Babe Ruth

George Herman "Babe" Ruth, born February 6, 1895, and died August 16, 1948, played Major League Baseball for 22 seasons, from 1914 to 1935. Known as "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat," he started out as a standout left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox but became most famous as a power-hitting outfielder for the New York Yankees. Widely seen as one of America’s greatest sports figures, many consider him the finest baseball player ever. In 1936, he was chosen for the Baseball Hall of Fame as part of its first group of five inductees.

At age seven, Ruth was sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. In 1914, he signed with the minor-league Baltimore Orioles, but was quickly sold to the Red Sox. By 1916, he was known as an excellent pitcher who occasionally hit long home runs—a rare feat during the dead-ball era. Though he twice won 23 games in a season as a pitcher and won three World Series titles with Boston, Ruth wanted to play every day and was allowed to switch to the outfield.

With regular playing time, he set the MLB single-season home run record in 1919 with 29. After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees, a move that stirred controversy. This trade contributed to Boston’s 86-year championship drought and gave rise to the "Curse of the Bambino" legend. Over 15 years with New York, Ruth helped the team win seven American League pennants and four World Series.

His powerful swing drove home run totals higher, drawing crowds, boosting baseball’s popularity, and helping shift the game from a low-scoring, strategy-focused sport to one where the home run mattered greatly. As part of the Yankees’ 1927 "Murderers’ Row" lineup, he hit 60 home runs, breaking his own single-season record by one. Ruth’s final season with the Yankees was 1934, and he retired after a brief stint with the Boston Braves the next year.

He led the American League in home runs 12 times in his career. During his playing days, Ruth faced intense media and public scrutiny for both his baseball feats and his off-field habits of drinking and womanizing. After retiring as a player, he was not given a chance to manage a major-league team, likely due to his poor behavior during parts of his career. In his later years, he made many public appearances, especially to support American efforts in World War II.

In 1946, he became ill with nasopharyngeal cancer and died from it two years later. Ruth remains a major figure in American culture.

George Herman Ruth Jr. was born on February 6, 1895, at 216 Emory Street in Baltimore’s Pigtown neighborhood, in a house owned by his maternal grandfather, Pius Schamberger, a German immigrant and union activist. His parents, Katherine and George Herman Ruth Sr., were both of German descent. Ruth Sr. worked various jobs, including selling lightning rods and operating a streetcar, before becoming a counterman in a family grocery and saloon. Only one of Ruth’s seven siblings—his younger sister Mamie—survived infancy.

Much of Ruth’s childhood is unclear. As a child, he spoke German. When he was a toddler, his family moved to 339 South Woodyear Street; by age six, his father ran a saloon with an upstairs apartment at 426 West Camden Street. Why Ruth was sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys at age seven—a reformatory and orphanage—is also uncertain.

However, according to Julia Ruth Stevens in 1999, because George Sr. owned a saloon and gave Ruth little supervision, the boy became delinquent. As an adult, Ruth admitted he ran the streets, rarely attended school, and drank beer when his father wasn’t looking. Some accounts say that after a violent incident at his father’s saloon, city authorities decided the environment was unfit for a child. Ruth entered St. Mary’s on June 13, 1902.

He was labeled "incorrigible" and spent most of the next 12 years there. At St. Mary’s, boys received an education but also learned work skills and helped run the school, especially after turning 12. Ruth became a shirtmaker and a skilled carpenter; he even adjusted his own shirt collars during his well-paid baseball career. The boys, aged 5 to 21, did most of the facility’s work and renovated St. Mary’s in 1912.

Food was simple, and the Xaverian Brothers who ran the school enforced strict discipline, including corporal punishment. Ruth’s nickname there was "Niggerlips," because of his large facial features and darker complexion compared to other boys at the all-white reformatory. Ruth was sometimes allowed to rejoin his family or was placed at St. James’s Home, a supervised residence with community work, but he always returned to St. Mary’s. His family rarely visited; his mother died when he was 12, and by some accounts, he was only allowed to leave St. Mary’s to attend her funeral.

How Ruth started playing baseball there is unclear: one story says he was sent to St. Mary’s partly because he repeatedly broke windows with long hits while playing street ball; another says Brother Herman, the school’s athletic director, told him to join a team on his first day, making him a catcher even though left-handers rarely play that position. At St.