agate type

babe ruth’s passport application, 1920

Ancestry.com has digitized U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925.  Here is Babe Ruth’s application for a passport prior to his famous trip to Cuba in 1920.  Note the affidavit (attesting to Ruth’s identity) signed by “Brother Paul,” one of the Xaverian Brothers who ran St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore.

(click to enlarge; the first half is from the previous application in the file)

(click to enlarge; the lower right-hand shows part of the next application in the file)

Tomorrow I’ll post some information on Negro Leaguers with passport applications—including photos.

UPDATE 5:48 p.m. I found this bit in Marshall Smelser’s The Life That Ruth Built: A Biography, on Ruth’s participation in the major league tour of Japan in 1934 (p. 481):

Before they left [for Japan] Babe Ruth discovered his true birthday.  He thought he had been born on February 7, 1894, but his sister Mamie, helping to make up his passport application, found that the date was February 6, 1895 (it had been and still is entered that way in the Baltimore birth records).  Ruth had received a passport for the unlucky Cuba caper of 1920 with an affidavit of birth sworn to by a Xaverian who accepted the wrong date.  Claire, many years later, said Babe’s quick reaction to the truth was to say, “I can play a year longer.”  Up to this time they had been celebrating his birthday with a party every February 7.  They decided to keep it that way.

ruth vs. royal giants, revisited

Reader Jack V. Morris has written in concerning an October 1927 exhibition game (discussed in this post) played in Trenton, New Jersey, featuring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig versus the Brooklyn Royal Giants, during which children kept invading the field.  This is what Jack has to say:

For five years in the 80s, I was a sports writer. My first job was with the Hamilton (NJ) Observer.  Hamilton is a suburb of Trenton.  One of my beats was American Legion baseball.  So my summer was basically taking a lawn chair and a scorebook and watching baseball - not too bad!  There were a number of older gentlemen who would come to the games and watch.  As they saw me more and more, they would gravitate over to me.  Soon they were regaling me with stories of baseball of the past.  I loved it.  One fellow, while I was covering a game in Trenton, told me that he had attended the 1927 Brooklyn Royal Giants and the Ruth-Gehrig game as a child of 8 or so.

When you listen to these guys, you obviously take things they tell you with a grain of salt.  So when he told me that Ruth hit a gigantic home run that caused all the children to stream onto the field and end the game, I didn’t really believe it all.  But a trip to the Trenton Public Library confirmed the story, to my amazement.  He was spot on.  The next time I saw him, I interviewed him about the game.  I got it recorded on a micro cassette recorder that I used. I then put the tape away for safe keeping.  Unfortunately, it was two moves ago and I have no idea where it is. I hope to stumble on it someday.  After two decades, I’m not exactly sure what is on the tape.

Jack has also generously supplied some research notes on the game he compiled from the Trenton Times:

•“The Lincoln Giants were originally scheduled to play against the Ruth-Gehrig combination but (George) Giasco and (Joseph) Plumeri (the Trenton-area promoters) found they could get the Brooklyn Royals.” (October 11, 1927 Trenton Times):

•Giasco was described as a “well-known Trenton athlete” and Plumeri was a “business man who has been interested in local baseball.” (Oct. 10, 1927, Trenton Times)

•Gehrig and Ruth initially were scheduledfor a game in Portland, ME but the Trenton promoters outbid Portland. (Oct. 10, 1927, Trenton Times)

•Gehrig announced the game on his radio show the Sunday night before. (Oct., 10, 1927, Trenton Times)

•Gehrig and Ruth had games afterward in Brooklyn on Wednesday, October 12 and in Asbury Park on Thursday, October 13. (Oct., 10, 1927, Trenton Times)

From a column by William R. Clark in the Trenton Times on October 10, 1927:

“The high cost of home runs is indicate in the announced price which George Giasco and Joseph Plumeri are guaranteeing Babe Ruth and his companion in crime, Lou Gehrig, to appear in Trenton ...”  No amount was given according to my notes, however.

More from that column:

“Mr. Ruth and Mr. Gehrig will be associated with a team composed of local players tomorrow but that is a detail that is of little interest to the customers. They are mainly intent upon viewing Mr. Ruth in the act of knocking the ball into Hamilton Township and the promoters shrewdly expect will pay well and often for the privilege.”

Finally, here are some notes on the game itself:

•“On 48 hours notice, Ruth packed the High School Field until its fences bulged and there was barely enough room left for Babe to knock three home runs.”

•Attendance was listed as 3,500 paid. But it was estimated that 3,000 children climbed over or under the fences. There were so many children in attendance that Clarke wrote in the Trenton Times the next day:

•“Alarmists who moodily shake pessimistic heads over the fancied decline of the birth rate should have been on the High School Field yesterday. You’d never suspect there were so many youngsters in the world.”

•Gehrig went 2-3 with a double to right in the first, a walk in the fourth, a single and scored run in the sixth, and a fly out to Finley in the seventh. Ruth was 3-5 with a fly out to Brooks in the first, a fly out to Washington in the third, a solo home run in the sixth, a two-run home run in the seventh and a one-run home run in the eighth. For some reason, I didn’t record the final score. In the box score, Gehrig was listed as the winning pitcher!

•Ruth’s last home run, which ended the game when the children ran onto the field, was described in the Times as flying “far over the right field fence out into Chambers Street.”

•Finally, the Trenton Times also made note of a local player on Brooklyn. Buddy Arnold, who started in left field, was from nearby Hopewell, NJ.

Thanks to Jack for all this rich detail.  Let’s hope he’s able to uncover that interview someday.

ruth vs. royal giants, 1927

While searching for mentions of the Brooklyn Royal Giants in the New York Times during the 1920s (there were seven hits altogether), I ran across this item, from Oct. 12, 1927:

BOYS JAM TRENTON FIELD AND STOP GAME
WHEN RUTH HITS HIS THIRD HOMER OF DAY

TRENTON, N.J., Oct. 11 (UP)—Babe Ruth’s third home run of the afternoon broke up an exhibition game here today between a selected Trenton team and the Brooklyn Royal Giants, which Trenton won, 9 to 4.

The Babe and Lou Gehrig  of the world’s champion New York Yankees opened their exhibition barnstorming tour, playing with Trenton, before a crowd which packed the field here.

Twice before the eighth inning, as Ruth lifted the ball over the right field wall, hundreds of boys swarmed into the field to romp from third to home with the King of Swat, each time holding up the game for fifteen minutes before the field could be cleared.

However, after his third homer in the eighth with two on base, officials found it impossible to get the fans from the field and the game was called.  Lou did not fare as well as the Babe, collecting only a double and a single out of four times at bat…

John Holway wrote about this game  in the chapter on Cannonball Dick Redding, the Royal Giants’ playing manager, in Blackball Stars:

Trenton promoter George Glasco recalled that he took the Cannonball aside before the game.  “Now look,” he said, “you know why all these people are here.  You know what they came to see.  They’re out here to see Ruth hit home runs, right?”
“Right.”
“Now, when the Babe comes to bat, no funny business.”
“Got ya,” Redding winked.  “Right down the pike.”

Another game, between Ruth and Gehrig’s “Bustin’ Babes” and the Brooklyn Royal Giants, was played in Asbury Park, N.J., on October 13. This one was held up for an hour while Ruth waited at his hotel for a guaranteed fee to be delivered to him.  When he finally arrived at the park, he found an overflow crowd of 7,000 and the entire police department of Asbury Park waiting for him.  According to the Times, “Thousands of youngsters darted past the police lines and fought to shake hands with the Babe,” making it a “miserable” game for anybody who tried to take it seriously.  “After each inning he half carried dozens of small boys who surrounded him on the trips from the bench to the outfield and vice versa.  He could not get rid of them…”:

These lads often raced with the players to gain possession of the ball, and when the former won another souvenir was pocketed.

On one occasion the ball trickled past the catcher while Babe Ruth was on first. The Babe started to steal second and one of the boys determined that his idol would not be caught stealing.  So he promptly pounced on the ball and darted away, with the catcher in hot pursuit.  The boy scurried between two spectators and disappeared from view….

No ball lasted very long.  Every foul meant a lost ball, and most of the outfield hits meant the same, so after two dozen were gone a messenger was dispatched for another dozen.  Eleven of these found their way into yawning pockets, and then Gehrig was inconsiderate enough to knock the one remaining ball out of the park [causing the game to be called].  No one complained, because all the fans had a lot of fun.

Ruth hit one home run in the lake, Gehrig two, and the “Babes” won, 6 to 5.