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  Babe Ruth

A Biographical report for Sophomore P.E. By Jason Perry A1 December 6, 1999  

"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime."

--Babe Ruth

The Great Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the Babe. These nicknames spark a since of awe of wonder and amazement even 50 years after the person for whom these names applied had died. We know what the man did. Some people recite what he did from memory when they hear these nicknames. The man for whom these names apply is still at the heart and soul of the Americans everywhere. The man we are talking about is of course, Babe Ruth. The man who "called his shot" was, and is still, more than baseball. He is the Babe. Babe Ruth, though, was not a god. He was born like any other man. He died of a horrible disease. To many though he was more that a man, he is a legend. To understand the legend, we must begin at his beginnings.

George Herman Ruth, Jr. was born on February 6, 1895 in Baltimore, Maryland to George Herman and Kate Ruth. He did not have a happy childhood. He had seven other brothers and sisters, but only one, a sister named Mamie, survived beyond childhood. George, Jr.’s father worked as a bartender for many years until he was able to open his own shop. His mother also worked at the family tavern. The long hours and frustrating work, however, took its toll. The Ruth’s did not spend much time with their children, thus little George had fend for himself on the streets of Baltimore. After a while, George’s father realized he could no longer take care of him so his father brought him to the St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys and signed over custody of George to the Xaverian Brothers, Jesuit missionaries who over saw the day-to-day running of the school. St. Mary’s served a dual purpose as a reformatory and an orphanage, which looked more like a jail that a school. In attendance at the school were 800 boys who were separated into 4 dorms of 200 boys each. George, Jr. was not a saint at the age of seven when he arrived at the school having been involved in many "mischievous altercations." Often times this "incorrigible" Ruth was so bad at the school that he was sent back to his family. Every time he was shipped back to the school where no one every visited him.

Not all of his time at St. Mary’s was bad. There he met Brother Mathias. The Brother was THE disciplinarian at the school. As you might expect, Brother Mathias spent a great deal of quality time with George. Brother Mathias’ relationship with George, though, was more that a spanker and spankee one. Brother Mathias in many ways was like a father to him, giving him advice and support that he would not get from his deadbeat parents. It was from Brother Mathias that George learned how to play baseball. Baseball was a favorite pastime at St. Mary’s and George loved to play it constantly when he was not in trouble. Due to his difficult childhood and his interaction with Brother Mathias that George developed his lifelong love of kids. This would later manifest itself in his helping of children in need.

From Brother Mathias, George learned the schools favorite pasttime, baseball. At a young age, George seemed destined to make a name for himself in baseball. On February 21, 1914, George signed with the home team, the Baltimore Orioles of the minor league International League. There was one problem. When George’s parents gave custody of him to the Jesuits, he was to remain at the school till the age of twenty-one. George was nineteen at the time. To go around this problem, the manager of the Orioles, Jack Dunn, adopted George and became his legal guardian. How did George Ruth, Jr. become know as Babe Ruth? One day Dunn brought George to the ballpark to show him the ropes. When the other players saw the new player, one remarked, "Well, here’s Jack’s newest Babe." All the other players started calling him that and the rest is history.

Babe Ruth’s first moment in the sun came after the Boston Red Sox bought the Babe. On July 11, 1914, two weeks after Archduke Ferdinand was shot in Serbia, the left-handed Ruth pitched his first game against the Cleveland Indians. That year the Babe had a 2-1 record as a pitcher and had a .200 batting average. That same year, Babe Ruth married his first wife, Helen Woodford, a young waitress, on October 14 at the St. Paul Catholic Church in Maryland. The Babe continued to play great baseball, compiling a 89-46 record and a 2.19 ERA in six years as a pitcher in Boston and .308 batting average in the same span. As his time at Boston progressed, the manager there decided due to Ruth’s amazing hitting ability to de-emphasize him as a pitcher and make him an outfielder. Thus, in 1919, Babe Ruth hit a then league record of 29 home runs and a .322 batting average. This ability raised his salary to an amazing $10,000 and allowed him to by a house near Boston for him and his wife. The owner of the Red Sox, Harry Frazee, was in financial trouble at the time so he sold "The Babe" to the New York Yankees for $100,000 and $300,000 in loans. The Red Sox have not won a World Series since.

In the next two years, "The Babe" got better and better. Each year he broke the Home Run record, hitting 54 in 1920 and 59 in 1921. Babe Ruth thus had a three-year total of 113 home runs which earned him the nickname "The Sultan of Swat." His slugging percentage of .847 in 1920 is a record that still stands today. He was also the league leader in runs and RBIs with 158 and 137, respectively. He continued to bat strong throughout the ‘20’s. He had a .393 batting average in 1923 and won the batting title in 1924 with a .378 batting average. His swing still rung with 35 home runs in 1922, 41 in 1923, and 46 in 1924. An abdominal abscess afflicted the Great Bambino in 1925, but he still had a respectable 25 home runs and a .290 batting average. Babe Ruth in 1926 hit 47 home runs and had a .372 batting average.

During this time in New York, Babe Ruth and his wife Helen moved into the Ansonia Hotel, a place where many celebs lived in The Big Apple. Helen, though, was not a very out-going person and shunned the attention that her husband was getting. So Helen moved back to their house near Boston. There she stayed on the 200 acre farm with the daughter that George and Helen adopted in 1921, Dorothy. Sadly, Helen Woodford Ruth died in a fire on January 11, 1929. It did not take long for Ruth to marry again. He met a widow from Georgia named Claire Hodgeson and they were married on April 17, 1929 at the St. Gregory Catholic Church in New Work. Claire had a daughter from her previous marriage named Julia. In October of 1930, Ruth adopted Julia and his second wife Claire did the same with Dorothy. On the baseball field, Ruth was playing the seasons that would define his career.

In 1927, the Yankees were unstoppable with their new threat, Lou Gerig. In fact the team won 110 games and lost 44. Babe Ruth set a record of 60 home runs that would only be beat by three players, Roger Maris in 1961, Sammy Sosa in 1998 and 1999, and Mark McGwire in 1998 and 1999. He also had a batting average of .356. In 1932, Ruth hit his famous "called shot" in which he pointed to the center field bleachers and hit a home run to there. It is still being argued whether that actually happened, but whether it was real or made up, it magnified his status as more than just a great baseball player, but a legend for all times.

In 1935, Babe Ruth’s playing days were over on June 2, 1935 after playing 7 years in Boston (6 as a Red Sock, 1 as Brave in 1935) and 15 years in New York as a Yankee. In that time he hit an amazing 714 home runs that was only beat by Hank Aaron in 1974, had a .342 career batting average, is all-time leader in home run percentage with 8.5, walks with 2056, and slugging percentage with .690. He hit 15 home runs in over 40 games in over 7 World Series. He also led the league in home runs in an amazing 12 seasons. He is in the top ten in NINE World Series categories. Babe Ruth had a stunning career but his life went on after baseball.

On February 2, 1936, Babe Ruth became one of the first members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY after receiving 95% of the vote. In his later years, he enjoyed his other hobby golf and spent his days with his wife Claire. Sadly, Babe Ruth’s days of chewing tobacco caught up with him and he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Even after surgeons went into remove the tumor and Babe received radiation treatment, the cancer could not be stopped. Babe Ruth died on August 16, 1948 at the age of 53. He left behind his wife Claire who died in 1976 and his daughters Julia and Dorothy. His body laid in state for two days in front of Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built. Thousands of mourners, some were astonished as adults, some were in awe as children, some never saw him play but still were in amazement of the legend of the Great Bambino.

Babe Ruth, despite the tremendous numbers of home runs he hit and his record slugging percentage, was just a man. He was born in humble beginnings and he died of a disease that was most likely caused by bad habits when he was younger. Despite his character flaws, he rose above them and became greater than ourselves. He perfected the game of baseball and played so well he was like a machine. Despite his mortal body, his playing ability makes him immortal.

"Heroes come and go, but legends never die."

"Babe Ruth’s Lifetime Stats." The Babe Ruth Home Page. Http://www.baberuth.com/stats.html (25 November 1999).