On August 16, 1948, the magazine Guideposts, a non-denominational inspirational magazine, received an autobiographical article written and submitted by Major League Baseball icon and American legend George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Jr.
In a twist of tragic irony, the same day Guideposts received the article at their office, Ruth died of cancer. The Babe— as he was affectionately called—had composed the article weeks earlier with the help of friends, and it was eventually published in Guideposts in October 1948.
In this, his final message to his adoring fans, Ruth wrote about his troubled youth, his Catholic education, his zeal for life, his faith journey, and how he was introduced to the Miraculous Medal.
Ruth ended his article by detailing his experience in 1946 of facing a difficult surgery and his own mortality: “In December 1946, I was in French Hospital, New York, facing a serious operation. Paul Carey, one of my oldest and closest friends, was by my bed one night.
“‘They’re going to operate in the morning, Babe,’ Paul said. ‘Don’t you think you ought to put your house in order?’
“I didn’t dodge the long, challenging look in his eyes. I knew what he meant. For the first time, I realized that death might strike me out. I nodded, and Paul got up, called in a chaplain, and I made a full confession.
“‘I’ll return in the morning and give you Holy Communion,’ the chaplain said, ‘But you don’t have to fast.’
“‘I’ll fast,’ I said. I didn’t have even a drop of water.
“As I lay in bed that evening, I thought to myself what a comforting feeling to be free from fear and worries. I now could simply turn them over to God. Later on, my wife brought in a letter from a little kid in Jersey City. ‘Dear Babe,’ he wrote, ‘Everybody in the seventh-grade class is pulling and praying for you. I am enclosing a medal, which if you wear will make you better. Your pal—Mike Quinlan. P.S. I know this will be your 61st homer. You’ll hit it.’
“I asked them to pin the Miraculous Medal to my pajama coat. I’ve worn the medal constantly ever since. I’ll wear it to my grave.”
BABE RUTH’S DEATH
On August 16, 1948, the Rev. Thomas Kaufman, O.P., a Dominican priest, was with Ruth during his final moments. “Father Kaufman told a flock of boys waiting beneath Ruth’s window that it was a beautiful death.” A statue of the Dominican St. Martin de Porres was at his hospital bedside table. St. Martin is the patron saint of the Knights of Columbus, an organization Ruth joined in 1916, when he played with the Boston Red Sox.
Ruth was intuitively aware that the sacraments, which include the Last Rites, are the greatest treasures of the Church. These sources of grace gave The Bambino peace as he entered eternity.
In the final analysis, during the truncated, 53 years that were allotted to him Babe Ruth lived life to the full.
Babe Ruth was waked in Yankee Stadium, the House That Ruth Built. Thousands of grievers passed by his bier, to view the deceased Bambino. Those mighty hands, which gripped many a baseball bat, now held a rosary.
His funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the 19th of August was one of the most attended requiems ever witnessed at that ecclesial edifice.
There were approximately four dozen members of the clergy present for the celebration of a man who died as he lived: with the simple faith of a child.
And among the mourners who lined the rainy Manhattan streets, were legions of children. After the Mass, boys and girls watched a hearse carry off the remains of the Greatest of All Baseball Players to Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
Ruth’s graveside memorial stands several feet above the ground. Fittingly, on the monument, there is an image of Jesus Christ, with His left arm on the shoulder of a boy.
“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 18:3