat in the electric chair for a moment and the journalists remarked that even the normally garrulous Ruth was quiet and contemplative for about a half hour afterwards.

A group of baseball reporters traveled with the Yankees to Sing Sing that day and recorded the game in poetic language.

("journalist") The day began as gray as the gloomy old cell house down by the river.

But just before the game started, the sun came out.

The rain gods didnt have the heart to spoil Sing Sings fun.

And Ruths.

("reporter") The Babe swung.

The horsehide whistled out through the air.

It overcame the greatest obstacle in Sing Sing and escaped triumphant.

That blow will be remembered as long as any of those who saw it live.

He was mightier than even those misguided souls dreamed he could be.

(lively piano music) (narrator) During his first at bat, Ruth drove a double through the infield.

He would then hit three consecutive homers over the prison wall.

It would be his first home run that day, which came in the second inning, that would become the stuff of legend.

The ball ascended high into the air and in a flash it traveled 320 feet from home plate, easily clearing the 40-foot-high prison wall and the center field guard tower.

The blast was so powerful that the guards in the center field watchtower left their machine guns to see how far the ball would soar.

The ball crossed the New York Central Railroad tracks before landing on a bluff.

While many of the details of the Sing Sing exhibition game would soon be forgotten, the lure around Babe Ruths second inning home run became something of a local legend.

It was soon rumored to be Ruths longest home run ever.

Now, if we believe the oral history, which tells us the ball landed on a hill slightly below the admin building, then were talking about a drive of close to 600 feet.

If you take the more conservative data, which tells us that the ball passed just barely to the right of the guardhouse in dead center field and cleared the six sets of railroad tracks, then were talking about a distance of 500 feet.

And my guess is that the 520 is probably as reliable as were gonna get and weve already talked about the standards and its bordering on the superhuman.

(somber piano music) (narrator) Lawes lowest moment and the lowest for many of Sing Sing inmates occurred on October 30th, 1937, when Kathryn Lawes, who had been called the "Angel of Sing Sing," died unexpectedly.

The news of Kathryns death shocked the entire prison population.

Talking it over, the inmates made a daring, almost impossible demand of the grief-stricken warden.

They wanted to leave the grounds of Sing Sing to join the funeral procession to St.

Augustines Church in the village of Ossining.

Speaking on behalf of his fellow inmates, Joseph Mallon pleaded with Lawes.

("Joseph Mallon") We who knew her for her beneficence, her great personal sacrifices, her deep mother love, with always lending a hand to the downtrod, can best appreciate her virtues.

(narrator) While another warden would have rejected such a request, he instinctively knew none of these men would mar such a sacred event by attempting to flee.

Lawes ordered that the south gate of Sing Sing be opened and the prisoners were instructed to check back in after the service.

Hundreds of prisoners walked out of Sing Sing to join the procession.

Every one of them checked back in.

Principal keep John Sheehy later said, "I dont know how it was done.

I cant believe it."

Warden Lawes firmly held convictions and the public perception of his efforts would be fundamentally shaken in April of 1941.

Working with two outside collaborators, three inmates arranged to have guns and handcuffs smuggled into Sing Sing from a milk truck that made a regular delivery to the prison from Newburgh.

One of the inmates who had special privileges was able to remove the guns from underneath the milk truck unseen.

The three inmates then killed a guard and fled the prison.

(solemn music) When they were stopped at the Ossining railroad depot, they killed an Ossining patrolman whose partner, in turn, killed one of the escapees.

(David Goewey) He made some serious mistakes that night, the main one being that he didnt blow the whistle and notify the town that there were men out.

He didnt know there were men out.

It was all relying on all of his experience, the men never got out.

So the odds were that they were still inside.

And so he orchestrated a massive top to bottom search of the place.

And so it did come down on him that he did not look for the men outside; he looked for them inside first.

(narrator) Lawes stayed on until the two escapees could be tried.

Though an independent commission absolved Lawes of any mismanagement, in July of 1941, he announced his resignation.

It ruined his reputation and it really tarnished his legacy, this legacy that hed worked so hard to establish and maintain.

The men who did get out had violated the trust that hed put in them and people didnt do that.

You didnt violate trust, you didnt bite Lawes hand.

This was the man who was, you know, helping you change your life, who was bringing you out of whatever hell you were in and giving you a chance; he was believing in you.

And these men, you know, spurned that.

(narrator) He had been the warden of Sing Sing for 21 years.

At age 57, he had spent 36 years serving the State of New York from inside a prison.

2,400 prisoners gathered in the Sing Sing chapel to wish him goodbye.

Lawes suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died in April 1947.

In its obituary, The New York Times eulogized Lawes as "a man who left a healing touch on one of the sorest spots of society."

A more personal tribute came in the form of a letter from a California man when Lawes announced his retirement from Sing Sing.

The man wrote... ("letter writer") You have proven one thing to me: that a man can be big even though he spends his life among many who are not.

(David Goewey) He saw that rehabilitation was achieved through trust, seeing inmates as human beings.

After he left Sing Sing and hed be out taking a cab in New York or going to a restaurant, the waiter would not bring him the check and say, "Im one of the boys."

The taxi driver wouldnt take his fare, "Im one of the boys."

(narrator) In 1935, Ruth played one of his last exhibition games against the New York Cubans, a Negro league team.

("reporter") There should be a huge turnout when the Wizard of Whack plays the Cubans in Harlem as Babe Ruths popularity knows neither race, creed, or color.

(narrator) Ruth didnt finish the 1935 season.

He officially retired from Major League Baseball on June 2nd of that year.

For all the devoted fans of Americas pastime, the brightness of Ruths star could never be diminished.

He died in August of 1948.

Looking back years later, his former teammate, Harry Hooper, mused about baseballs greatest player.

"Sometimes I still cant believe what I saw.

This 19-year-old kid, crude, poorly educated, gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and a symbol of baseball the world over.

A man loved by more people and with an intensity of feeling that perhaps has never been equaled before or since."

(crowd) So its one, two, three strikes, youre out at the old ball game ("Babe Ruth") Baseball is the greatest game in the world and deserves the best you can give it.

(crowd cheering) (dramatic piano music)