Babe Ruth being fed Thanksgiving dinner by a group of orphans pic.twitter.com/O5FF304Bk3
— Baseball In Pics (@baseballinpix) November 25, 2021
Yes, it's obviously staged but does reflect the real Babe Ruth. According to his biographers, including his most recent, Jane Leavy, the Babe felt a real bond with children, particularly orphans, most likely because of the nearly twelve years he spent at the St Mary's Industrial School for boys in Baltimore, a reformatory and orphanage. Babe himself was not an orphan. His parents placed him at St Mary's when he was seven because he was ungovernable even as a small child, though it should be added that both his parents were rough characters themselves.
It was at St Mary's that Babe came under the tutelage of Brother Matthias Boutlier, a huge man and Prefect of Discipline at the school. Brother Matthias was also the baseball coach and the only man who could ever instill at least some minimal sense of discipline on Babe, who admired him beyond all other men in his life. Once Babe became famous and well-paid he became a steady and large financial supporter of St Mary's.
For that reason, Babe regularly visited orphanages as he traveled, both in and out of baseball season. According to Leavy, despite the advice of his business manager, to whom he usually deferred, Babe made it a practice to visit black, as well as white, orphanages.
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