George Herman Ruth Thanks a Crowd at Yankee Stadium
       on the Occasion of His Last Appearance in Pinstripes

In ’47 there had been Dying-Babe-Ruth-Addresses-Fans Day.
That was the year before. This was The-Bambino-in-Pinstripes- 
for-One-Last-Time. And it went out over radio to America.
What would you expect? They fucking cherished the guy.

Background right in the Ralph Morse photograph for Life:
man in a suit and tie—a hand in his pocket and wearing 
a pirate patch—that’s him: the douche with the camera. 
But the Babe isn’t upstaged. Him, you don’t upstage.

Morse says what reporters didn’t record was Ruth
before the shoot. In the locker room, trying to dress.
Gray and sick enough there was an ambulance outside.
Later, in the dugout, he claims the Babe said, I’m gone 

and sobbed. The world is a one-eyed, smiling witness.
A hand in a pocket to say, All right, but it is just death.

Roy Bentley | “Captain America Gets Arlington Burial”
Contents | Mudlark No. 58 (2015)