Babe Ruth

Baseball Player

• Born: February 6, 1895
• Place of Birth: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: August 16, 1948
• Place of Death: New York, New York

A remarkably talented athlete with a great flair for showmanship, Babe Ruth has come to symbolize baseball, the American national pastime.

Early Life

George Herman Ruth Jr., later known as Babe Ruth, was the son of George H. Ruth Sr. and Kate Schamberger Ruth. Some confusion exists about the younger Ruth’s actual date of birth. For many years, George Ruth believed that he had been born on February 7, 1894, but his birth certificate gives February 6, 1895, as his date of birth. George Ruth was the eldest of the eight children born to the Ruths, although only he and a sister (later Mrs. Wilbur Moberly) survived to adulthood. George Ruth’s mother (whose maiden name is sometimes spelled Schanberg) lived until her eldest son was thirteen. His father survived until young George’s second year in Major League Baseball.

The Ruths attempted to support their family through the operation of a barroom. Of his childhood, the dying Ruth told his biographer Bob Considine in 1947, “I was a bad kid. I say that without pride but with a feeling that it is better to say it.” Having discovered that their eldest child, George, was a fractious youth, George and Kate enrolled him in St. Mary’s Industrial School in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1902. Under the direction of the Xaverian Catholic Brothers, St. Mary’s served as a vocational school as well as an orphanage, boarding school, and reform school. It was at St. Mary’s that young Ruth studied to become a tailor and also learned to play baseball. Brother Matthias of St. Mary’s would hit fungoes to Ruth, who quickly seized on the game as a release from the studies and chores at St. Mary’s as well as a chance to demonstrate what Brother Matthias recognized as a remarkable skill in the popular game. To Ruth, Brother Matthias was not only a fielding, hitting, and pitching coach, but also “the father I needed.” Years later, at the height of his fame and popularity, Babe Ruth never forgot St. Mary’s or the Xaverian Brothers who had taught him so well.

In Baltimore, in 1914, there was a professional baseball team named the Orioles. At the time, the Orioles were a minor league team, owned and managed by Jack Dunn, who, after learning about Ruth’s great baseball promise, signed the young athlete to a contract. Ruth discovered that he did not have to become a tailor; he could make a living doing what he enjoyed most: playing baseball. On February 27, 1914, George Ruth left St. Mary’s to join the Baltimore team. During his first few days of spring training, Jack Dunn’s new “babe” was the subject of some good-natured baseball pranks. Eventually, the new arrival on the team became Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest and most colorful player in the history of the sport he loved so well.

Life’s Work

Young Babe Ruth was a left-handed pitcher, and the high prices being offered for Ruth’s pitching ability soon proved too tempting for the financially distressed Orioles to resist: Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox in July 1914. On July 11, 1914, Babe Ruth pitched and was victorious in the first major league baseball game he had ever played. With his tremendous speed and sharp breaking ball, Ruth impressed Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan. Still, it was clear by August that the Red Sox would not win the American League pennant from Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. Ruth was therefore sent down to the Red Sox minor league team in Providence, Rhode Island, to help them win the International League pennant. Providence manager “Wild Bill” Donovan was credited by Ruth for his effective pitching coaching, later of value to Ruth in his Red Sox career.

Throughout his long and colorful career, Ruth was criticized for financial, gastronomic, and sexual excesses. As with other legendary personalities, however, his sins as well as his successes may have been exaggerated. In his major league career, spanning 1914 to 1935, the Babe (as he was called) was an exciting, intelligent, and astonishingly well-rounded ballplayer, suggesting that the tales about his endless hedonism were largely, if not entirely, fictitious. On October 17, 1914, Babe Ruth married Helen Woodford, a waitress whom he had met in 1914, while with the Red Sox. In 1922, the Ruths adopted a baby girl named Dorothy. In 1926, the Ruths separated; in January 1929, Helen Ruth was killed in a tragic fire. Three months later, Ruth married a woman named Claire Merritt Hodgson and adopted her daughter, Julia. Ruth remained with his second wife until his death in August 1948.

In 1915, the Boston Red Sox won the American League pennant, winning 101 games, of which Ruth had won 18, and losing only 50. In the 1915 World Series, the Red Sox defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, four games to one. In 1916, Ruth won twenty-three games, a figure he matched in 1917. Overall, Babe Ruth won ninety-two games as a pitcher, and lost only forty-four; his earned run average was a remarkable 2.24. Ruth pitched for Boston in three World Series: 1915, 1916, and 1918. He won three World Series games, lost none, and sported an earned run average of 0.87. Had he continued as a pitcher, Ruth’s pitching record could have been as remarkable as his hitting record.

The Red Sox now faced a problem with Ruth. In 1918, Ruth was recognized as one of the finest pitchers in baseball. He also hit eleven home runs, knocked in sixty-four runs, and batted .300. Ruth was too good a hitter to pitch every four days, resting between starts. He was too good a pitcher, however, to play the outfield or first base every day. It is some indication of Ruth’s phenomenal baseball ability that from 1914 to 1919, while he was principally a pitcher, Ruth had 342 hits in 1,110 at-bats, with 49 home runs and 230 runs batted in. He simply had become too powerful as a hitter to keep as a pitcher. He also had become too expensive. Babe Ruth’s 1917 salary was five thousand dollars, in 1918 it was seven thousand, and by 1919, it had grown to ten thousand. In January 1920, Babe Ruth was sold again, this time by the Red Sox to the New York Yankees . The price tag was $100,000 and a loan of $350,000.

The season of 1920 was a turning point in the history of baseball. In that season, Ruth smashed an incredible 54 home runs, driving in 137. A new national hero was born, and the game of baseball began to change from a short game (meaning a game of bunts, sacrifices, and steals) to a long game (meaning home runs and big-scoring innings). There had been great concern for the future of the national pastime when it was revealed that some Chicago White Sox players had been bribed in the 1919 World Series, which they lost to Cincinnati. Ruth’s amazing feats, however, drove the 1919 scandal from fans’ minds. As the New York Times reported, “Inside of a fortnight the fandom of the nation had forgotten all about the Black Sox, as they had come to be called, as its attention became centered in an even greater demonstration of superlative batting skill by the amazing Babe Ruth.” In 1921, Ruth hit an astounding 59 home runs and drove in 170, while batting .378. Ruth’s Yankees won ninety-eight games in that season and beat their cross-town rivals, the New York Giants, five games to three, in the World Series. It was no wonder, the New York Times reported, that “the baseball world lay at his feet.”

The Yankees won the pennant again in 1922, 1923, 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1932; they won the World Series in 1922, 1923, 1927, 1928, and 1932. In the World Series games in which he played as a Yankee, Ruth hit fifteen home runs, drove in twenty-nine runs, and hit .347. Obscured by his extraordinary totals as a hitter (and pitcher) are Ruth’s fielding, throwing, and baserunning abilities. Numerous baseball fans and analysts testify to Ruth’s superb skills as an outfielder and daring, aggressive base runner. Ruth’s attempted steal of second base in the final game of the 1926 World Series, which the St. Louis Cardinals won, is part of baseball folklore. With two outs in the ninth inning of the deciding Series game, Ruth walked. Trailing 3–2 in the ninth inning, the Yankees had two outs, but powerful Bob Meusel was at bat. With one strike on Meusel, Ruth attempted a delayed steal of second but was thrown out. The game was over, and the Cardinals were world champions. Baseball fans still argue the wisdom of Ruth’s attempted steal. There is another Ruth legend associated with the 1926 World Series, the validity of which is still debated by baseball mythologists. A young boy, John Sylvester, was seriously ill during the 1926 Series. When he asked his father for a ball autographed by Ruth, the older Sylvester wired that request to the Babe. Players of both teams autographed balls that were sent to the Sylvester home. Johnny Sylvester did recover, but reports that Ruth promised to hit a home run for Johnny that, when executed, led to the boy’s recovery, are in error.

In 1927, the New York Yankees, led by Ruth’s herculean hitting (60 home runs, 164 runs batted in, batting average of .356), won the World Series in a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The 1927 Yankees are properly regarded by baseball historians as the greatest of all baseball teams. Ruth had, by that time, accumulated 416 home runs, batted in 1,274, and was batting .349. He was regarded as the great turnstile whirler, and it seemed as though people everywhere knew of Babe Ruth. In 1927, the Yankees paid Ruth an unbelievable seventy thousand dollars—a figure they matched in 1928 and 1929. In 1930 and 1931, he received eighty thousand dollars per season. Ruth’s earnings over twenty-two seasons in the majors were estimated to be $896,000, in addition to World Series shares of $41,445 and approximately one million dollars from endorsements and barnstorming tours. Despite the high cost, Ruth was an asset to the Yankees: He attracted so many fans to Yankee Stadium, which opened in 1923, that it was nicknamed the House That Ruth Built.

Although 1927 will always be associated in sports history with Babe Ruth, the years 1928–33 were equally, perhaps even more, impressive. In those years alone, Ruth batted .341, hit 270 home runs, and drove in 852 runs. It was spectacular. It was the golden age of sports, and Babe Ruth came to symbolize it all. Americans needed a diversion: The Depression had hit, and Prohibition was not repealed until December 1933. The public followed Ruth’s successes and his failures, his heroics and his occasional misconduct, with enthusiasm.

In 1934, Babe Ruth spent his last full year in the major leagues. His average sank to .288; he hit twenty-two home runs and batted in eighty-four. It would have been an excellent season for most players, but it signaled the end for Babe Ruth. In 1934, the Yankees failed again (as in 1933) to win the pennant. Ruth left the Yankees and signed on for the 1935 season with the Boston Braves of the National League. He played in only twenty-eight games for the Braves, hitting six homers, driving in twelve runs, and batting .181. Ruth never attained his goal of becoming a major league manager, although he did coach in 1938 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Statistics do not always reliably convey the value of a ballplayer, but, in Ruth’s case, the evidence is clear: In his major league career, he played in 2,503 games; he batted 8,396 times and had 2,873 hits, of which 714 were homers. His lifetime batting average was .342. At the time of his death in 1948, Babe Ruth held fifty-four major league records. Although some of those records were captured by other players (including in 1974 when Hank Aaron broke Ruth's home run record), Babe Ruth, the famous Number Three of the Yankees, is still the standard against which ballplayers are measured.

In June 1948, Ruth, a dying man, stood in Yankee Stadium to say good-bye to thousands of fans. About two months later, he died of cancer at a New York City hospital. On the evening of August 17, 1948, Ruth’s body lay inside the main entrance to Yankee Stadium. It is estimated that more than 100,000 fans passed by to pay their respects. The Babe was dead, but, as Marshall Smelser put it, “one with ears tuned and eyes alert will hear or read his name almost monthly. Even without any imposing monument his memory will last in this country till memory be dead.” Seventy years later, in November 2018, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump.

Significance

In March 1944, during the bitter fighting on Pacific Islands in World War II, Japanese soldiers attacked US Marine positions, screaming in English, “To hell with Babe Ruth.” Babe Ruth had come to symbolize not only American baseball but also America. As Robert Creamer, the baseball historian, reported, Ruth once said of himself: “I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.” Here was an indigent boy who rose from the obscurity of a Maryland boys’ home to become one of the most famous Americans, whose death was reported in the headlines of the New York Times. Although he died when he was only fifty-three, Ruth’s life seemed curiously long and complete. Ruth had a remarkable flair for the spectacular and the flamboyant. He lived his life with a zest that his countrymen seemed able to share. As he was dying, he told Considine that “I want to be a part of and help the development of the greatest game God ever saw fit to let man invent Baseball.” Smelser summarized the importance of Babe Ruth in American life thus: “[H]e is our Hercules, our Samson, Beowulf, Siegfried. No other person outside of public life so stirred our imaginations or so captured our affections.”

Further Reading

"Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend." National Baseball Hall of Fame, baseballhall.org/discover/museum/babe-ruth-his-life-and-legend. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Creamer, Robert W. Babe: The Legend Comes to Life. Penguin Books, 1974.

Montville, Leigh. The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth. Doubleday, 2006.

The Official Website of Babe Ruth, 2024, baberuth.com/. Accessed 8 July 2024.

Reisler, Jim. Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend. McGraw-Hill, 2004.

Ruth, Babe. Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928.

Ruth, Babe, as told to Bob Considine. The Babe Ruth Story. E. P. Dutton, 1948.

Smelser, Marshall. The Life That Ruth Built. Quadrangle/New York Times Books, 1975.

Wagenheim, Kal. Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend. Praeger, 1974.

Weldon, Martin. Babe Ruth. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1948.