In the summer of 1967, a brief item in "Mr. Peep's Diary," an Evening Sun column, reported the imminent destruction of four dilapidated Baltimore rowhouses, including one thought to be the birthplace of one George Herman Ruth.
I brought the story to the attention of Mayor Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, for whom I then worked as press secretary.
Since he had saved the Carroll Mansion, home of the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, I thought he should also save the Ruth house. Of the two, I suggested, he would be more appreciated for saving the ballplayer's place.
Mayor McKeldin did not initially think much of the concept (a teetotaler whose father and brother had died of alcoholism, he once referred to the Babe as "that drunkard.") He said he did not think the city had funds to buy and restore the house, but he did not dismiss the idea. He told me to call the owner and tell him to hold off doing anything for now.
The owner agreed, happy to hear that somebody might help.
With Baltimore encountering some of the racial tensions erupting into riots in other cities, the mayor's attention became focused on keeping our city calm throughout that summer. But in late September, the owner called to say he had been notified to fix the buildings or raze them in two weeks. The mayor decided to look at the house.
We found the buildings in deplorable shape. A rusted auto sat in the back yard of the Ruth house. The surrounding neighborhood was run down as well.
On the ride back to City Hall, Mayor McKeldin asked me to check with the city's department of vital statistics to make certain Ruth had actually been born there. Sidney Norton, the longtime head of the department, researched the records of the time and corroborated that 216 Emory St. was, indeed, the Babe's birthplace.
When I presented this finding to the mayor, he raised one final concern. He noted that the owner's last name was Pollack.
"Call him and ask him if he's related to Jack Pollack," the mayor said in that Scottish brogue he resorted to when he wanted to make a special point. Jack Pollack was a major Democratic political boss of that era.
"I don't think it would look right to the city to be helping a relative of Jack Pollack," the Republican mayor said. "The Sunpapers would make something out of that."
I phoned the owner one more time and asked hesitantly if he was related in any way to Jack Pollack.
He laughed. "No relation. But sometimes I wished I were," he said. "I might have been able to save the house long ago."
I gave the mayor the news. He smiled.
But he was still bothered by the lack of city funds. If we bought the Ruth house, we had to buy three others attached to it. What finally saved the hallowed house was no great and final decision by anyone. It was simply that on that Friday, now just weeks away from the end of the mayor's term, I discovered I needed a news story from the mayor's office for that Sunday's newspapers. I suggested to the mayor that we could announce that the house faced possible destruction and that those interested in preserving it should make their views known. If there was enough public and private support, the court could be persuaded to delay any further action and the next administration would have time to work on finding the funds. He agreed.
Our news release proposed that "the city consider saving from imminent destruction the house Babe Ruth was born in and restoring it as a sports museum."
To our surprise, the proposal was prominently displayed in The Sunday Sun, which published not only an article but a photo taken by a Sun photographer of the front door of 216 Emory.
During the following week, the story was picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted in newspapers across the country. Within days, we began receiving letters of support from all over, including a $5 contribution from an out-of-state donor to help in the restoration. Last Monday, at the conclusion of the Babe's 100th birthday celebration in front of his birthplace, several baseballs autographed by his descendants were tossed into the crowd as mementos.
I caught one of them and I'm wondering now if the Babe looked down on the ceremony and said, "Throw a ball to that kid, Goldberg."
M. Hirsh Goldberg is a public relations executive and author of five books, the latest of which is "The Complete Book of Greed" (Morrow, 1994).