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.