Babe Ruth learned to hit at a Baltimore reformatory run by monks
At seven, George Herman Ruth was placed in St. Mary's, a Baltimore reformatory and orphanage, and labelled incorrigible. He spent much of the next 12 years there, learning to make shirts and to swing a bat by copying a towering Xaverian brother. He left to become a star pitcher, then baseball's most famous slugger.
Ruth was born on 6 February 1895 in Baltimore's Pigtown district, to parents of German descent, and spoke German as a small child. Only one of his seven siblings survived infancy. His father kept a saloon and gave him little supervision; Ruth later admitted he roamed the streets, skipped school and sneaked beer. On 13 June 1902 he entered St. Mary's, part reformatory, part orphanage, where boys worked as well as studied and discipline was strict.
The man who changed him was Brother Matthias Boutlier, the school's prefect of discipline, respected for both his strength and his fairness. Ruth's running and hitting styles closely mirrored his, and Ruth said he was born a hitter the first day he saw Matthias strike a ball. Though left-handed, Ruth caught and played the infield in right-handers' gloves before becoming the school's best pitcher. Years later, rich and famous, he bought Matthias a Cadillac for 5,000 dollars, and replaced it after it was wrecked.
In 1914 Jack Dunn signed him to the minor-league Baltimore Orioles, and veterans reportedly dubbed the naive rookie Dunn's babe, which stuck. He was soon sold to the Boston Red Sox, where he twice won 23 games in a season and shared three World Series titles, but he wanted to play every day. As an outfielder he set a single-season home run record of 29 in 1919. Owner Harry Frazee then sold him to the Yankees, a deal later blamed for Boston's 86-year title drought, the so-called Curse of the Bambino.
In New York his power helped usher in the live-ball era, turning a low-scoring tactical game into one built around home runs. He hit 60 in 1927, led the American League in homers 12 times and won four World Series with the Yankees. His drinking and womanising drew constant headlines and probably cost him a chance to manage. He joined the Hall of Fame among its first five members in 1936 and died of nasopharyngeal cancer on 16 August 1948.
Source: Babe Ruth
