This was on American Digest recently. I have no idea what either site does, but I’m grateful for the traffic. Anyway, I was a huge Babe Ruth fan as a boy. One of the first books I recall reading on my own was a short biography of him. It was one of those kids books where you read the first half, flipped it over and reads the second half. Before that, I only read what was given to me by parents and teachers. Reading for fun was alien to me until about the age of eight.

A former teammate of Babe Ruth’s once recalled him by saying, “You’ve got to remember, this guy wasn’t born, he fell out of a tree.” Ruth grabbed life by the throat (or maybe it was another part of life’s anatomy) and shook it up as it has seldom been shaken up.

Ruth spent the majority of his youth cooped up in St. Mary’s industrial school, listed as an “incorrigible.” After he was released at the age of 20, Ruth seemed to spend the rest of his life making up for lost time. He went through women like they were jelly beans.

Most men, even the greatest ladies’ men, have particular “favorite types” of women, subjective turn-ons, and particular traits they especially like in the opposite sex. Ruth seemed unusual in his complete lack of this quality. Ruth just simply loved women- of all types, sizes, races, and personalities.

It’s funny, but men do have certain types of women they prefer. That’s not something that gets discussed in public much at these days. I suppose women are attracted to certain men as well. I recall a study that claimed women are far less likely to date out of their race or be attracted to men of another race than men. That is, men will go with just about anything if it means sex. Given a choice, most men do prefer certain types. I guess Ruth was way over on the liberal scale in these matters.

Hardly a day passed during his baseball career (1914-1935) that he did not have sex with at least one woman. He liked women as much as baseball. Having no favorites, bedding tall women, short ones, fat ones, thin ones, beautiful knockouts, ugly rejects, socialites, film starlets, secretaries, other men’s wives, and hookers in every big city in America.

Ruth was a stallion in bed, once making love to a woman seven times in one night- and smoking a cigar between each encounter to boot. Ruth often went to the women’s homes, but sometimes he called them up to his hotel.

Ruth was crazy about prostitutes and loved frequenting brothels. Often during his career, St. Louis fans would be “touched” by the Babe as he told a St. Louis cab driver to take him to “the house of the good shepherd.” They assumed he was going to church. Little did they know, “the house of the good shepherd” was St. Louis’ biggest whorehouse.

Once Ruth took over an entire house of ill repute for an entire night. His goal was to go to bed with every woman in the house- and he did, one by one. In the morning he celebrated by eating an 18-egg omelet.

Ruth lived to just 53, but it seems like a miracle that he made it that far. On the other hand, his cancer was unlikely to have been caused by hard living. We like to think there is a direct causal relationship between sin and health, but there’s little evidence to support it. As the song says, I’ve known more old drunks than old doctors. Until Ruth got cancer, he was healthier than most men his age, even with all the boozing, womanizing and carrying on.

It is why one should always remember that life is for living. Put another way, we have a short time to live. While we live, let us live.

Sic transit gloria mundi

How doth the busy bee,

Dum vivimus vivamus,

I stay my enemy!