The Bambino’s Bad Year

In case you missed it, the powers that be in the town called New York – in cooperation with the semi-private corporation known as the New York Yankees – are nearly finished with the destruction of the real Yankee Stadium i the borough known as the Bronx. There’s little left but scrap and rubble on what will eventually come to be the park the city agreed to create to compensate the local community for the loss of most of Macomb’s Dam Park for the $1.5 billion megalith constructed on that site.

So the House That Ruth Built is gone, like Pennsylvania Station, never to see another fastball or towering blast into those near rightfield seats. But hey, there’s a cheesy mall-like forecourt across 161st Street with a flimsy neoprene sign that proclaims itself Babe Ruth Plaza and points fans to the chromed entrance to “New York Steak” amidst the great collation of shiny, polished granite south of Woodlawn Cemetery.

But the Stadium’s not the only loss on the Babe Ruth memory trail this year. St. Vincent’s Medical Center closed its doors down in the Village, a truly historic institution that looks to be lost to the sands of time. St. Vincent’s was a regular pit stop for the Bambino in life. Indeed, the Babe’s legendary physical collapse in 1925 put him in St. Vincent’s for weeks – nobody really believes those tales of an extravagant hot dog feast. Ruth’s first wife Helen, who eventually died in Massachusetts fire with her lover, was treated for a long time for what was delicately termed “hysteria” in those days.

Now comes word that the Baltimore school that gave Ruth his start on the diamond, and kept him fed and clothed during hard times, is also closing its doors. The Cardinal Gibbons School, formerly St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, has been ordered closed by the Archdiocese in Baltimore, which apparently values the land more than the history (or the current class of inner city students, for that matter). Writes Richard Sandomir in today’s Times:

Ruth would recognize what became of St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, although the stone wall that gave it the look of a grim fortress no longer surrounds it and home plate is just about where center field once was. But this essential part of Ruth’s history — a place where the slogan the House That Built Ruth adorns the back of the baseball team’s jerseys — could soon be demolished in much the same way as the old Yankee Stadium, now a crumbled wreck in the Bronx.

Ruth spent the better part of 12 years at St. Mary’s until 1914, when he left at age 19 to sign with the Baltimore Orioles. After he joined the Yankees in 1920, he took the St. Mary’s band to major league ballparks to raise money to replace the main school building destroyed in a fire.

Too bad some of the only authentic Ruthian places left are in Chicago and Boston these days. It’s been a bad year for the Bambino.

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• Closure Looms for House That Built Ruth (nytimes.com)
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• Scenes from the destruction across the street (riveraveblues.com)
• In the end, City saves part of Gate 2 (riveraveblues.com)

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