The Great Bambino
The Sultan of Swat. The King of Crash. The Colossus of Clout. George Herman “Babe” Ruth transcended the confines of the baseball diamond, instead becoming an American and worldwide icon.
A bust portrait of Babe Ruth as a New York Yankee. (Library of Congress)
His large, pudgy face and wild smile was plastered on countless newspapers, magazines, advertisements and movie screens. And no one in baseball has been more written about and dissected ever since he stepped off the mound and into the batter’s box.
He was also a Knight of Columbus — one of the more notable members in the Order’s storied history that includes U.S. President John F. Kennedy, NFL coach Vince Lombardi, and heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson. See more in the book The Knights of Columbus: An Illustrated History.
Ruth shown just after clouting homer in third inning of the All Star Game, July 6, 1933. (Knights of Columbus Multimedia Archives)
As Henry Farrell suggested in his 1922 Columbia article “On the Three-Sacked Arena,” “As long as baseball lasts the name of Babe Ruth will be held up as one of the greatest players of all players.” It should be noted, Ruth walloped 59 home runs in the 1921 season, a record he would eclipse several years later with 60 in 1927.
An Incorrigible Kid
Before the Babe wowed baseball fans and ushered in a new era of the game, he was born with the name George Herman Ruth on Feb. 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Md.
Ruth believed he had a rotten start in life. The conditions of his upbringing were harsh. “Looking back to my youth, I honestly don’t think I knew the difference between right and wrong,” he wrote in Guideposts. “I spent much of my early boyhood living over my father’s saloon, in Baltimore — and when I wasn’t living over it, I was in it, soaking up the atmosphere. I hardly knew my parents.”
The saloon run by Ruth’s father, George Herman Ruth Sr. The photo is undated. (Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum)
He was a delinquent — roaming the streets, skipping school and drinking alcohol at a young age. At the age of 7, Ruth was admitted as “incorrigible” to the St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage run by the Xaverian Brothers. His father and mother could no longer discipline their son.
“It was a reform school — and that’s all there is to it,” Ruth stated in 1926. “But it wasn’t a place boys were sent for punishment. They were sent there for training. The brothers did everything in their power to bring out all the good there was in a boy and give him a chance.”
St. Mary’s Industrial School in the 1890s. (Maryland State Archives)
Brother Matthias
Ruth resented most authority figures during his youth. But the one figure he admired for his athleticism and religious piety was Brother Matthias, a 6-foot-6-inch, 250-pound man, who worked at St. Mary’s Industrial School.
Brother Matthias poses for a photograph, undated. (National Baseball Hall of Fame)
Brother Matthias introduced Ruth to baseball and trained him in the game, recognizing a natural talent in the boy. Ruth recalled in Guideposts, “He used to back me in a corner of the big yard at St. Mary’s and bunt a ball to me by the hour, correcting the mistakes I made with my hands and feet.”
The Hall of Famer added: “Thanks to Brother Matthias, I was able to leave St. Mary’s in 1914 and begin my professional career with the famous Baltimore Orioles.”
At the same time, Brother Matthias’ faith also left a lasting impression on Ruth, who recalled, “He could have been successful at anything he wanted to in life — and he chose the Church.”
Babe Ruth Day, 1919
Toward the beginning of his career, Ruth joined Pere Marquette Council 271 in South Boston while playing for the Red Sox in 1919. And though he struggled to practice his faith in the decades that followed, Ruth often collaborated with the Knights of Columbus in charity events and barnstorming tours in the offseason.
Babe Ruth as a Red Sox in 1919. (Library of Congress)
The Knights of Columbus recognized the Babe’s talent and his popularity from early on his membership in the Order, sponsoring “Babe Ruth Day” on Sept. 20, 1919, at Fenway Park in his honor. Although the Bostonians didn’t realize it, the day would be the final time Ruth played a home game at Fenway Park in a Red Sox uniform, sparking the “Curse of the Bambino” — a World Series drought that lasted until 2004.
According to the Boston Daily Globe, the council met on Sept. 9 to “perfect arrangements” for the occasion making “every effort” to get “every member interested in the testimonial to the king of sluggers.”
Ruth warming up before a game. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)
That year, Ruth was on his way to becoming the king of sluggers. By late September, he was on pace to tie the single-season home-run record, which then was 27, held by Chicago White Stockings’ Ned Williamson since 1884.
In game one of a double-header, Ruth started as pitcher as he did 15 times that season. But during the game, he gave up three runs for a 3-3 tie going into the 9th inning. But when he approached the plate as a hitter in the bottom of the 9th, with the game on the line, Ruth did what he did best that season: he hit a home run.
It was a solo, walk-off blast — the first of his career — and tied the single-season home-run record.
The role of the Knights in the game culminated during a ceremony in-between game one and two, when Pere Marquette Council’s Grand Knight Arthur Leary presented Ruth and his wife with $600 worth in U.S. Treasury savings certificates.
The presentation, and “Babe Ruth Day,” is one of the earliest examples of the Order honoring Ruth. There was more to come — several of which occurred in 1921.
“It Would Soon be Rebuilt”
In 1921, Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore called on the Order to restore St. Mary’s Industrial School, which had been destroyed by a fire. The Knights recognized that the home of Babe Ruth, and its restoration, as one of “national importance,” according to Columbiad. As part of a fundraising campaign, the Order published blurbs in Columbiad — prior to its transition to Columbia — referring to Ruth’s statistics. For example: “Babe Ruth’s Batting Average. How many will equal it in dollars? 385.”
Ruth poses for a full-length portrait as a New York Yanke, circa 1920. (Irwin, La Broad, & Pudlin/Library of Congress)
The Order also conceived of a fundraising gimmick for the Supreme Convention in San Francisco, since Ruth wouldn’t be able to attend due to a scheduling conflict (he would be “puncturing the right-field fence at the Polo Grounds,” according to Columbiad). The Babe would “hit” a ball — “specifically constructed, to contain in its center the brief speech, written in Ruth’s handwriting” — from St. Mary’s grounds that then would be relayed across the country by more than 150,000 men and boys to carry out the “longest hit in creation.”
However, it is not noted in Columbiad or Columbia whether the gimmick ever occurred, but Ruth, for his part, took the St. Mary’s band to major league ballparks to raise money.
Bustin’ Babe Goes Barnstorming
Ruth’s most consistent collaboration with his brother Knights came after the major league season ended, conducting barnstorming tours across the United States and even into Canada.
At the time, no major league teams existed past the Mississippi River. If baseball fans couldn’t get to St. Louis, Chicago or farther east to see a game, the best option was to hope the Bambino came to town. With the help of local K of C councils and his agent Christy Walsh (who was also a Knight), Ruth did just that.
A slow-motion film of Babe Ruth during batting practice, circa early 1920s. (American Motion Picture Corporation/Library of Congress)
When Ruth arrived in town, local council officers were often on hand to greet him and, one some occasions, presented him with K of C-branded flower wreaths. And a steady lineup of Knights of Columbus luncheons and dinners helped keep the “Colossus of Clout” colossal.
K of C councils would sponsor exhibition games Ruth played in — for his team the “Bustin’ Babes” — as charitable opportunities. For instance, Knights underwrote a game in Los Angeles on Oct. 27, 1924, raising money for their charitable fund. On Oct. 22, 1927, an exhibition game in Stockton, Calif, benefited a K of C Christmas charity fund, which didn’t start until 3:30 p.m. as “will permit all youngsters who wish to see the game to reach the ball park after school.”
During the 1927 barnstorming tour, Ruth (right) and his Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig (center) visited Boys Town orphanage in Omaha, Neb., founded a decade earlier by Father Edward Flanagan — also a Knight of Columbus (second from right). According to an April 1928 Columbia article, “Babe talked to the boys on the value of his training in a similar institution when he was a boy.” (Knights of Columbus Multimedia Archives/Ernest Bihler Co.)
Tour of Japan
In 1934, Ruth was the front-and-center of a team of AL stars, managed by Connie Mack (a Knight of Columbus), for a 12-city, 22-game tour in Japan.
Although baseball had been introduced to the country in the 1870s and other tours were previously held, this tour was different simply because of Ruth’s presence. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets and filed into ballparks to watch him play.
A poster for the 1934 Japan Tour with baseball stars, including Babe Ruth. According to Robert K. Fitts’ book Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, & Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan, Ruth “the Jovial demigod of baseball, brought the two nations together and forestalled talks of war.” (Public Domain)
For one outing, media mogul Matsutarō Shōriki constructed a team of Japanese all-stars that fared decently against Ruth and the AL team. This event convinced Shōriki to keep the team together and establish Japan’s first professional team — the Great Tokyo, which later became the Yomiuri Tokyo Giants. By 1936, the first Japanese professional league formed. This solidification of Japan as a hotbed for baseball is rooted as an effect of this notable tour.
Ruth sits with Japanese children during the 1934 tour. Even though he was beloved during the tour, Japanese soldiers in World War II would reportedly scream at U.S. troops “To hell with Babe Ruth” to insult American culture. (National Baseball Hall of Fame)
Ruth would retire a year after the tour in 1935 with otherworldly career statistics — 714 home runs; a WAR (wins above replacement) of 183.1 which is the best all-time; and records in slugging percentage and OPS (on-base and slugging percentage). Farrell’s words from that 1922 Columbia article proved prophetic. Even today, Ruth is regarded as not only one of, but the greatest ballplayer of all time.
“I Made a Full Confession”
Ruth received a devastating diagnosis of nasopharyngeal cancer in 1946. In December of that year, he was in the hospital about to undergo an operation when his friend Paul Carey asked him, “Don’t you think you ought to put your house in order?”
Ruth knew what his friend meant. As he recalled, “For the first time, I realized that death might strike me out. I nodded, and Paul got up, called in a chaplain, and I made a full confession.”
Ruth visits the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York to autograph baseballs for the little patients, and formally open the drive for the annual campaign for Emergency and Relief Work Funds. He is shown here with Jimmy Bilotelau sitting on his lap and others proudly seated beside him. (Knights of Columbus Multimedia Archives)
Afterward, Ruth experienced a “comforting feeling to be free from fear and worries,” adding, “I now could simply turn them over to God.” Right before the surgery, his second wife, Claire Hodgson — whom Ruth married after Helen Woodford’s death — gave him a letter from a boy in Jersey City, which read:
Dear Babe. Everybody in the seventh-grade class is pulling and praying for you. I am enclosing a medal which if you wear will make you better. Your pal — Mike Quinlan. P.S. I know this will be your 61st homer. You’ll hit it.
Ruth pinned the Miraculous Medal, also known as the Medal of Our Lady of Grace, on his pajamas before the surgery and vowed to wear it until his death.
Ruth sits and discusses baseball with young fans, Nov. 1, 1924. But in his last days, the Great Bambino wanted to impart to kids not just lessons on how to swing a bat but also the wisdom he learned from Brother Matthias during his youth, believing in giving children “the works” in religious education. (National Baseball Hall of Fame)
Commitment to the faith and the Church’s teachings were struggles for Ruth throughout his life before making that full confession. However, the religious education he received as a boy allowed him to realize that in all of us is a “solid little chapel.”
“It may get dusty from neglect, but the time will come when the door will be opened with much relief,” he wrote in Guideposts.
The Babe eventually died from cancer on Aug. 16, 1948, nearly two years after the surgery. As the baseball world grieved for their fallen hero, Henry Turner wrote a poem in memoriam titled “The 61st Homer.” Ruth, he wrote, “said his Prayers and went to sleep.”
Ruth’s return to the faith gives us all hope that God never abandons us, even if at times we may abandon him. As the Bambino affirmed at the end of his life, “God was Boss” through it all.
Ruth, two months prior to his death on Aug. 16, 1948, wears his famed uniform for the last time and acknowledges the cheers of the thousands of fans who saw the number 3 retired permanently by the Yankees. (Harry Harris/Library of Congress)
