February 6, 2024

Babe Ruth's 129th Birthday Celebration

Originally posted February 6, 2020 with annual updates. 

Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time and the transcendent 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 hotel and 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, 2024, we toast the Bambino's 129th birthday. 
On February 7, we drink to the 130th 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: 


1926: 32rd Birthday (observed)

St. Petersburg Times


1929: 35th Birthday (observed)

St. Petersburg Times


1930: 36th Birthday (observed)

1932: 38th Birthday (observed)

Enhanced and colorized photo from Argus-Leader Feb 12, 1932



1934: 40th Birthday (observed)




40th birthday in New York, prior to the family's departure for St. Petersburg, Babe Ruth receives a gift of new golf clubs from wife and daughters. (colorized photo from Idaho Statesman, Feb 1934). Another party was celebrated a few days later when the family arrived in St. Pete and Ruth played on the golf course with his new clubs.