His polite and proper Southern drawl makes you feel at ease and his wide smile can still charm ladies of any age.

Bill Werber will celebrate his 100th birthday this June. He needs a wheelchair to move about the senior housing facility in North Carolina he calls home; but his mind is sharp and the memories of a life well led are as vivid as ever.

Werber is, by several accounts, the oldest living baseball player; the last man alive to play with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. In fact, as a young Yankee prospect, he briefly travelled with the legendary 1927 Murderer's Row team during his summer break from Duke University.

"The Yankees were pretty hostile. I was scared," says Werber.

"They were crude and didn't have time to fool around with a college kid. But they were darn good ballplayers."

In fact, many regard the 1927 Yankees as the best team ever and Werber's experiences with them and later with the 1930 and '33 Yankees are recounted in "The Legacy of Yankee Stadium" - a WNBC-TV special set to air Saturday, March 22nd at 7pm.

Werber's stories are, to be blunt, very salty and reflective of a different time.

Werber's time with the Yankees was brief but on the train trips that carried the Yankees to opposing cities, Werber became a regular in a "bridge" game that included Ruth, Gehrig and another Hall of Famer, Bill Dickey.

"Whenever the train would start," Werber recalls, "Babe would say, cut the cards. Ruth was a good bridge player; Gehrig, fair. Babe would sip Scotch throughout the game and often, would make Gehrig mad and Lou would throw the cards."

Of the two baseball immortals, Werber says, "I liked them both."

According to Werber, Ruth fundamentally had a good heart and his love for kids knew no bounds.

""The Yankees were sitting around the lobby of a hotel in Detroit and Ruth noticed this kid was shaking because it was cold. And Ruth peeled out two twenty dollar bills and told the kid to go buy an overcoat."

Of Gehrig, Werber says, "He didn't drink. He didn't smoke. Gehrig took his mother to spring training. He was an exemplary fellow but kind of a momma's boy."

Bill Werber has written several books about his life in baseball - a career that saw him play 10 years for the Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia A's, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants. In 1940, his .370 average led the Reds as they won the World Series.

Werber remains a baseball treasure - the last link to baseball's golden era and the men who defined it.

Bill Werber's memories of the Babe are part of a new WNBC-TV special - The Legacy of Yankee Stadium- set to air Saturday, March 22nd at 7p.m.

NBC 4HD'S Yankee Special: The one-hour special explores the 85 year history of the ballpark we know as Yankee Stadium. A tour of the stadium will be accompanied by rarely seen footage of the events and moments that took place there including never before seen color footage of Don Larsen's perfect game. And it's not all baseball! Popes, rock stars, gridiron gladiators and movie stars all graced the field in the house that Ruth built.