Maryland on Stamps & Covers - Babe Ruth
Richard D. L. Fulton
“If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.” ~Babe Ruth
The United States Postal Service (USPS) issued a 20-cent stamp on July 6, 1983, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first All-Star Game, and honoring the legendary Baltimorean baseball player, George “Babe” Herman Ruth, Jr.
The stamp’s design featured Ruth “in action” swinging a baseball bat, based on a well-known photograph of the baseball player as he hit the first home run during the newly-founded All-Star Game held in Chicago.
The First Day (of issue) covers (FDC) were canceled in the Chicago post offices.
Ruth was born on February 6, 1895, at 216 Emory Street, a Baltimore “Pigtown” house, to parents George Herman and Katherine (sometimes spelled Catherine) Ruth. The home was owned by Ruth’s maternal grandfather, Pius Schamberger. According to Britannica (britannica.com), Ruth, Sr. owned and operated a saloon in the house, while Ruth’s family lived in the rooms above the saloon.
Ruth’s mother, Katherine, gave birth to eight children, but only Babe Ruth and Mary Margaret survived into adulthood.
A reporter for the Boston Post in 1920 asked Ruth how he had acquired the nickname “Babe,” and he replied. “They all call me ‘Babe.’ Where it came from, I don’t recall.”
Ruth was never an orphan, as some have reported. He was rather insubordinate as a child, and his parents had placed him in St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage, at age seven because Ruth became a street kid, running with a tough crowd, skipping school, fighting, and drinking alcohol at his father’s saloon.
He had attributed his tenure at school, turned his life around, and this resulted in his pursuing a career in baseball.
At age 19, George married Mary Ellen “Helen” Woodford, a waitress he reportedly met in Boston, on October 17, 1914, at Saint Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in Ellicott City, and who perished in a house fire in January 1929. Ruth and Woodford had remained married, although they had lived separately for at least three years before she died in a fire. He then subsequently married Claire Hodgson on April 17, 1929, in New York. Ruth only had one child, Dorothy, who was born on June 7, 1921, by his mistress, Juanita Jennings. After marrying Hodgson, he and his wife then subsequently adopted Dorothy and Hodgson’s daughter, Julia Marshall Hodgson.
During his baseball career, Ruth played for the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Braves from 1914 to 1935, according to the Official Website of Babe Ruth (baberuth.com). By the end of his career, he had hit a cumulative number of 714 home runs and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on June 12, 1939.
Ruth died on August 16, 1948, of a cancerous tumor that had formed at the back of his nose (according to an article published in the August 17 issue of The (Wilmington, Delaware) News Journal, at the age of 53. On the following two days, a viewing of his body was held in the rotunda of Yankee Stadium in New York, and he was subsequently buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
According to an article published in the Time magazine published after his death, “Sportswriters (sic) knocked themselves out, thinking up new names and superlatives for him: The Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, The Colossus of Clout. He didn’t need all that; he was color itself—a fellow built on heroic, swaggering lines, an enormous head on a barrel of a body.”
In response to the passing of Ruth, President Harry S. Truman had stated, “A whole generation of boys now grown to manhood will mourn the passing of the home run king of the world…”
As far as honoring Babe Ruth on a stamp, Scott Lucas, an Illinois senator and former professional baseball player, proposed such a project in 1948 when Ruth had passed, but the proposition was rejected.
George Herman Ruth, Jr. First Day (of issue) Cover (FDC), 1983.
