George Herman Ruth

George Herman Ruth died at Memorial Hospital in New York on August 16, 1948, of cancer that had begun in the neck and taken the voice that used to fill a dugout. He was fifty-three. Born in Baltimore on February 6, 1895, he spent boyhood years at St. Mary's Industrial School, where Brother Matthias taught him to hit and to behave, with mixed results on the second lesson. He came up as a left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and became the reason the Yankees needed a stadium. Seven hundred and fourteen home runs was the number the country learned; the more interesting work was how he changed the sport from a place-hitting argument into a crowd that came to see one swing. He ate too much, drank too much, visited too many wards, and signed too many slips for children who would never see the box. The called shot in Chicago is still a fight among witnesses. The salary fights with Ruppert are not. He never managed, and he never pretended the owners had forgotten how to count. He wanted to manage. The owners who had grown rich on him did not offer a serious chair. He wore a Boston Braves uniform for a last, sad season. New York was the city of the apartment, the restaurants, and the hospital. Hawthorne, up in Westchester, was the cemetery the family chose. Tens of thousands passed the bier at Yankee Stadium. He is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York — not under the Stadium, and not in Baltimore.