The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth Read Online Free PDF Page B

her mother visited him on a regular basis, taking the Wilkens Avenue trolley on Sunday afternoons.
    The Fats Leisman version is very different. Ruth pretty much stayed at St. Mary’s from the time he arrived until he was 20 years old, the only exception a failed attempt at living in the St. James Home, sort of a halfway stop toward returning to the everyday world. Leisman also said that Ruth had no visitors.
    “Babe would kid me and say, ‘Well, I guess I am too big and ugly for anyone to come to see me,’” Leisman wrote about visiting day. “‘Maybe next time.’ But next time never came.”
    The average St. Mary’s resident tried a number of jobs before settling into one that seemed to suit him. The one that seemed to suit Nigger Lips was the tailor shop. He became accomplished at sewing shirts, eventually working in the High City Tailor Shop, which manufactured the best clothes. He would, when he made big money, always have an eye and appreciation for a well-made shirt.
    His education at the school would be best expressed in his handwriting, always a Catholic school priority. He would write with his right hand, not his natural left, in an elegant script that was fashioned by assorted whacks on his wrist by a brother’s wooden ruler.
    Only one fight ever has been mentioned, a slug-out with a newly arrived bully, but there must have been numerous discipline situations. An active boy, a loud boy, pleasant-natured as he might have been, would have been fodder for the disciplinary system.
    “They took us into a room that had straps lined up against a wall,” Jimmie Reese, a friend and teammate of Ruth’s with the Yankees and a visitor to St. Mary’s years later, said. “They said ‘These are the straps we used on Babe Ruth.’”
    Again, there is much that is missing about these years. A lot of time passed. Christmases, birthdays, colds, fevers, high points, low points, school events, report cards. What happened? Did he get any presents? Did he sing any carols? Blow out any candles? Ever get an A for anything?
    In 1904, two years after he was first enrolled in the school, a massive fire swept through downtown on February 7, the Great Fire of Baltimore. In 31 hours, it destroyed 70 blocks of the city, 1,526 buildings, and put 35,000 people out of work. All of this happened within four or five streets from Pigtown, where the Ruth family lived. Was he at home when it happened, nine or ten years old, terrified, wondering if the conflagration would come his way? Did everyone run to the water? Did everyone run to the fire to help? If he was at school, which was located on one of the highest points around the city, the fire certainly was visible. Was he sitting out there wondering what was happening with his mother, father, and sister? Where was he? Was he scared? Did he care? What happened?
    The fog is in the way.
    His mother died when he was 17 years old. Was he at home? Was he at school? Did he go to the funeral? Did he stand at the grave at Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery? Did he cry?
    The fog is in the way.
    He was another boy in the overcrowded system, anonymous and wounded, trying to overcome hard beginnings. He was Nigger Lips. He was ticketed to move along with Fats and Skinny and Congo Kirby and Loads and all the rest, off to find anonymous places in a society filled with anonymous places.
    Except, of course, he found baseball.
    The fog began to lift.
     
    One version: he played baseball the first day he arrived at St. Mary’s. Brother Herman, in charge of athletics, was putting together a game. He spotted a sad-eyed new arrival at the edge of the playground. He called the boy to the group.
    “What do you play?”
    “Huh?”
    “What position do you play? Or don’t you care?”
    “I don’t know. I ain’t played.”
    Brother Herman threw him a catcher’s mitt, not knowing the boy was left-handed. The boy put the left-handed mitt on the wrong hand, but was ready to go. A career was born.
    Another