Here is an excerpt from a “classic” New Yorker article by Arthur Robinson that appeared in the July 23, 1926, edition.

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At thirty-two, baseball’s “bad boy” is erratic, impulsive, and—despite a slew of financial scandals—nearly a millionaire.
By Arthur Robinson

The details are obscure and cannot be completely exhumed. The Babe himself understandably prefers not to discuss them. But the legend is that back yonder in Baltimore, when he was a boy, the family owned a saloon and that one day, therein, there occurred a tribal brawl and a shooting.

The saloon was near a lumber yard, in a squalid precinct of the town. There, in the murkiness and shadows of great piles of lumber, the rough-grained youngsters of the neighborhood devised increasingly outlandish deviltries; and so, in time, the growing Babe’s incorrigible path led to a Catholic Protectory where, in the hands of good priests of the faith, he underwent sundry repairs.

Such, in part, is the background of that Gargantuan and singularly colorful fellow who has since risen to the golden eminence of baseball’s Home Run King.

It may explain a number of things to psychologists and biologists and other scientific folk who believe that, to a considerable degree, we are tugged this way and that by forces over which we have little control. It may also partly account for the fact that George Herman Ruth is the most picturesque, fascinating, and variable study in Behaviorism in the public eye—for many of the things which he does and has done, judged by the standards applied to common clay, would otherwise be beyond all auditing.

But the reeducation of Babe Ruth was not complete when, passing seventeen, he left St. Mary’s in Baltimore, and went forth into the wide-open spaces of the baseball world. Sophomorically, it had just begun. And now, after a hectic whirl on the treadmill of experience, he is at the high point of his spectacular and scandal-spangled career, and thirty-two years old.

I know this utterly unprecedented fellow intimately. In those dear, distant days of my past, before I degenerated into an editorial writer, I wrote sports and traveled hither and thither about the land with the Babe, helping him with his syndicated newspaper articles and, upon occasion, with more personal matters, generally of a most embarrassing nature. And so far as I am concerned his thousand and one failings are more than offset by his sheer likableness.

One thing and one thing alone Ruth does well, and this he does with supreme distinction. He can hit a baseball harder and farther and higher than any hitherto recorded and observed addict of the horsehide. For this he receives the largest salary ever paid an artisan of the ball fields—$52,000 per annum for an annum which comprises only the fair days of the fair seasons. In addition to this he derives income from other sources, having made close to a million dollars, all told, on baseball, syndicated newspaper articles, the movies, vaudeville, exhibition games after the regular season has ended, and by indorsing ice cream, baseballs, shoes, caps, suspenders, and countless other commodities. But to ladies concerned with bazaars for worthy purposes, to churches campaigning for building funds, to various charities, to sick and crippled children, to the Knights of Columbus (of which he is a member), and other organizations of the kind he lends his name and presence endlessly and gratuitously.

He is strictly a One Idea Man and in all the arts of human relationship has been woefully inept and naïve, for in him the physical dominates. In proof of this, aside from the evidence of known biographical and biological data, phrenophysicians point to the protuberant development of the lower third of his forehead.

There is as much literature in him as there is in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. In this connection it may be appropriate to recall an occurrence in Boston when, as a member of the Red Sox, he was beginning to set himself up in the home-run business and was exciting nation-wide interest in his giant bat.

“Bullet Joe” Bush, then also a member of the Red Sox and a boon companion of the Babe, was something of a clown and practical joker, as well as a pitcher of parts.

“Tarzan,” he said to the Babe while the boys whooped ‘er up under the showers following a game in which the Babe had hit one of his greatest home runs, “Tarzan, you sure did kiss that ol’ apple today—Tarzan.”

The Babe grunted his appreciation from under the shower spray. But Tarzan—what did that mean? Probably the name of some colossal figure in history. Surely Joe intended it for a compliment. The Babe’s suspicion, however, was aroused by Bush’s prankish antics. He investigated, learned that Tarzan had as much hair on his chest as even he, climbed trees, was half man and half ape, and the next day, on arriving at the clubrooms, he chased Bush all over the park with a bat!

Ruth is a bit of a hypochondriac. He complains of minor troubles, such as a bad stomach, eats huge quantities of bicarbonate of soda, and then devours unheard-of quantities of murderous food at astonishingly frequent intervals. By way of dessert he chews tobacco, as almost all ball players do, and then, as a cordial, takes a pinch of snuff.

Music he likes. He has a bearish basso voice and has outdone Ring Lardner in some Pullman riots of close harmony. But he is not quite as reliable as Lardner, for the Babe just naturally will hit some sour notes. Musically, he was born under the sign of a canoe, a moonlit night and a ukulele. He thrives on tear-jerkers and jazz, and often carries a portable victrola with him on the road, giving concerts in baggage rooms of railroad stations while waiting for the Yankee Special to be made up.

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