It's difficult, seven decades later, to fully appreciate the hold Babe Ruth had on the American public. Not just baseball fans, let alone New York Yankees fans. Everyone. And not just because of his incredible prowess in the batter's box. His gargantuan personality -- a mixture of Falstaff and Pete Rose -- made him an idol whose every action was grist not only for the newspapers but also the topic of the day at office water coolers and rural soda fountains.
And this in an era before media hype. There was no television, no endorsements, no publicity machines to inflate personalities. Even a severe belly ache that landed him in the hospital was front-page news around the world. He was such a familiar figure that his farewell photograph could be a rear view of him leaning on a bat, hat in hand, the number 3 on his back sufficient identification.
The famous belly ache in 1925 illustrates the complexity of the man who was baseball's most spectacular player. No Cal Ripken quaffing milk. Ruth fell seriously ill pigging out on nine or 10 greasy hot dogs and eight bottles of soda pop. He was a man who did just about everything to excess. Writer Paul Gallico called him the only man he knew who was "as spectacular in failure as he is in success." Ruth's strikeouts, in which he whirled almost completely around, were just as impressive as his home runs, Gallico wrote.
George Herman Ruth Jr. was a Baltimorean, born a century ago tomorrow in Pigtown. He learned the game of baseball here and played briefly for Jack Dunn's International League Orioles. The team, not the Babe, failed and he was shipped to Boston. As a pitcher, he was exceptional. But it was in Yankee Stadium in the 1920s that he achieved sports immortality. Statistics-minded fans can argue whether he was the greatest hitter in baseball history -- Ty Cobb may have been a better all-round hitter and Hank Aaron hit more career homers. But neither dominated baseball as Ruth did until his retirement in 1935.
Baltimore celebrates the centenary of one of its greatest sons with festivities this weekend at the house in which he was born on Emory Street, now the Babe Ruth Museum, and at nearby Camden Yards, on land where he once polished glasses in his father's saloon. Yankee Stadium may be the House that Ruth Built, but Baltimore is the city that built Babe Ruth.