George Herman Ruth, Jr. is the legendary
baseball player of the United States. He had many
nicknames like Babe, The Sultan of Swat, The
Colossus of Clout and The Great Bambino. An American
Major League baseball player, Ruth was one of the
famous baseball players of all times and according
to many he is the no.1 player in history.
Born to Kate Schamberger Ruth and George Herman
Ruth, Babe Ruth was a native of Maryland. He was
admitted in St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys,
where he met Brother Matthias who cultivated his
interest in the game of baseball. He taught him to
hit, field and even pitch.
Ruth started his career as a starting pitcher for
the Boston Red Sox, he spent most of his an
outfielder with the New York Yankees, starting form
1920. With the Red Sox he won eighty-nine games and
lost forty-six. He played as an outfielder in one
hundred and eleven games and he broke the record of
Ned Williamson by hitting twenty-nine runs, which is
the maximum number of runs in a single season, in
1919.
Red Sox owner sold Ruth to the New York Yankees in
1920. He turned out to be the golden duck for the
team as in the next fifteen season, he not only lead
the league by walks, runs, home runs, and RBI but
also placed it in the top ten in slugging
percentage, batting average, and total bases. The
team even won seven American League Pennants and
four World Series titles. In 1921, he made a record
by hitting fifty nine home runs in a single season
which he broke himself by hitting sixty in 1927.
Nobody else could break this record for the next
thirty-four years.
Ruth also appeared in many movies and he became a
very popular media figure. He featured in the silent
era films like Speedy and Pride of the Yankees.
Ruth's health began deteriorating in 1946 when he
developed a malignant tumor that spread over his
neck and his left carotid artery. He received many
treatments during which he lost eighty pounds. At
that time Dr. Brian Hutchings had developed a new
drug named teropterin, which showed improvement in
leukemia patients. Ruth was induced with this
experimental drug, which gave him headaches,
hoarseness and swallowing problems. From June 1947,
he was given injections, which proved to bring
improvements in his health. His case was also
discussed at the fourth Annual internal research
congress, but now his conditions is being recognized
as nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which is a very rare
tumor located near the Eustachian tube for which the
patient should be given radiation therapy and
concurrent chemotherapy.
During his marriage to Helen Woodford, Ruth adopted
a daughter. But after his separation with his first
wife, whom he married in 1914, in early 1920s, she
died in a house fire. He married actress Claire
Hodgson on April 17, 1929, with whom he stayed till
death. Ruth liked to spend his winters in Florida
playing golf. After his retirement from the game he
settled in a winter beachfront home in Florida. Babe
Ruth expired at the age of fifty-three, on August
16, 1948.
He was elected as the baseball's Greatest Player
Ever in 1969, on professional Baseball's hundredth
anniversary. The Sporting News in 1998 ranked babe
Ruth No.1 in the list of Baseball's 100 Greatest
Players. In 1999, his fans named him to the Major
League Baseball All-Century Team.
