Babe Ruth’s last surviving daughter dies in Nevada at 102
Julia Ruth Stevens, the last surviving daughter of Hall of Fame baseball slugger Babe Ruth and a decades-long champion of his legacy, has died at age 102, her family has announced.
Her family said Stevens died Saturday morning at an assisted living facility in Henderson, Nevada, after a short illness.
“Julia was a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother who lived a wonderful, full life during the 102 years that she was with us,” her family said in a statement posted on Babe Ruth Central’s Facebook page.
Diane Murphy, a fellow resident at Prestige Senior Living at Mira Loma in Henderson, told The Associated Press that Stevens had lost her sight but remained bright and vibrant.
Stevens was part of a circle of residents who read books aloud, according to Murphy.
“She was so sharp and laughed at the right moments,” Murphy said. “She was a lovely lady.”
Even well into her 90s, Stevens threw out first pitches at baseball games across the nation, attended Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, New York, and appeared at the annual Babe Ruth Little League World Series.
She authored three books about her famous father.
“As long as there is baseball, daddy’s name is always going to be mentioned. He was one of a kind,” Stevens once said. “My goal in life is to keep his name alive. He
HENDERSON, Nev. —
was a wonderful father and I remember him as that and just not as a baseball player.”
Stevens was adopted by baseball’s biggest star soon after Ruth married her mother, Claire Hodgson, in 1929 when Julia was 12 years old. Hodgson died in 1976.
Julia was the older of two daughters adopted by Ruth. Dorothy Ruth Pirone, who was Ruth’s daughter from a previous relationship, died in 1989 at age 67.
Tom Stevens told the Las Vegas Review-journal in an interview earlier this year that it rankled his mother to be referred to as Ruth’s stepdaughter.
He said Ruth proved to be a match to provide Julia a needed blood transfusion when she was hospitalized as a young adult.
“She said as far as she was concerned, between being adopted and the transfusion, ‘I’m his daughter, period,’” Tom Stevens said.
Babe Ruth retired in 1935, days after playing his last game. He was with the Boston Braves, starred for the New York Yankees from 1920-34 and the Boston Red Sox from 1914-19.
He died from cancer at age 53 in 1948.
“I sometimes wonder if the designated hitter rule would have been in effect when Daddy played, his career would’ve lasted much longer and he would’ve hit a lot more home runs,” Stevens once said. “It was his legs that gave out. He had trouble with his knees.”