Babe Ruth, an
American, was born as George Herman Ruth in 1895 in Baltimore, into a poor
family that saw six of his eight siblings die in childhood, and his father in a
knife fight just after his mother who had passed away from tuberculosis not
long before that. It was a certainty back then that a boy who had a background
like George, either marginally better or worse, was going to end up in St Marys
industrial/reformatory institution in the same city. But this place was
different. Not only for its time but it’s ethos in how they viewed children in
a place run by Christian Brothers who are more infamous today for abusing
children rather than saving them. They would save George and give America and
the world one of the greatest baseball players that had ever lived.
How they did it
was forward thinking then that many authorites and parents are still trying to
grasp the basics that applies even today. The order of the Xaverian Brothers, yet another
strand of Christian Brothers, were different at least in this place and time
for the most part. Their ethos was simple: Inadequacies of upbringing rather
than deficency of character were to blame for a child that grows into a bad
man, and that any boy treated with ecouragement and respect would grow into a
model citizen.
It was not
speculation, but based on their own tried and tested set of ideals rooted in a
firm and strong morality based ethos that wrapped itself around the value of
respect for any individual no matter where they came from or what was the
colour of their skin. With a ninety- five per cent success rate it would have
been hard to argue otherwise that they were not one hundred per cent right. What
also saved Babe Ruth was that it seemed these Brothers were obsessed with
baseball like the rest of the United States.
Finally launched
into the world with a yet
un-recognized masters degree in baseball, Babe Ruth had to re-invent himself or
at least find that self from the debris of family that for all intents and
purposes did not exist anymore. Many little habits died hard though that
trailed along with him that were seeded in institutional poverty like sharing
toothbrushes, or over eating in case another meal was not on the menu anytime
soon, but upon his freedom into the wider community as a teenager, he knew he
had just been exposed to the largest candy store in the world with every
variety of life on offer. His former impoverishment would become the core
reason for his excess. He would not be stopped or wanting in the taking
advantage of it all. And he did.
He embraced the
chinese philsophy perahaps a little too much that if ‘Someone has another to love, always something to do and
something to look forward to’ then they have a good shot at a happy life. From
too much women, food, drink, and smoking, something had to give and he died
from cancer at the age of 53 in 1948. It was a wonder that smoke did not come
from his casket itself such was the turbo charged life that he had lived. He
was the wild bunch of his era and will never be forgotten.
Though it carries
its own health warning, the belief of the vikings was that ‘it was better to
live a short life like a lion rather than a long life as a sheep’ may carry
more than a kernel of truth for without characters like Babe Ruth this world
would be a very boring place.
But it was the
belief of the Xavarian Christian
Brothers who reared him since he was a child that gave him that roller coaster
colourful life, and had there been more like them in character, in or out of
uniform in this world, it would have shed a lot less tears.
Barry Clifford
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