God, it's frustrating reading argumentative threads like this.
Why hasn't anyone posted the source photo that apparently is so well known????
After digging and digging, I ran across this image which is purportedly from a
1928 Japanese magazine...
BabeRuth1928Japanesemagazine2.jpg
They made the player much more squat looking and darkened everything, while removing a good amount of his telltale facial features
(most notably the eyes) to probably turn him into a more generic 'ballplayer.'
To me, this is another example of:
732. Shtick Figures (also
Packsimiles)
The colorful illustrations of baseball players found adorning vintage wrappers, boxes and other packaging which were obviously intended to resemble real major leaguers, but whose facial and/or other features were altered slightly to make them ‘different’ people.
BabeRuth1928JapanesemagazineCOMP2.jpg