Babe Ruth biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Athlete, baseball player. Born George Herman Ruth, Jr. on February 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland. Ruth was raised in a poor waterfront neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, where his parents, Kate Schamberger-Ruth and George Herman Ruth, Sr., owned a tavern. Babe Ruth was one of eight children born to the couple, and one of only two that survived infancy.

At the age of 7, the trouble-making Ruth became too much of a handful for his busy parents. Routinely caught wandering the dockyards, drinking, chewing tobacco, and taunting local police officers, his parents finally decided he needed more discipline than they could give him. Ruth's family sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a Catholic orphanage and reformatory that became Babe's home for the next 12 years. Ruth particularly looked up to a monk named Brother Mathias, who became a father figure to the young boy.

Knack for Baseball

Mathias, along with several other monks of the order, introduced Ruth to baseball, a game at which the boy excelled. By the time he was 15, Ruth showed exceptional skill both as a strong hitter and pitcher. It was his pitching that initially caught the attention of Jack Dunn, the owner of the minor league Baltimore Orioles. At the time, the Orioles groomed players for the major league team known as the Boston Red Sox, and Dunn saw promise in Ruth's athletic performance. Only 19, the law at the time stated that Ruth had to have a legal guardian sign his baseball contract in order for him to play professionally. As a result, Dunn became Ruth's legal guardian, leading teammates to jokingly call Ruth "Dunn's new babe." The joke stuck, and Ruth quickly earned the nickname "Babe" Ruth.

Ruth was only with the club for a short time before he was called up to the majors in Boston. The left-handed pitcher proved immediately to be a valuable member of the team. Over the next five years, Ruth led the Red Sox to three championships, including the 1916 title which saw him pitch a still-record 13 scoreless innings in one game.

Major Leagues

With its titles and the Babe, Boston was clearly the class act of the major leagues. All that would change in 1919, however, with a single stroke of a pen. Faced with financial hardships, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee needed cash to pay off his debts. He found help in the New York Yankees, which agreed in December of 1919 to buy the Babe's rights for the then-impressive sum of $100,000.

The deal came to shape both franchises in unforeseen ways. For Boston, the departure of the Babe spelled the end of the team's winning streak. It wouldn't be until 2004 that the club would win another World Series, a championship drought that later sports writers dubbed "The Curse of the Bambino."