In his mad rush to catch up to history, President Donald Trump this week bestows the nation’s highest civilian honor on a fellow out of West Baltimore named George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr.
This comes a mere seven decades after the Babe went to his grave. Talk about an extra-inning decision!
Also listed in the starting lineup for this week’s bestowal of the Presidential Medal of Freedom are Elvis Presley, who was the Babe Ruth of rock ‘n’ roll; football stars Roger Staubach and Alan Page; the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
Oh, and Miriam Adelson, whose most famous contribution to American culture seems to be her relationship to Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate. The Adelsons have contributed millions of dollars to Republican politicians, including $5 million in September to a pro-Trump PAC.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom traditionally goes to those individuals whose accomplishments are so towering that they’ve become cultural icons. Take the Babe. It’s not just that he hit the most home runs, and hit them higher and farther and more dramatically than any other player of his era. It’s his life story as well.
It’s the American story – or at least the one we like to imagine as the American story. It’s about overcoming adversity. It’s about starting at the bottom and rising to the top by hard work and willpower and sheer talent.
And not because, in the late Ann Richards’ famous phrase, you were “born on third base and thought you hit a triple.” The Babe was rejected by his own parents, who farmed him out to St. Mary’s Industrial School in Baltimore and never even bothered to visit him there.
“I guess I’m just too ugly,” Ruth told the kid in the bed next to his.
But if he never found love from his parents, America drenched him in adoration. Partly, it was the home runs. But a big part of it was the personality. Today, we’d call it holding on to his inner child. Out there in the grass, the Babe was extending youth forever, the way we all wish we could.
In her new book, “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created” (Harper), Jane Leavy writes about an interview Ruth gave toward the end of his playing career:
“He talked about St. Mary’s Industrial School, where he learned what it meant to be on his own and how to make the best of it,” Leavy writes. “The brothers taught him how to make a shirt collar and how to stave off loneliness in the crucible of competition.”
This was a man who staved off loneliness by surrounding himself with cheering crowds, with people who couldn’t help but adore him and identify with his remarkable life story. So it’s nice that he’s being honored with the nation’s highest civilian award, even if it’s arriving 70 years since Ruth bowed out.
What the hell, the Babe was accustomed to extra innings.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent book, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, is now in paperback.
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