Our Forgotten But Notable Neighbors The Rocklanders Who Contributed to the Story, Legend, Myth and Legacy of Babe Ruth

The Final Installment of  Jerome’s Four Part Series on Babe Ruth and the Baseball Legend’s Connection to Rockland

As a young man, Babe Ruth burst upon the scene by hitting an incomparable number of home runs and expanded the enthusiasm for the sport to a level that it had never known.  Yet, in the early part of his career as a Yankee he also exhibited unbridled behavior, doing what he wanted, when he wanted to do it.  You could say he behaved like a kid in a candy store in which the whole world was his candy store. 

As time went on, he seemed to have matured, settling down and showing more self-restraint. Apparently, a trusted friend had sat him down and pointed out that since the youth of America loved and considered him their greatest hero and role model, he therefore had an obligation and responsibility to grow up and moderate his off-the-field behavior.  Beyond that, at some point, it seems to have dawned on him that he could use the vast power that he derived from super-stardom to influence boys to continue to play baseball. 

Babe had always loved smoking cigars, and in 1946 he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. By early ‘47 it looked like his life was drawing to a close.  His imminent demise shocked the nation and there was a desire to have a big sendoff prior to his death. The Yankees and Major League Baseball arranged to have a Babe Ruth Day, which took place at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day of 1947, attended by nearly 59,000 fans. In it, Babe, never an articulate man, gave a short speech expressing his deep faith in the beauty and importance of baseball.  Broadcast live to millions of fans over the loudspeaker systems in every major and minor league ballpark across the nation, it included the following words:

“You know, this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth.  That means the boys… you grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to see the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime, the only real game, I think, in the world, baseball. You got to start from way down, at the bottom, when the boys are six or seven years of age.  You got to let it grow up with you, if you’re the boy.  And if you try hard enough, you’re bound to come out on top.”

Eight years earlier, at Babe’s induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1939, he made a short speech expressing similar sentiments:

“…I hope the coming generation, the young boys today, that they’ll work hard and also be on it… I hope that it goes another hundred years and the next hundred years will be the greatest…”

In both of his speeches, Babe Ruth didn’t talk about himself.  Rather, he focused on his commitment to both baseball and the youth of America, and his realization that he had a responsibility to help pass on his love for the game to generations still unborn.

(Several years after Babe’s passing, and inspired by his message, the Babe Ruth League was established.  Proof of its success is that since its inception, dozens of boys who developed their skill playing in the program, including Tom Seaver, Mike Piazza, CC Sabathia, Nolan Ryan, and Cal Ripken, would themselves be inducted into the Hall of Fame.  Today, there are over 1 million young people globally who participate.  Babe Ruth Baseball is truly the legacy of George Herman (Babe) Ruth, Jr.)

As it turned out, Babe didn’t die in 1947, as expected.  That year, he was given a experimental drug and his cancer went into temporary remission.  However, by the spring of 1948, he was clearly dying.  On June 13, an event was held to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Yankee Stadium, “The House That Ruth Built”, and to also “retire” Babe’s famous Yankee uniform, the one with number 3 on the back.   It was at this event that a photo was taken that has since come to represent Babe to subsequent generations.  Known as “The Babe Bows Out”, it was taken by Nat Fein, 1914-2000, a long-time Tappan resident who was then a staff photographer for the NY Herald Tribune. Two months later, on August 16, at the age of 52, Babe Ruth passed away.

In 1949, Fein was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for “Babe Bows Out,” the first sports photograph to receive such an honor. Yet, strictly speaking, the image was not a sports photograph. It was, above all, a human-interest photo that encapsulates the demise of a beloved individual as his countless admirers pay homage to him and wish him a heartfelt final goodbye.

In stark contrast to the 1920 Babe Ruth, virile, young, energetic and with his wonderful future ahead of him, who played ball in Haverstraw 28 years earlier while appearing in “Headin’ Home”, the Babe Ruth in the 1948 photo was a shell of his former self, worn out, shrunken, bent over and essentially waiting for the inevitable to happen.  But aside from the physical deterioration, in the intervening period, the ill man in Fein’s photo had garnered the adulation of sports fans everywhere and had become a much-beloved figure with incomparable charisma and social cachet.

Creatively, what distinguishes “Babe Bows Out” from other pictures is the particular angle and perspective that Fein shot it.  Rather than shooting Ruth, who was wearing his Yankee uniform for the last time, head-on, as the other newspaper photographers did, Nat positioned himself behind Babe.  Sitting low to the ground, he aimed up and snapped the photo as Babe stood at home plate while bidding farewell to 50,000 fans and well-wishers, who can be seen in the background. In one decisive instant, Fein’s photo poignantly captured the intense emotion of this historic event, as a renowned figure publicly transitioned from the physical life into the realm of mythical immortality.  Only a photographer like Fein, one with vast artistic talent as well as a true understanding of human nature, could have taken this photo.

“Babe Bows Out” by Tappan’s Nat Fein has itself become timeless. Over the years and decades, it continues to remain familiar to generations of baseball fans who were not alive in 1948.  It has become one of the photos, etched deep in our psyche, that has come to represent the mature Babe Ruth in the minds of millions upon millions of fans.

And like Nat Fein, other Rocklanders such as Raymond A. “Little Ray” Kelly, as well as a multitude of Haverstraw residents and the children from the NY Rehabilitation Hospital who appeared in “Headin’ Home” in August 1920, all played important roles in the development of the story, the legend, the myth and the legacy of Babe Ruth, the most important, significant and prominent person to ever play the game of baseball.