Babe Ruth

1895–1948 · 53 years Tier I

A Baltimore reform school taught him shirtmaking, carpentry and hitting

Portrait of Babe Ruth — Irwin, La Broad, &amp — Pudlin. — 1920 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

He was born on Emory Street in Pigtown, a Baltimore neighborhood named for the animals driven through it, to parents of German descent who kept a grocery and saloon. He spoke German as a child. Seven of his siblings died in infancy and only his sister Mamie lived. On June 13, 1902, at seven, he was entered at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys and written down as incorrigible, and he stayed for most of the next 12 years. The Xaverian Brothers taught him shirtmaking and carpentry, and he was still adjusting his own collars when he was famous. Brother Matthias Boutlier, the prefect of discipline, taught him to hit. The other boys had a nickname for him built out of a racial slur.

Before he was a slugger he was one of the best left-handers in the league: 89 wins for Boston at an earned run average of 2.19, 23 and 12 with nine shutouts in 1916, and 29 and two-thirds scoreless innings in the World Series. Harry Frazee sold him to New York on December 26, 1919 for 100,000 dollars and a 350,000-dollar loan. He finished with 714 home runs and a career pitching record of 94 and 46. What that did to baseball and to the country is BriefHistory's ground. This page is about what it did to him.

The marriage ended in a way he could not manage. He and Helen Woodford separated around 1925 over what the record calls his repeated infidelities and neglect, and in January 1929 she died at 31 in a house fire in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she had been living with a dentist named Edward Kinder as Mrs. Kinder. Three months later Ruth married Claire Hodgson. The daughter he and Helen had adopted in 1921, Dorothy, wrote in 1988 that she was in fact his biological child by a mistress named Juanita Jennings, and that Jennings had admitted it to her in 1980. What he wanted at the end of his playing career was to manage a major league club. He was never offered one. The Yankees hired McCarthy and the Tigers hired Cochrane, and the reason given was his behavior.

He was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer in 1946 and never told: his family was afraid of what he would do with the information. Doctors treated him with teropterin, a folic acid derivative, possibly as the first human subject. His case was presented at a scientific meeting under no name. On June 13, 1948 he walked onto the field for the 25th anniversary of Yankee Stadium leaning on a bat, and Nat Fein photographed him from behind and won a Pulitzer. He died on August 16 at 8:01 in the evening, aged 53. His open casket stood in the stadium rotunda for two days and 77,000 people filed past. He is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Babe Ruth's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Twenty-nine and two-thirds scoreless World Series innings other
A pitching record built across the 1916 and 1918 Series for Boston 1918
Sixty home runs in a season other
He broke his own record of 59, set in 1921 1927
Election to the Baseball Hall of Fame other
One of the first five men chosen, on 95.1 percent of the ballots 1936
The Babe Ruth Story book
Almost entirely ghostwritten — by then he was too ill to help with it 1948

Life in brief

with age at each point

June 13, 1902 aged 7 Entered at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys at seven The school recorded him as incorrigible. He was there for most of 12 years.
July 11, 1914 aged 19 Debuts for the Boston Red Sox Jack Dunn of the Baltimore Orioles had signed him earlier that year. Veterans called him Dunn's babe.
1916 aged ~21 Wins 23 games with nine shutouts and a 1.75 earned run average
December 26, 1919 aged 24 Sold to the Yankees for 100,000 dollars and a 350,000-dollar loan The sale was announced on January 6, 1920.
January 1929 aged 33 Helen Woodford dies at 31 in a house fire in Watertown, Massachusetts He married Claire Hodgson on April 17 and adopted her daughter Julia.
1930 aged ~35 Asked why he should be paid more than President Hoover He said the president got a four-year contract and he was only asking for three.
May 30, 1935 aged 40 Plays his last game, for the Boston Braves He had been promised a vice presidency and a share of the profits. None of it came.
April 27, 1947 aged 52 Babe Ruth Day at Yankee Stadium He addressed nearly 60,000 people in a whisper.
June 13, 1948 aged 53 Appears at Yankee Stadium for the last time, using a bat as a cane Nat Fein's photograph of him from behind won the Pulitzer Prize.