The Jungle Country Club History Project: Babe Ruth's Two-Day 127th Birthday Celebration Begins February 6

February 4, 2022

Babe Ruth's Two-Day 127th Birthday Celebration Begins February 6

Updated from original post (February 6, 2020):

Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time and the preeminent celebrity of the Roaring Twenties, celebrated many birthdays here at the Jungle Country Club Hotel (now Admiral Farragut Academy), always punctuated by what he really loved to do - playing a few rounds of golf on the Jungle Country Club course. Often arriving in St. Petersburg weeks before the start of spring training camp, Ruth walked the Jungle course every day as part of his preseason conditioning program. The golf course was on the west side of St. Petersburg in what is now the Azalea neighborhood.

According to The Jungle Country Club History Project, "Ruth lived in an orphanage in his youth and mistakenly thought his birth date was February 7, 1894. It wasn't until he applied for a passport after the 1934 baseball season that he discovered his actual birth date was February 6, 1895 - which made him a year younger than he thought he was - but he continued to recognize February 7, 1894 as his birthday for the rest of his years."

Photo credit: mlb.com. Colorized by colorize.sg.

On February 6, 2020, we toast the Bambino's 127th birthday.

On February 7, we drink to the 128th birth date that Ruth observed.

Photo credit: www.scoopnest.com. Colorized by colorize.sg.

Babe Ruth's birthday party at the Jungle Country Club was a time-honored tradition.

"The next time-honored step in the Ruth ritual was the trip to Florida and his birthday party. His friends set up a huge square table in the patio of the Jungle Club Hotel, arranged to resemble a baseball diamond with flowers for baselines and bases. A mammoth birthday cake, in the shape of a baseball, occupied the center. Twenty-eight guests sat around the table, with the Ruths in the place of honor at "home plate." [Yankee owner Jacob] Ruppert came down a few days later and, following a long tradition, sat with the Babe at a table on the sunny lawn of the Jungle Club with dozens of reporters and photographers gathered round for the contract signing."
-- Kal Wagenheim, Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend

Remembering a few of those parties at the Jungle Country Club Hotel (now Admiral Farragut Academy) here in the Azalea Neighborhood: