Babe Ruth: A Swashbuckling Palooka Who Strides With a Spirit of Possibility Across the American Stage

This blog is about the historic Jungle Country Club Hotel and Golf Course in St. Petersburg, Florida, a place where Babe Ruth played hundreds of hours of golf, where he celebrated birthdays, and where he and his family enjoyed many winter days of sun and fun.

The golf course is now a residential neighborhood. My home overlooks the former 6th green ‒ Babe Ruth left his footprints on my front yard and all over the Azalea neighborhood, but there are no markers to acknowledge that he once played here ‒ I hope that will change.

Babe Ruth and wife Claire in front of Jungle Club Hotel, January 15, 1930 (colorized)

Ruth was much more than a baseball star -  he was an international celebrity, the biggest of his time, someone who symbolized America and embodied "a spirit of possibility and enjoyment of life across the American stage."

Photo credit: Life Magazine (colorized)

Bob Costas on Babe Ruth, from Ken Burn's "Baseball". 

"Baseball is a human enterprise. Therefore, by definition, it's imperfect, it's flawed, it doesn't embody perfectly everything that's worthwhile about our country or about our culture. But it comes closer than most things in American life. 

And maybe this story, which is probably apocryphal, gets to the heart of it: An Englishman and an American are having an argument about something that has nothing to do with baseball. It gets to the point where it's irreconcilable, to the point of exasperation, and the American says to the Englishman, Ah, screw the king! And the Englishman is taken aback, thinks for a minute and says, Well, screw Babe Ruth! 

Now think about that. The American thinks he can insult the Englishman by casting aspersions upon a person who has his position by virtue of nothing except for birth; nothing to do with personal qualities, good, bad or otherwise. But who does the Englishman think embodies America? Some scruffy kid who came from the humblest of beginnings, hung out as a six-year-old behind his father's bar; a big, badly flawed, swashbuckling palooka, who strides with great spirit — not just talent, but with a spirit of possibility and enjoyment of life across the American stage. That's an American to the Englishman. You give me Babe Ruth over any king who's ever sat on the throne and I'll be happy with that trade."

"Baby" Ruth at Jungle Club ball, February 22, 1929