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When I first talked to Wayne about his scooter I asked him why he based it on a foreign sportsman from a bygone age of a sport that isn't really played here. I wondered if it he was just a frustrated custom scooter builder who couldn't really think of a theme and just picked Babe Ruth, as some custom builders base a scooter on a band because they like one of their records or a film that they though was okay but nothing special.
No, Wayne is genuinely interested in baseball and the New York Yankees and Babe Ruth in particular.
"What other sport could a fat, womanising, pisshead be the best in the world at?". Fair enough, none of the darts players have a real reputation for shagging loads of birds and none of the football stars are really that fat.
Waynes interest extends to paying for old baseball books to be posted from the states, and his knowledge of Babe Ruths's on and off the field activities is formidable.
Heres Waynes explanation of the character:
"Babe Ruth was to baseball in the '20's what George Best was to football in the '70's. A total extrovert, brilliant, unpredictable, unshameless.
But where the similarities end is Babe Ruth smashed all the records, won world series, and reached his full potential in his chosen field, whereas Best let his situation get the better of him.
Babe Ruth, brought up in Baltimore at an Industrial school (reform), first showed his talents to the Baltimore Orioles, going on to the Boston red sox (major leaguers) where he became the best left-handed pitcher of his day.
He was then traded to the New York Yankees where he became an outfield player and was to become, with his monster hitting achievements, the best baseball player of all time.
He also broke records off the field as well, regularly eating the whole menus at restaurants, drinking, smoking, cars, women - always taken in excess. He had a real liking for the 'good living' of the day. His idolisation with the fans was to make the Yankess build a new stadium just so they could all see him play.
Oh to have such talent, money, success, adoration - Are we back to George Best?"
By far the most interesting story Wayne told me was of one night in a hotel when the Yankees were touring and Babe Ruth had picked up a girl and taken her back to the hotel. In the morning a team-mate asked how many times Babe Ruth had shagged the girl. Babe said he couldn't remember but that everytime he'd finished he'd had a cigar. There were 18 cigar butts in the ashtray.
It comes as no surprise then, with this sort of performance that he eventually died of throat cancer.
One thing you notice is that these, for me, are some of the best black and white murals John Spurgeon has ever done; this always seems the way when he is presented with someone who has a passion for the subject and a real idea of what they want done rather than just asking for it to be 'blue with pikshurs of dragons on'.
The motor in Wayne's scooter has had a lot of attention from some bloke he sees down the pub. This particular bloke has welded, ported and steel linered an AF TS1 kit to take a Yamaha piston. The boost ports out of the inlet have been moved so that the piston ring pegs don't need moving (always a dodgy business) and at the moment the machine sports a fully blown prototype exhaust.
We ran it on the Allgear Tools dyno at Coventry (0203 667525) to find that it was the most powerful roadgoing scooter we've tested at nigh on 25 horsepower, which we could probably have bettered with a few jetting changes.
All that and good looks too. I wonder what Babe Ruth would have thought of it. He probably would have preferred a few bottles of Jack Daniels and a good bunk up as it goes.
