Ruth Teammate, World Series Champ

Bill Werber, who was the oldest living major-league baseball player and the last surviving teammate of Babe Ruth's and who later owned an insurance agency in Washington, died Jan. 22 at the Carriage Club retirement community in Charlotte. He was 100.

He had diabetes, but his son said the specific cause of death could not be determined.

Mr. Werber was a speedy infielder who led the American League in stolen bases three times over an 11-year career. He was considered the spark plug of the 1939 and 1940 National League champion Cincinnati Reds and helped lead the Reds to the World Series title in 1940.

He was the teammate of no fewer than 13 members of the Hall of Fame, none of whom was more memorable than Ruth, the New York Yankee slugger of the 1920s and 1930s. Over the years, Mr. Werber entertained sportswriters with tales of the Babe, whom he knew well.

Ruth was "good-natured, amoral, loving, loud, rough, vulgar, but kind and considerate, especially with the kids," Mr. Werber wrote in his 2000 autobiography, "Memories of a Ballplayer."

He first met Ruth in 1927, when the 19-year-old Mr. Werber was secretly signed to a contract by the Yankees while attending Duke University. He was taking a shower when he felt a warmer stream on his back. It was Ruth's crude way of welcoming the youngster to the big leagues.

Although Mr. Werber didn't officially play with the Yankees until 1930, he traveled with the team throughout much of the 1927 season, when Ruth hit a record 60 home runs.

Mr. Werber often played cards with Ruth and first baseman Lou Gehrig on train trips and later recalled that the two Yankee superstars could not have been more different.

"Lou was aloof and introverted and didn't like to be ribbed," he told the New York Times last year. "But he was the ultimate team player and stayed in the game through pain and broken bones. I never heard him complain."

After graduating from Duke, Mr. Werber joined the Yankees for a short stint late in the 1930 season. Once, when Ruth hit a home run, Mr. Werber raced around the bases to show off his speed. When Ruth returned to the dugout, he said, "Son, you don't have to run like that when the Babe hits one."

After a few more games with the Yankees in 1933, Mr. Werber was sold to the Boston Red Sox, where he was the starting third baseman. He had his finest season in 1934, with a batting average of .321, 200 hits, 129 runs and a league-leading 40 stolen bases. He led the American League in steals again in 1935 and 1937. With Cincinnati in 1939, he led the National League with 115 runs scored.

On Aug. 26, 1939, when Mr. Werber hit leadoff for the Reds in a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, he became the first batter to appear in a televised baseball game.

He was a member of the Reds only because he had alienated his previous owner and manager, Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics. According to a story Mr. Werber told The Washington Post's Dave Sheinin last year, Mack asked his players for lower salaries after a dismal season in 1938.

Mr. Werber, who by then had experience in insurance, wrote back: "In substance, Mr. Mack, what I would advise you to do is sell your ballclub and get into a more profitable business."

"That was a bad error," he told The Post. "A while later, Mr. [Warren] Giles called from Cincinnati and said, 'Bill, we've acquired your contract from Mr. Mack.' "

William Murray Werber was born June 20, 1908, in the Prince George's County community of Berwyn. He graduated from McKinley Tech High School in the District, he told The Post, after he was expelled from a school in Berwyn for writing a nasty poem about the principal.

At 5-feet-10 and 170 pounds, he excelled in baseball and basketball at Duke, where he was the first of the university's many all-American basketball players.

Mr. Werber's highest salary as a baseball player was $13,500. A year after he retired in 1942, he made $100,000 in the Washington insurance business founded by his father. He specialized in corporate pension plans and retired as a millionaire in 1973. The Werber Insurance Agency is still in family hands.

Mr. Werber lived in College Park for years, volunteered with the Boy Scouts and was active in the Rotary Club, Duke alumni groups and the Sigma Chi fraternity.

He retired to Naples, Fla., before settling in Charlotte in 1998. He enjoyed following basketball but gave up on baseball after watching the shaggy, unkempt Boston Red Sox win the World Series in 2004.

"They're a grubby-looking bunch of caterwaulers," he concluded.

His wife of 70 years, Kathryn Potter Werber, died in 2000.

Survivors include three children, William W. Werber of Rockville, Pat Bryant of Charlotte and Susie Hill of Durham, N.C.; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.