So what does that have to do with Babe Ruth?
Well, a few sources state that when Billie Holiday died in 1959, a benefactor wanted to pay for her burial near Babe Ruth - something that never happened since her grave is in the Bronx and Babe is buried at Hawthorne, New York. That is about the only connection that I could find between the two.
But, I bring up Billie Holiday at this time, because like Babe Ruth - her supposed autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues," is rife with errors about her early life in Baltimore.
The book begins with this line, "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three." An admission of birth out of wedlock was shocking in the 1950s. The first page goes on to state that, "Mom was thirteen that Wednesday, April 7, 1915 in Baltimore when I was born."
The problem with these quotes is that they are all false. Billie's parents never got married. She was not born in Baltimore, but in Philadelphia. Also, according to a new biography by John Szwed, her mother was 19 and her father was 17, when Billie was born.
The book begins with this line, "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three." An admission of birth out of wedlock was shocking in the 1950s. The first page goes on to state that, "Mom was thirteen that Wednesday, April 7, 1915 in Baltimore when I was born."
The problem with these quotes is that they are all false. Billie's parents never got married. She was not born in Baltimore, but in Philadelphia. Also, according to a new biography by John Szwed, her mother was 19 and her father was 17, when Billie was born.
So when Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball states, "My earliest recollections center about the dirty, traffic-crowded streets of Baltimore's riverfront," and his autobiography (as told to Bob Considine) states, "I spent most the first seven years of my life living over my father's saloon at 426 West Camden Street, Baltimore," it ain't necessarily so.
Virtually nobody refers to Baltimore's harbor or waterfront, as a riverfront. Although Baltimore is located on the Patapsco River, it doesn't have the look or feel of a traditional river, but an extension of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore natives don't refer to our waterfront as a riverfront, a clue that Babe Ruth probably had little to do with details about his youth in his "Own Book of Baseball."
As will be seen in this blog, Babe Ruth did not live over his father's saloon on Camden Street until he was six years old, so he couldn't have spent most of the fist seven years of his life there.
So-called autobiographies of celebrities, especially when they are as told to someone or written with someone else must be taken with a grain of salt. While they may provide some useful information, they should not be taken as gospel. Such is the case with both Billie and the Babe.
