Thursday, December 26, 2013

Chapter 10


From Baltimore Boy to National Hero

                While this exploration of Babe Ruth’s early life in Baltimore provides new information and more detail concerning his family background than previous biographies, it doesn’t substantially change his life story.  It is well known that Babe Ruth grew up in a reformatory/orphanage and that he was pretty much abandoned by his parents at a young age.  He always credited the Xaverian Brothers at Saint Mary’s for his success and rarely spoke of his family.  “I hardly knew my parents,” he once said.1

His home run hitting ability was universally acclaimed.  The praise he received for doing good works outside of baseball, especially in regard to needy children, was largely attributed to his Catholic upbringing at Saint Mary’s.  On the other hand, the seamier side of his life outside the game which was notorious for overeating, drinking, womanizing, wrecking cars, adultery, etc. was attributed to his lack of a traditional family; earning ungodly sums of money for the time; and acting on pent-up desires after being confined for most of his teenage years.

This detailed summary of Babe Ruth’s early life and family background helps to better understand the boy and the man he became.  It clarifies how much his parents failed him.  Babe Ruth was not merely “a bad kid” or “a bum” as he states in his autobiography.  He did not run wild because his parents were too sick, too poor or too overworked to properly care for him.  He was a child of parents that had a multitude of problems.  His mother in all likelihood was an alcoholic.  Her addiction led her to infidelity and divorce.  His father was a jealous, violent man who made bad decisions for himself and his family.   He appears to have been more interested in running a bar than caring for his family.  Eventually Katie’s drinking probably led to her early death, and his father’s temper and poor decisions led to his death as well.  Compared to his parents, the poor behavior Babe Ruth exhibited as an adult by overeating, drinking too much, driving recklessly and sleeping with many women can be considered relatively moderate.

The underlying theme of Babe Ruth’s youth is the erosion of an early twentieth century American family.  In 1901 when he was six years old, he was torn away from an extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles living within a stable working class community when he was moved to a less desirable neighborhood living over a saloon.  In 1902 when he was seven years old, he was sent to Saint Mary’s Industrial School for the first time removing him from the only family he had.  Although he may have lived back and forth between Saint Mary’s and his family for the next few years, in 1906 when he was eleven years old, his parents divorced leaving him with no family to return to if released from confinement.  In 1912 when he was 17 years old while still at St. Mary’s, his mother died.  In 1918 when he was 23, his father also died.

                From the ruins of his naturally family, St. Mary’s Industrial School became his new family.  The Xaverian Brothers became surrogate parents.  His fellow schoolmates replaced his sister and cousins as surrogate siblings and friends.  His dormitory and dining hall behind locked gates substituted for a real home.  The play field became his sanctuary and release from abandonment.  At Saint Mary’s Industrial School, young Babe Ruth built a new life for himself replacing the shattered old life.

                When released from Saint Mary’s in 1914 to join the Baltimore Orioles, Providence Grays and Boston Red Sox in rapid succession, he apparently made amends with his father.  Given the first chance to live on his own, he did not go wild, drinking and sleeping around as later stories may lead one to believe.  Instead he married a waitress, Helen Woodford, perhaps one of the first girls he met and tried to recapture the more traditional family he lost.  They moved in with his father and sister during the off-season creating a new extended family.  Upon meeting with success as a major league pitcher, he established a family business, Ruth’s Café, with his dad as proprietor and himself as manager (a title he later would seek but never obtain after his playing career was over).  But playing ball took him on the road where he was enticed by other vices.  He was not even twenty years old and his bride a mere girl of sixteen when they wed. 

For the rest of his life, Babe Ruth tried to recapture a home life he experienced just briefly as a young child on Woodyear Street.  He bought a farm for himself and his wife in Sudbury, outside of Boston.  When Helen could not provide him with children, Dorothy became his “adopted” daughter in a manner he would never explain.2   A photograph of Babe at his farm smoking a pipe with his young daughter sitting on his lap promotes the image of a successful young family man. 

But, Babe Ruth had an insatiable appetite for things that Helen and a family life could not provide.  With his new wealth and fame, Babe Ruth epitomized the Roaring Twenties by living life on his own terms outside of society’s norms.  When he could not reconcile this dual lifestyle with Helen, they separated.   He lived life large on the road, in New York, and in the limelight; while she settled down to a quiet home with a dentist in Watertown out of the public eye.

When Helen died in a house fire in 1929 at the height of Babe Ruth’s fame, he was free again to live as he pleased.  So what did he do?  Within three months he married the former Claire Hodgson.  Now he had a wife and two daughters, and a large Riverside Avenue apartment.  There was room for a mother-in-law and two of Claire’s brothers in the household as well.  Once again, Babe Ruth recaptured an extended family.  And so it was in his life, going from pole to pole -- establishing a stable home life, but escaping on the road to do as he wished.

He was that way in his baseball career going from Babe Ruth the greatest ball player of all time to Babe Ruth an injured, overweight player, flaunting the authority of managers, umpires and commissioners.  He would overstep boundaries and then make amends and return to the grace of friends, family, teammates and fans.  Finally time eroded his baseball skills and he retired from active play, yet he would continue to be idolized by America’s youth.  He was Babe Ruth and there was nobody like him.

                Cancer took his life on August 16, 1948 just thirteen years after he last played the game.  In retirement, Babe Ruth would still enjoy the accolades of fans, play golf, hunt and roam from Claire when given the chance.  Babe, the unwanted child, was loved by all when he died at the age of 53.  Not far removed from his playing days at the time of his death, baseball fans, many who had seen him play, lined up by the thousands for two days to pay respects as he lay in state at the entrance of Yankee Stadium.  They lined Fifth Avenue to watch his funeral procession pass on the way to his final resting place at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. 

                Babe Ruth’s life took him from Emory Street to Frederick Avenue extended; from Woodyear Street to Camden Street; from St. Mary’s Industry School on Wilkens Avenue to 406 West Conway Street; from old Oriole Park on 29th Street to Ruth’s Café on Eutaw Street; and from Boston’s Fenway Park to the house Ruth built, New York’s Yankee Stadium.  The life he built became the stuff of legends and the myth more real than the man.  Along the way, he left behind the story of his early life in Baltimore.  What good would it do to re-live bad memories from his youth?  Life was too short, and good times were to be had in the present.


1 Babe Ruth Story as told to Bob Considince, New York:  E. P. Dutton & Company, 1948, p. 12
2 My Dad, the Babe by Dorothy Ruth Pirone, Boston: Quinlan Press, 1988, p. 193-196.  Babe Ruth's daughter Dorothy explains that she was the child of Babe Ruth and Juanita Jennings.  Dorothy was born when Babe was still married to Helen.  Later she was "adopted" by Babe and Helen and raised as their daughter.  After Helen's death, Babe married Claire and he adopted Julia, Claire's daughter, while Claire adopted Dorothy as her daughter.  Dorothy's birth mother, Juanita, later married Charles Ellias, a close friend of the Ruths.  She didn't reveal to Dorothy that she was her real mother until shortly before her death when Dorothy was more than fifty years old.