“The Sultan of Swat, the King of Crash, the Colossus of Clout, The Great Bambino!”1 From the Roaring Twenties through the Great Depression, Babe Ruth, formally known as George Herman Ruth, personally ended the dead-ball era of Major League Baseball and mashed his way into athletic and cultural immortality. But who knew Mount St. Mary’s University played a major role in launching his stardom?
The Babe was quite the hell-raiser in his youth (and most of his adulthood, as well) and did not settle well into the life of a Baltimore saloon-owner’s son. Ruth was a drinker, a dipper, and a thief before he had a decade under his belt. Because of his “mature” hobbies for his age, he was sent away to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in west Baltimore. It was there where Brother Matthias of the Xaverian Brothers introduced Ruth to the game of baseball.
Ruth’s boyhood success at St. Mary’s led him to play schools around Baltimore, and one fateful day in 1913, the St. Mary’s baseball team traveled to Emmitsburg, Maryland, and faced off against the Mount St. Mary’s prep school baseball team.
As the tale goes, the Babe took the mound on Echo Field, with views of the Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and Immaculate Conception Chapel, and his pitching impressed so much that he caught the attention of Joe Engel, a Mount St. Mary’s University alumnus and a pitcher for the Washington Senators. In fact, the eighteen-year-old Ruth played so well, striking out 18 of 20 batters faced, that he earned comparisons to Engel’s teammate, Walter Johnson. Johnson, being one of the MLB’s greatest pitchers, holds the record for the most shutouts and has the second most wins in MLB history.
At the same place where today’s Mount Rugby Team practices their tries and the Ultimate Frisbee Team pulls their discs, Babe Ruth, the most infamous athlete of the 20th century, was discovered. On Echo Field, Babe Ruth transformed from a misbehaving juvenile into the future of baseball.
Keeping with Ruth’s larger-than-life frame and personality, the story of his discovery has more layers than may originally meet the eye. As legend goes, there was an element of subterfuge to Ruth’s discovery.
Engel, renowned for his scouting ability, delivered the news of Ruth’s dominance to John Dunn, the owner and manager of the minor league Baltimore Orioles. Dunn did not immediately act on this tip, but he would when he heard it a second time. Ruth and the St. Mary’s team would later face Mount St. Joseph College in west Baltimore, where Ruth and Mount St. Joseph pitcher Ford Meadows would impress. Mount St. Joseph’s athletic director, Brother Gilbert, wished to keep Meadows at his school and gave Dunn Ruth’s name instead. Dunn would go to watch Ruth work out and promptly offered him a contract with the Orioles. Ruth would star at Baltimore and earn a move to the Major League Boston Red Sox. After a successful time in Boston, Ruth would be traded to the New York Yankees, where he established himself as the greatest baseball player of his time.
Ruth was good to all who had helped him throughout his career and in his youth. He donated to and made appearances at St. Mary’s, he bought Brother Matthias a Cadillac, and he would visit places that were instrumental to his upbringing.
On May 7, 1921, one of the greatest hitters in Major League Baseball history gave a hitting demonstration on Echo Field at this venerable college. The Babe met with students and faculty of the university on May 6th, who convinced Ruth to stay the night and give a hitting demonstration the next day. The Great Bambino hit towering shots left and right, but also had people take the field. Ruth hit so the fielders could make catches and even let the pitcher strike him out. Ruth was a genial sort, a man of good nature. He was a man of the people, signing autographs and taking pictures, including one with Monsignor Bernard J. Bradley, the 16th president of Mount St. Mary’s. Ruth would leave Emmitsburg for Washington, D.C. to play the Senators, where he would hit an eighth-inning home run en route to a 6-5 Yankees win.
At Mount St. Mary’s University, students walk in the footsteps of saints. This university has seen figures such as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Teresa of Calcutta, and Blessed Stanley Rother. Now the Sultan of Swat definitely had his vices, but he would still attend Sunday Mass and was a member of the Knights of Columbus. Students can know they not only walk in the footsteps of saints, but in the footsteps of a legend. Every beach volleyball game on Echo Field is played where Ruth has walked, and the Immaculate Conception Chapel and the Seminary have been gazed upon by the Babe.
Like the Catholic faith, the sport of baseball was a once cultural staple with rich tradition lost to modernity. Just as many have lost patience for the smells and bells of Catholicism, so, too, do many no longer see the value in a sport with no set clock and seemingly boring gameplay. Today, society wants what is loud and fast, eye-catching and exciting. The Holy Mass and a baseball game are not this, but they have so much value for those willing to appreciate it.
In Babe’s time, a cathedral would smell of incense, and a ballpark would smell of tobacco and peanuts. Men would wear suit and tie to both events. An infinite number of intricacies occurred, from the lifting of a priest’s chasuble at the Elevation to a catcher calling for a pitch up and in to back the batter off the plate, and from the faithful inclining their heads at the name of Our Lord and Blessed Mother to a player tipping his cap when receiving applause. With Opening Day falling near Easter Sunday, a new dawn and new life is brought to society with both events. Our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension along with the first pitch thrown after a long winter symbolize the official coming of springtime, a season of hope and joy to come.
Babe Ruth brought this spirit with him to Mount St. Mary’s and to the crowd that gathered to watch him play America’s pastime. As a boy and a man, Mount St. Mary’s watched the athletic greatness of the Babe, and Ruth would surely hold fond memories of the time he spent at this university. It is an indisputable fact that the King of Crash found his talent and greatness at this beautiful sport through the Catholic Church and at Mount St. Mary’s. “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”2
