North Carolina lost a link to one of the most historic baseball games ever played in the state when Woodrow L. "Woody" Lambeth, 95, died recently in Brevard. Well into his 90s, Lambeth liked to talk about the day State College, now N.C. State, played against Babe Ruth and the Boston Braves in a game that was stopped when Fayetteville ran out of baseballs.

"He loved to show the clippings, especially to young people," said Lambeth's daughter Jeanny Lambeth Hart. "It was one of his favorite stories."

A successful textile executive and an avid golfer, Lambeth was an All-Southern Conference selection in baseball and as a basketball guard.

"Dad was a great athlete," Hart said. "Up until a couple of years ago, you could tell he was an athlete by the way he walked. He moved like a man in his 60s when he was in his 90s."

Lambeth had three hits in the 6-2 exhibition game loss to the Braves.

April 5, 1935 was proclaimed "Babe Ruth Day" in Fayetteville. Mayor Q.K. Nimocks Jr. declared a business holiday and a crowd estimated at between 7,000 and 10,000 crowded into Highland Park, which had a seating capacity of 3,000.

The Boston Braves were headed north from spring training, and Fayetteville arranged the game to honor Ruth, who made his first professional appearance there in 1914 in an intrasquad game played at Fair Grounds Park.

Ray Freeman of Wake Forest, 94, believes he is now the last living player from the game.

"I remember Woody well," Freeman said last week. "He was the shortstop and probably was our best hitter. He hit the ball well that day against major league pitching."

The game was begun with 40 baseballs, but spectators were encouraged to keep any ball they could get a hand on.

Spectators packed the foul lines and eventually moved into the outfield.

One fan stopped the game when she walked on the field and got Ruth, who was playing first base, to autograph her souvenir ball.

The players even got into the souvenir hunt.

State reserve Mason Bugg went into the stands and got a couple of souvenir balls for himself.

When the initial supply of baseballs was down to four, the owner of a local store was summoned from the stands and sent to get more balls.

Later, it was announced that every new baseball in town was at the park.

Bugg was pinch hitting with two men on base, including Lambeth, who had singled, when the game was stopped in the seventh inning.

Bugg volunteered to give up his two souvenir balls, but umpire Robert Dunn declared the game over.

Anthony J. McKevlin, The News & Observer sports editor at the time, wrote:

"The game ended at the right time. Everyone went away happy -- and whole. Had it continued, someone probably would have been seriously hurt by a line smash ... the fans were getting closer and closer."

As for Ruth, in his final baseball appearance in the state, he walked twice, hit into a double play and was struck out by Freeman, a lefty who recently had begun experimenting with what he called his "underhand delivery."

His first pitch in the sixth inning almost struck Ruth in the head and the aging star dove to avoid being hit.

The next two pitches were wide and the fans booed Freeman for not throwing a strike.

Ruth missed a 3-0 sidearm curveball, fouled off another sidearm curve and swung so hard at the third strike, an overhand curveball, that he fell down.

"When I faced Ruth, he was on up in years and he carried a little paunch," Freeman recalled in 1977. "But even then, the Babe was mighty special."

Last week, Freeman remembered the Braves' Wally Berger, who led the National League with 34 home runs and 130 RBIs that season.

After walking Ruth in the fourth, Freeman threw a waist-high pitch over the middle of the plate. In those days, pitchers were told to never walk two batters in succession, Freeman said.

Berger hit it farther than any ball Freeman had ever seen.

"It was foul, but it went 500, 550 feet," said Freeman, who still attends N.C. State baseball games and goes to Wolfpack Club events.

Berger eventually hit a grounder to second that led to a State double play.

"I faced two of the best power hitters in baseball at the time, Ruth and Berger, and I survived," Freeman said.