Baltimore will never forget Babe Ruth

BALTIMORE – Three-quarters of a century since George Herman (Babe) Ruth took his final breath, his hometown folks have not forgotten him.

It’s precisely 50 years since they converted the little row house on West Baltimore’s Emory Street, where the Babe was born, into the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, a charming turn-of-the-last-century shrine to baseball’s gaudiest star.

And the other day, they marked its half-century anniversary by toasting Ruth and hosting “a huge number of people swamping the place,” said Mike Gibbons, its director emeritus. Among the surprise guests at the museum, located two blocks from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, was new Orioles owner David Rubenstein.

The Babe, always up for a good party, would have loved it.

He’d have loved the brand new exhibits they unveiled, including the trophy Ruth received as Athlete of the 20^th Century. And “athlete” was only part of the great man’s appeal.

The Babe wasn’t just a fabulous pitcher who became the game’s greatest home run hitter. He was the 20^th century’s twinkle in America’s eye. He was the way Americans like to see ourselves: childish, full of fun and mischief, and triumphing over the worst kinds of adversity.

Or, as the great sports writer Jimmy Cannon once declared, “The Babe ate more and drank more and threw more money away and had more fun and felt sicker and tipped higher and drove a car faster and laughed more and blubbered more fat man’s beery tears and was kinder and knew more priests and visited more orphanages and hospitals and grabbed more tabs and staked busted guys more and made more people happier…”

Who does such things?

In Ruth’s case, it was a fellow whose youth looked like something out of Charles Dickens, who spent the rest of his life making up for lost time.

The Babe’s father operated a saloon at 426 Camden Street. At the birthplace, there’s a great photo of father and son. The kid’s become a young man in the photo, standing near his dad inside the bar. The two of them look as if they might be twins.

The Babe’s mother was a sickly woman who didn’t have much time for the young Babe. He learned to crawl, and then walk, on the dust-covered floor of the family bar. His earliest memories were street fights, and stealing from shopkeepers, and running from the cops around Emory Street.

No wonder he was a natural at stealing bases. If you could steal from the nearby Lexington Market, second base was a piece of cake.

It was John Updike who once wrote, “In America, a man is a failed boy.”

Ruth spent his life as the eternal boy – no matter the painful boyhood he endured. When he died in 1948, at 53, that boyhood was part of the legend that endeared him to so many who adored him.

But, in the eyes of Baltimoreans, he was more than just a fabulous ballplayer. In a town that still sees itself as scruffy working class, Ruth was the embodiment of the American dream, risen from hopelessness to grandeur.

Those who make the pilgrimage to Emory Street are reminded of the glorious Ruthian days and the toughest ones. He was such an untamed street kid that his parents farmed him out to St. Mary’s Industrial School when he was still in elementary school.

And then they pretty much forgot about him.

Around this city, you still have old-timers who remember when they were kids and misbehaved, their parents warned them, “Keep it up and we’re sending you to St. Mary’s Industrial School.”

When Babe’s parents took him to St. Mary’s, he was 7 years old. They put him on a trolley car and took him to this home for incorrigibles, where Ruth looked up at men standing over him in full-length black gowns.

The Babe wept and said, “Please don’t make me stay.” But they did, and he remained there for the next 12 years. His family rarely visited. He told a classmate that nobody ever came to see him because, “Who’d want to come see an ugly kid like me?”

As it turned out, the whole wide world watched him and came to love him. That’s the story they’re still telling down at the little row house on Emory Street.