George Herman Ruth

She was born as Mary Margaret Ruth, but everyone knew her as "Mamie" -- the name, she would say, her brother George would use to annoy her.On Wednesday, Mamie Ruth Moberly -- the little sister of baseball immortal Babe Ruth -- died of cancer at the Colton Villa Nursing Center in Hagerstown. She was 91.A native of Baltimore, Mamie Ruth lived during her childhood in the apartments above various family taverns -- including, from about 1906 to 1912, Ruth's Saloon, located roughly in what is now center field at the city's new baseball palace, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

They pass through the tiny row home at a steady clip, 50,000 pilgrims a year on a mission to visit their mecca. Here, in a second-floor bedroom of a narrow little residence on Emory Street, on a bitter cold day in 1895, George Herman Ruth was born. Humble digs, indeed, for one who'd grow up to be larger than life. But as Lorie Vaughan toured Babe Ruth's birthplace on Tuesday, she said the locale wasn't as important as the aura around it. "I've been to Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's home)

They pass through the tiny row home at a steady clip, 50,000 pilgrims a year on a mission to visit their mecca. Here, in a second-floor bedroom of a narrow little residence on Emory Street, on a bitter cold day in 1895, George Herman Ruth was born. Humble digs, indeed, for one who'd grow up to be larger than life. But as Lorie Vaughan toured Babe Ruth's birthplace on Tuesday, she said the locale wasn't as important as the aura around it. "I've been to Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's home)

On Super Bowl Sunday, while a good portion of a football-loving nation was watching the pregame shows on TV, a few brave fans made a pilgrimage to the Baltimore birthplace of a ballplayer from another sport who would have turned 110 yesterday. Call them the Babe Ruth faithful. "He might have drunk and caroused with women, but he was still the greatest," said Stan Zelaskowski, 56, of Cumberland, who called his Ruth-signed baseball one of his most treasured possessions. Zelaskowski and the dozens of others found occasion to don Babe Ruth ties, wear Ruth T-shirts emblazoned with his Yankees number 3 and discuss whether the St. Mary's Industrial School that Ruth attended for 12 years was truly a "reform school" or just one for "wayward youth."

It's difficult, seven decades later, to fully appreciate the hold Babe Ruth had on the American public. Not just baseball fans, let alone New York Yankees fans. Everyone. And not just because of his incredible prowess in the batter's box. His gargantuan personality -- a mixture of Falstaff and Pete Rose -- made him an idol whose every action was grist not only for the newspapers but also the topic of the day at office water coolers and rural soda fountains.And this in an era before media hype.

BABE RUTH'S OWN BOOK OF BASEBALL. By George Herman Ruth. University of Nebraska Press. 301 pages. Illustrated. $9.95 paperback.SO FAR, this has been an exciting baseball season in Baltimore. And now, for fans who like to laugh now and again, how about this reprint of a 1928 book that purports to be the literary work of the greatest of all baseball players, George Herman Ruth Jr., Baltimore's own immortal Babe?It's about as likely that Babe Ruth wrote this book himself as it is that his contemporary, Noel Coward, wrote it. The original edition listed no co-author "with" the Babe, noting only that the book was published "by arrangement with Christy Walsh," a sports writer and talent agent.

Six-foot-one, 220 pounds, size 38 waist. With numbers like that, 19-year-old Erik Crown would easily pass for a teen-age Babe Ruth before an audience of millions of Japanese children."

Six-foot-one, 220 pounds, size 38 waist. With numbers like that, 19-year-old Erik Crown would easily pass for a teen-age Babe Ruth before an audience of millions of Japanese children."

THE LIFE THAT RUTH BUILT: A BIOGRAPHY. By Marshall Smelser. University of Nebraska Press. 592 pages. Illustrated. $16.95 paperback.PLAY BALL: THE LIFE AND TROUBLED TIMES OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. By John Feinstein. Villard Books. 427 pages. $22.50.A PICTURE POSTCARD HISTORY OF BASEBALL. By Ron Menchine. Almar Press. 135 pages. Illustrated. $17.70.FOR literate fans, it's a pretty good year for books about baseball. So try any or all of these."The Life That Ruth Built" is a reprint of a biography, first printed in 1975, of Maryland's most famous native (better known even than Wallis Warfield Simpson)

Not GuiltyEditor: An error appeared in Doug Birch's June 28 article, "Baltimore upbringing fueled Marshall's outrage against racism." In referring to Parren J. Mitchell, Mr. Birch stated that he was the University of Maryland School of Social Work's first black graduate and that Justice Marshall helped strike down our school's "white-only" admission policy. The University of Maryland School of Social Work has never had an exclusionary policy and former Representative Mitchell never attended our school.

Almost make believe, except he was authentic, magnetic, entertaining, exploding with vitality and colorfully animated without knowing it. Yes, and susceptible to all the weaknesses of humankind while endowed with overpowering skills that set him apart as baseball's most accomplished player of all time.His presence had an almost mythical yet mystical impact on America that no other athlete, before or since, has been able to command. A combination of ability, personality and boisterous charm that drew crowds until his dying day and, yes, even beyond, because 6,600 mourners attended his funeral and another 75,000 were standing in the streets under an oppressive summer sky that was dripping rain, while paying silent tribute as the cortege made its way from New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

For a moment, Mike Gibbons blocks out the rattling noises all around him, the moving of boxes, the hammering of vagrant nails, the shuffling of network television crews, and he considers, for maybe the 714th time (this morning) the eternal question:What is this hold that George Herman Ruth still has on the American imagination?"I should be able to answer that one, I've rehearsed it enough," says Gibbons, director of the Babe Ruth Museum, which is sprucing up to celebrate the great man's hundredth birthday, even though the weather experts, at week's end, are predicting snow.

It's difficult, seven decades later, to fully appreciate the hold Babe Ruth had on the American public. Not just baseball fans, let alone New York Yankees fans. Everyone. And not just because of his incredible prowess in the batter's box. His gargantuan personality -- a mixture of Falstaff and Pete Rose -- made him an idol whose every action was grist not only for the newspapers but also the topic of the day at office water coolers and rural soda fountains.And this in an era before media hype.

THE LIFE THAT RUTH BUILT: A BIOGRAPHY. By Marshall Smelser. University of Nebraska Press. 592 pages. Illustrated. $16.95 paperback.PLAY BALL: THE LIFE AND TROUBLED TIMES OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. By John Feinstein. Villard Books. 427 pages. $22.50.A PICTURE POSTCARD HISTORY OF BASEBALL. By Ron Menchine. Almar Press. 135 pages. Illustrated. $17.70.FOR literate fans, it's a pretty good year for books about baseball. So try any or all of these."The Life That Ruth Built" is a reprint of a biography, first printed in 1975, of Maryland's most famous native (better known even than Wallis Warfield Simpson)

BABE RUTH'S OWN BOOK OF BASEBALL. By George Herman Ruth. University of Nebraska Press. 301 pages. Illustrated. $9.95 paperback.SO FAR, this has been an exciting baseball season in Baltimore. And now, for fans who like to laugh now and again, how about this reprint of a 1928 book that purports to be the literary work of the greatest of all baseball players, George Herman Ruth Jr., Baltimore's own immortal Babe?It's about as likely that Babe Ruth wrote this book himself as it is that his contemporary, Noel Coward, wrote it. The original edition listed no co-author "with" the Babe, noting only that the book was published "by arrangement with Christy Walsh," a sports writer and talent agent.

She was born as Mary Margaret Ruth, but everyone knew her as "Mamie" -- the name, she would say, her brother George would use to annoy her.On Wednesday, Mamie Ruth Moberly -- the little sister of baseball immortal Babe Ruth -- died of cancer at the Colton Villa Nursing Center in Hagerstown. She was 91.A native of Baltimore, Mamie Ruth lived during her childhood in the apartments above various family taverns -- including, from about 1906 to 1912, Ruth's Saloon, located roughly in what is now center field at the city's new baseball palace, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

For a moment, Mike Gibbons blocks out the rattling noises all around him, the moving of boxes, the hammering of vagrant nails, the shuffling of network television crews, and he considers, for maybe the 714th time (this morning) the eternal question:What is this hold that George Herman Ruth still has on the American imagination?"I should be able to answer that one, I've rehearsed it enough," says Gibbons, director of the Babe Ruth Museum, which is sprucing up to celebrate the great man's hundredth birthday, even though the weather experts, at week's end, are predicting snow.

On Super Bowl Sunday, while a good portion of a football-loving nation was watching the pregame shows on TV, a few brave fans made a pilgrimage to the Baltimore birthplace of a ballplayer from another sport who would have turned 110 yesterday. Call them the Babe Ruth faithful. "He might have drunk and caroused with women, but he was still the greatest," said Stan Zelaskowski, 56, of Cumberland, who called his Ruth-signed baseball one of his most treasured possessions. Zelaskowski and the dozens of others found occasion to don Babe Ruth ties, wear Ruth T-shirts emblazoned with his Yankees number 3 and discuss whether the St. Mary's Industrial School that Ruth attended for 12 years was truly a "reform school" or just one for "wayward youth."

Six-foot-one, 220 pounds, size 38 waist. With numbers like that, 19-year-old Erik Crown would easily pass for a teen-age Babe Ruth before an audience of millions of Japanese children."

Six-foot-one, 220 pounds, size 38 waist. With numbers like that, 19-year-old Erik Crown would easily pass for a teen-age Babe Ruth before an audience of millions of Japanese children."