Saturday, November 11, 2017

Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth's or George Herman Ruth Jr. was son of George Herman Ruth Sr. and Katherine Schamberger German Americans. Babe Ruth spoke German as a child and was sent to a St. Mary's industrial school for boys at the age of 7. Babe Ruth drank alcohol behind his father's back literally, He rarely attended St. Mary's and, spent 12 years at St. Mary's because he was deemed incorrigible. Ruth was a shirt maker and, a carpenter at St. Mary's and, he was kept in this strict environment only allowed to leave for his mother's funeral and go to St. James. Despite being put into this place for breaking windows by playing street ball would've lead to Ruth's stunning baseball career. 
File:Babe Ruth - St. Mary's Industrial School.JPG






                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        He started out by playing a game for St. Mary's ball team but the way people view it is that Ruth was a chicken for running away and the other view is that he won the game for St. Mary's. James Dunn was reported to by Joe Engel about Ruth's performance and wanted him to join him for professional baseball but it was an issue because he had to remain in St. Mary's until he was 21. After it was straightened out, Ruth began training and got his famous staple nickname "Babe" Ruth. 

Ruth started his first game in march 7th 1914 for the Boston Red Sox and he started off with a bang. Ruth hit a home run that was longer than Jim Thorpes' legendary shot. Ruth was more of a pitcher than a batter and was very prone to anger such as when he threw four balls and tried to punch the umpire. He was fined $100 and sent out of the game.While Ruth was playing baseball a war has begun and Ruth sent an application to be drafted in but never was. A little comical fact was that Ruth didn't know his own birthday and put his birthday as Feb. 7th 1894 when it was actually Feb. 7th 1895. Ruth's place in the Boston Red Sox came to a close when Frazee started running low on money and sold him for $100,000 to the New York Yankees.

Ruth's career for the New York Yankees is his most well known team he played for from 1920-1934. Ruth didn't start out the best injuring himself with a bat but, some of his greatest feats. were also achieved. He broke his records of home runs with 38 whereas he had only hit 19 for the Red Sox. Ruth took Spring training to keep in shape but, in 1924 he gained 50 pounds to get to 260 and, he began to collapse to the point where news had begun printing early obituaries for Ruth. His hospitalization was believed to be influenced by his early drinking binging of hot dogs and pop(soda). This was his worst season with the Yankees. 
File:Harding Cox and Ruth.jpg
"How does he do it?" Presidential candidates Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox take time out to ponder another big story of 1920, Babe Ruth's record-breaking home run tally.

The Yankees eventually were called "Murderer's Row" because of their formidable line up of players.  The Yankees were becoming famous for having many injuries occur to their players. Ruth was being hated on by the crowd that even Franklin D. Roosevelt had attended while a democratic candidate for president. He silenced them briefly by hitting a three run home run. After the yelling began once more, Ruth performed his famous "Calling Shot" where he pointed to the center of the field and hit the ball the same direction he pointed at. Ruth joined the Boston Braves because he knew his time was coming but he didn't want to leave baseball just yet until he joined the Boston Braves he then retired his last game May 30th 1935. 

Overall, Ruth made his mark on the world as a baseball player who started on the bottom and fell rather quickly once he reached new heights with baseball. He split with his first wife Helen from 1914 to 1925 and they adopted a daughter named Dorothy. Three months later he married an actress named Claire and, adopted another daughter named Julia. It was because of this relationship that Gehrig's mother commented about the difference in care for Dorothy(1st daughter) vs. Julia(2nd Daughter) and, Ruth responds by telling Gehrig to tell his mother to can it and mind her own business but Gehrig tells Ruth to back off and they drift apart. Ruth had Tumors and cancer that and it's commented that he was so skinny compared to the big man he had once been. Despite his difficult upbringing, Ruth had made even 5,000 more than the President of the United States Herbert Hoover playing baseball. He was a light to people to ignore the Great Depression with baseball and his legacy of baseball still goes on today. 

File:1928 Gehrig Speaker Cobb Ruth.jpg







https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harding_Cox_and_Ruth.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1928_Gehrig_Speaker_Cobb_Ruth.jpg
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth
https://baseballhall.org/archive-collection/called-shot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Babe_Ruth_-_St._Mary%27s_Industrial_School.JPG
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruthba01.shtml
http://www.baberuth.com/biography/ 













4 comments:

  1. Your article was very interesting and I learned a lot about Babe Ruth. I thought it was interesting how he received the nickname "Babe" while his given name was George. The story behind his name is actually really interesting. After leaving St. Mary's, he didn't really know what to do so he followed his now legal guardian and manager. The other players noticed it and thought it was funny, giving him the nickname of Babe. It's funny how something this small ended up being a part of one of the names that everyone has heard of before.

    Source : http://www.baberuthcentral.com/kids-clubhouse/babe-nickname/

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  2. Paolo, your post on Babe Ruth was very interesting. I learned a lot about the life and career of Babe Ruth. He is known as one of the best baseball players of all time in the way that he obliterated almost every hitting record at that point to date. One thing that I found very interesting about him is how he used his worldwide fame. It turns out that at the onset of WW2, Babe Ruth decided to become invested in activism and promotion for the war. He even organized exhibition games to donate to the relief fund for the different army branches. It is interesting to see how political actions in today's sports, like the recent "kneeling" in the NFL, existed in some form even back then.

    Src:
    Bullock, Steven R. (2004). Playing for Their Nation: Baseball and the American Military during World War II. University of Nebraska Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-8032-1337-9

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  4. I loved reading this brief history on the life of the famous Babe Ruth. While reading your article, I began to wonder how baseball in general interacted with the American public during the time of the Great Depression. I did a little bit of searching, and I came across a small article that discusses such a connection. For example, such things discussed in this particular article include how many attended baseball games in attempt to escape the stressful life produced from the Great Depression. Not only did the public come for this reason, but also the press and radio stations. A focus on the airing of such sport events became present.
    https://historyrat.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/the-golden-age-of-baseball-the-1930s/

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