George Arrives At St Mary's

(Ruth, on right)

On this date in 1902, seven year old George Herman Ruth arrives at St Mary's Industrial School for Boys.  It was at St Mary's that little George would be introduced to organized baseball under the instruction of Father Matthias and it was directly from St Mary's that George would be signed and go to the Baltimore Orioles of the International League in 1914.  Later that year his contract would be purchased by the Boston Red Sox.

The child was escorted to the school by a local police officer.  Whether beat cop Harry Birmingham was asked to do a favor for a friend, George Ruth Sr, is unknown, but the boy was not in formal police custody. Unlike his parents, Birmingham would occasionally visit George at St Mary's.  According to Jane Leavy's biography of the Babe, The Big Fella, Birmingham later told his children and grandchildren:

He felt sorry for the boy, living above a bar . . .

Leavy quotes him telling a Baltimore sportswriter years later:

"I remember that Babe was a little rascal.  Although he was not a bad boy - just mischievous, and no more so than any other boys his age.  He certainly never gave the police any trouble.  But his father decided to send him to St Mary's because he just couldn't make him mind at home."

Though George's sister claimed he was sent to St Mary's because he refused to go to school, he was too young at the time to be attending school.  His homelife was chaotic.  George and his sister were the only survivors of six siblings, the other four dying a very young ages.  His parents had a fractured relationship with his father eventually suing for divorce on grounds of adultery.  His father died in a street brawl during Babe's teunure with the Red Sox.

For most of the next twelve years, St Mary's was George's home.  Everything he did was communal, sleeping, eating, school. 

St Mary's stood on a hill on what was then the rural outskirts of Baltimore.   Built by the Roman Catholic Church, the building was five stories tall.   According to Leavy, St Mary's:

. . . was unique among the religious institutions create to care for what Baltimore industrialist Alex Brown called 'the broken wreckage of industrial society', because it was funded by Baltimore City and the state of Maryland.  Founded by the archbishop as a refuge for Catholic boys who faced bias in public institutions, St Mary's became a nondenominational public charity eight years later, when it was incorporated by the city and state as a place to settle vagrant and homeless boys.

Its remit was expanded beyond the homeless and orphans in 1882 when a state statute allowed parents to commit a child they deemed beyond their control and were required to designate the school's superintendent as the child's legal guardian.  That is how George Ruth came to St Mary's.  Or perhaps not.  No court order has ever been found, and the Babe's sister remembers that her father paid tuition while George was at the school.

The Xaverian Brothers who ran the school instilled a minimal sense of discipline in George and harnessed his energy into playing baseball.  There were many Brothers who played a role in his development but it was Brother Matthias to whom Ruth gave the most credit, calling him "the greatest man I've ever known".

Throughout his life Babe Ruth helped support St Mary's, making substantial financial gifts as well as organizing and sponsoring fundraising activities.  He also helped many of his fellow inmates who befriended him during those years.  And the New York Yankees called on the Xaverians of St Mary's on several occasions to visit Babe during one of his wild periods in order to adjust his behavior.