Babe Ruth: The Legend Who Changed Baseball Forever

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before he helped fill stadiums, George Herman Ruth was a restless boy growing up near the Baltimore waterfront. His father ran a saloon, his mother rarely had time to spare, and discipline came from the brothers at St. Mary's Industrial School. There, he met Brother Matthias, who taught him baseball and provided the structure he needed to find his purpose.

His baseball talent carried him from the Red Sox to the Yankees, where his swing reshaped the game and turned him into a national symbol.

Mike Gibbons, director of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, shares the real story about the boy who became the Babe.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and as you know, we
tell stories about everything. Very few athletes, let alone celebrities,
have achieved the legendary status that has been given to
George Herbert Babe Ruth, Jr. Here's Mike Gibbons, Director Emeritus
and Curator of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore, Maryland,
to tell us just a little bit about what made

(00:31):
the Babe a legend.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, today, I'd like to talk to you about one
of my favorite topics, and that would be Babe Ruth,
the guy that I've spent most of my lifetime studying
and celebrating. He is arguably the most celebrated athlete ever
and certainly the greatest baseball player of all time. Now
people ask me all the time, they say, well, how

(00:57):
can you say that? How can you say he's the greatest,
And it's an easy answer.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
He is the only.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Player who starred both as a pitcher and then as
a position player not to mention being the major's all
time slugger for a three forty two batting average. When
he retired in nineteen thirty five, he held two hundred
and six major league pitching and batting records. His talent
certainly puts him on the mount Rushmore of sports, but

(01:28):
his bigger than life personality and the timing of his
move from Boston to New York in nineteen twenty the
beginning of the Roaring twenties in America, helped make him
into an American cultural icon, right up there with the
likes of JFK. Martin, Luther King, Marilyn Monroe.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Honest Abe Lincoln.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So all these years after his death seventy two to
be exact, virtually every American and countries in Latin America
and Japan where they played baseball, they know the name
Babe Ruth, his autograph the most valuable and recognizable of all.

(02:11):
What contributes to this unprecedented celebrity, Certainly it's his baseball accomplishments,
but also something legendary, the tales, the myths, legends that
helped to mold that legendary aspect into the man. Let's
start at the beginning, right here in Baltimore and how

(02:32):
he got to the point of having the most famous
nickname in all of sports.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Ruth grew up on the.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
West side of Baltimore along the waterfront, came from a
modest family blue collar workers. They were saloon keepers, Mom
and dad. They were so busy trying to run the
shop that at the age of seven, his father threw
up his hands and said, George, we're going to be
taking you to Saint Mary's Industrial School. And there he
stayed until he was nineteen year years old. So twelve

(03:01):
years he stayed at Saint Mary's and was raised by
the Zaverian brothers, most notably a guy by the name
of Brother Matthias. And Brother Matthias instilled in Ruth a
little bit of discipline, a lot of religion.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
And taught in the game of baseball.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Ruth went on for the rest of his life thinking
that Brother Matthias was really the man that he admired
more than any other, and Matthias gave him the gift
of teaching him how to pitch, throw, catch, hit all
those things. Ruth excelled at Saint Mary's to the extent

(03:38):
that when he was nineteen years old, he caught the
attention of the Baltimore Orioles Minor League owner and manager,
a guy by the name of Jack Dunn. Now Here
is where the nickname comes in. So Donny goes out
to Saint Mary's and signs Ruth on Valentine's Day nineteen
fourteen to a contract that would pay the youngster six hundred.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Ruth said, that's more money than I've seen in my
whole life. So Dunny takes Ruth along with his minor
league orioles down to spring training in Fayetteville, North Carolina,
and there word spreads about Done having to sign guardian
papers to get Ruth to be a professional baseball player.
The Saint Mary's Industrial School would not have released Ruth

(04:24):
until he was twenty one without someone else signing over
for the legal guardian rights to George Junior. So off
they go there and word gets out that Dunny is
his legal guardian, and the players and reporters covering the
team started referring to George Ruth as Jack Dunn's baby.

(04:46):
And this is in mid February nineteen fourteen. Within a month,
the Baltimore Sun is referring in print to Ruth as
Babe Ruth, and the nickname.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Obviously stuck forever.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Now, the next thing I wanted to talk to you
about occurred on his first stop at Major League baseball
in Boston, where he was a star pitcher for the
Boston Red Sox. As a matter of fact, he was
so good that in the five full seasons he played
in Boston, he helped deliver three World Series championships to
Boston and the Red Sox and was just a burgeoning star.

(05:24):
His name was known nationwide by then Babe Ruth. Everybody
thought that he was the best left handed pitcher.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
In the game.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
But he got sold to the Yankees over the winter
of nineteen nineteen nineteen twenty and headed off to New York.
The Yankees who had never won a championship. So he
goes to New York plays there sixteen years and in
that time delivered seven World Series appearances for the Yankees.
In the meantime, the Red Sox totally dried up and

(05:52):
over the next eighty six years failed to win a
World Series championship, and that became known as the Curse
of Thebino, something that is still talked about to this day,
especially in Boston. A lot of people know that Babe
Ruth loved children, maybe more than any other athlete ever,

(06:13):
at least that we have seen. Babe went out of
his way throughout his career, throughout his life to visit
children and orphanages and also hospitals. He always would be
trying to bring some joy to children down on their
locker in some kind of trouble, and on one of

(06:33):
those hospital occasions, that's where the story of Little Johnny
Sylvester comes from. The year is nineteen twenty six. The
Yankees are playing the Cardinals for the World Series and
word gets out, and this supposedly came from Johnny Silvester's father,
who was a big Yankees fans, that little Johnny is
dying of a rare blood disease and is there anything

(06:56):
that the Yankees could do to lift his spirits. Well,
the story that Babe Ruth predicted he would hit a
home run for Johnny in the next World Series game.
So Johnny listens to his radio and Babe hits a
home run and lifts Johnny's spirits. But in fact, that
day Ruth hit three home runs, so he must have
really lifted Johnny's spirits to the extent that Johnny got

(07:18):
better and went on to live a long and productive
life as a banker up in Connecticut. In nineteen eighty six,
sixty years after the event at the museum, we decided
to celebrate the little Johnny story, and I went looking
for Johnny Sylvester. I found him and I asked him.

(07:38):
I said, john do you have anything to prove that
Babe Ruth predicted he'd hit a home run for you?
And Johnny says, not only can I prove it, I'll
bring it to Baltimore and show you. And Johnny came
down to Baltimore and he presented a baseball to us,
and on the baseball, Babe Ruth wrote, I'll knock a
homer for you in Wednesday's game. And that ball stayed

(08:01):
on display with us for about twenty years. It was
one of our most popular artifacts. Just a great story,
but it just shows you just how incredible Babe Ruth
really was. Next up is the nineteen twenty seven Barnstorming Tour.
The Yankees had defeated the Pirates four straight games in
the twenty seven World Series, and Ruth and lou gereg

(08:21):
went out and toured the country, going to small towns
to play baseball games. Well, this was a big deal
because back in the twenties it was rare when Americans
could see their favorite athletes or movie stars or things
like that. They pretty much had to go to a
movie theater to watch movie tone reels to get a

(08:42):
glimpse at these stars. So Ruth and Garek take off
on a six weeks tour and give their fans an
experience that they would remember for the rest of their lives.
It was so big when they came to town. The
only thing I can liken it too in today's world
is when the Beatles hit America in nineteen sixty four.

(09:02):
We had never seen anything like it back then. This
was equal to that. Ruth was the biggest thing that
ever happened in America. The last thing I want to
talk about is the called shot home run. This is
where Babe Ruth supposedly points and then where he's going
to hit a home run and on the next pitch
he does. It occurred in the nineteen thirty two World

(09:22):
Series Game three October first, nineteen thirty two.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Ruth is with the Yankees.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
They're in Chicago playing the Cubs. They're up two games
to none, and in the fifth ending of that game,
Ruth comes to the plate. The Cubs had been giving
him a lot of grief throughout the game, throughout the series, actually,
and he was pushing back and with a two and
two count, he stepped out of the box, supposedly pointed
either the center field or a pitcher Charlie root but

(09:49):
said to Rut, I'm going to hit the next pitch
down your throat. And Ruth hit the ball to center
field on the next swing, and the ball became the
longest home.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Run in the history of Wrigley Field.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
So there you are just some examples the indelibility of
Ruth's celebrity and his mythic status in this country. He
is an American icon, He's an all American dream come true,
the Big Fellow, the Bambino, the Babe. In World War Two,
and I'll leave you with this, the Japanese when they
charged the American positions, they shouted to hell with Babe Ruth,

(10:22):
knowing that Babe was precious to them, maybe more precious
than anything else.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
And that's the way. Babe Ruth was bigger than life.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
And great job by Robbie and a special thanks to
Mike Gibbons, the Director Emeritus and curator of the Babe
Ruth Birthplace and Museum. The story of the legendary man
known as Babe. Here on our American Story