Fans still flocking to Bambino’s grave
HAWTHORNE, N.Y. Amid the serene graves at Gate of Heaven Cemetery sits the one where visitors leave baseballs and bats instead of bouquets, tributes to a baseball superstar who still outshines others seven decades after his death.
It’s the resting place of Babe Ruth, the indelible slugger and larger-than-life personality who died Aug. 16, 1948.
Considered by many to be the greatest player in baseball history, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox legend set home run records — 60 in one season, 714 in his career — that stood for decades, and he remains one of the sport’s defining figures. If someone knows one name in baseball, it’s likely his: the Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, the Babe, or officially, George Herman (Babe) Ruth.
Ruth began as a left-handed pitcher and became a slugging outfielder, playing for 22 seasons before retiring in 1935.
Former U.S. president George H.W. Bush once wrote that although he got to attend many enjoyable events as president and vice-president, meeting Ruth at Yale University while Bush was a student and baseball team captain there “topped them all.” After Ruth died of throat cancer at age 53, thousands of fans came to pay respects as his body laid in state for two days at the original Yankee Stadium, dubbed “The House That Ruth Built.” People jammed the streets around St. Patrick’s Cathedral during his funeral.
At his grave at the suburban cemetery owned by St. Patrick’s trustees, visitors over the years have left countless bats, balls, caps, and T-shirts, as well as beer, whiskey, cigars, hotdogs and once even an entire pizza to honour a man known for his appetite, field superintendent John Garro said.
Once, he said, someone asked — unsuccessfully — to sleep over in the cemetery in the run-up to Boston’s 2004 World Series win. It ended an 86-year drought that fans called “the curse of the Bambino,” supposedly cast upon the Red Sox for sending Ruth to the Yankees.