Let's party! Sunday is Babe & Elvis Day, so swing for the fences, sing to the heavens

If you’re having the family over for the big holiday Sunday (Aug. 16), this column suggests you serve ‘em fried peanut butter/banana/bacon sandwiches, hot dogs, gin, beer, steak, eggs, eels and apple pie—one pie per guest. Don’t forget the cigars.

Your goal: Make the typical Thanksgiving dinner look like Ghandi’s brunch.

Hey, it’s Babe & Elvis Day, when America celebrates every kind of excess, including joy, fun, and gluttony.

Swing big, sing big.

You’re probably new to Babe & Elvis Day, which I invented. Here’s the deal:

Every August 16^th, we should celebrate the mystical connection between Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley, the two greatest pop culture icons and forces of nature in American history. Nobody turned the status quo on its head like these two

Surely, it’s no coincidence that both of them died on August 16. Ruth passed away in 1948 at age 53; Presley in 1977 at 42.

Years ago, I was struck by similarities between the two men, and the more I looked, the more I found. Check out the following list and tell me that Babe and Elvis weren’t conjoined cosmic twin brothers.

--Both revolutionized—some say ruined—their art/sport by their stunning performances and the sheer power of their personalities.

--Both reached their prime as swivel-hipped gazelles—Ruth 6-2 and 185 pounds, Presley 6-0 1/2 and 175. Both morphed into fat slobs during their careers, 300-plus mounds of flab. Both periodically tried to get back into shape, Ruth with rigorous gym workouts, Presley with martial-arts training. Both died from their excesses, Ruth of throat cancer (he smoked up to 20 cigars per day) and Presley of run-amok pill abuse partially tied to fat-fighting.

--Both were born in squalor and rose to royalty—Babe became the Sultan of Swat, Elvis the King.

--Both were of partial German ancestry.

--Both loved Cadillacs. Drove ‘em, and gave ‘em away as gifts. Elvis saw a working woman gazing at Caddies in a showroom in Memphis, so he bought her one. Ruth gave a Caddie to his old reform-school mentor, Brother Matthias, and when Matthias wrecked it, Babe bought him another.

--Both were controlled, and in a sense ruined, by colonels. Yankees’ owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert bought Ruth from the Red Sox, a move that turned a struggling Yankees’ franchise into a dynasty and enabled the building of Yankee Stadium. So Ruppert benefitted enormously from the Babe, but in the end he denied Ruth his ambition to manage, and coldly traded him away. Presley’s manager, Colonel Parker, no doubt aided Elvis’ rise, but also steered him away from the roots and renegade music that defined him, into commercial pop treacle, and into acting, and took advantage of Elvis financially, cutting himself in for 50 percent of the earnings, far above the agent’s standard 10 to 15 percent.

--Ruth and Presley were both sometimes mistaken for being Black. Elvis rose to fame in a radio-dominant era, and because of his kick-ass style and choice of music, many people assumed he was Black. With Babe, there is a long-running cultural investigation into whether or not he had Black ancestry.

--Both were instrumental in breaking down racial barriers. Ruth was the first big baseball star to barnstorm against Black teams, he mingled with Blacks socially, and publicly praised their baseball ability at a time when most white players wanted no part of Black inclusion. There are plausible claims that one reason Ruth was denied an opportunity to manage was because he planned to bring Black players to his team, way before the game’s eventual integration in 1947. While some say Elvis ripped off Black music, what he did was embrace it, honor it, and help bring it to the cultural/commercial mainstream. Little Richard said of Elvis, “He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn’t let Black music through. He opened the door for Black music.”

--Both went Hollywood. Babe made 10 Hollywood feature films and cinematic shorts, often playing himself or a version of himself. Elvis made 33 movies, often playing a version of himself.

--Each had one biological offspring, a daughter.

--They liked young girls. When Ruth was 19, he married Helen Woodford, who was 16. When Presley was 24, in the army in Germany, he met and fell in love with Priscilla Beaulieu, who was 14. He moved back to America and she followed him to Memphis when she was 17. They married four years later.

--Elvis was born in 1935, a few months before the start of Babe’s final big-league season. When Babe died in ’48, Elvis and his family were in the process of packing to move from Mississippi to Memphis, where he would be discovered.

--They had healing powers. Mothers brought sick children to be touched by Elvis. Babe’s hospital visits gave gravely ill kids the will to live.

--Elvis loved sports, Babe loved to sing. Elvis had a No. hit with “My Babe.” Babe owned hound dogs. Both men played the piano.

--Towards the end, Elvis walked with a cane, Babe leaned on a bat.

--We started this column with a mention of gluttony, so let’s close with that. Babe and Elvis were pigs, straight up. One staple of Elvis’ diet was called the Fool’s Gold Loaf—a hollowed-out loaf of sourdough bread stuffed with a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly and a pound of bacon. Serves one. Babe, before one doubleheader, drank a pint of bourbon and a pint of ginger ale. Between games he ate 11 hot dogs, a jar of pickled eels, a quart of ice cream and an apple. He was rushed to the hospital, moaning, “I knew I never shoulda ate that apple.”

On Sunday, do it right. Swing from the heels, sing from the heart, live large, dream big, eat big, drink big, don’t sleep, smoke a stogie, break new ground, break old rules, break records.