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June 13, 1948 – Babe Ruth visits Yankee Stadium for last time

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Babe Ruth visited Yankee Stadium (The House that Ruth Built) for the last time to commemorate the retirement of his uniform and the 25th anniversary of the stadium.

By this time Babe Ruth had lost much weight and had difficulty walking. Introduced along with his surviving teammates from 1923, Ruth used a bat as a cane. The photo, by Nat Fein, of Ruth taken from behind, standing near home plate and facing “Ruthville” (right field) became one of baseball’s most famous and widely circulated photographs, and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Ruth made one final trip on behalf of American Legion baseball, then entered Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, where he would die. He was never told he had cancer, but before his death, had surmised it. He was able to leave the hospital for a few short trips, including a final visit to Baltimore. On July 26, 1948, Ruth left the hospital to attend the premiere of the film The Babe Ruth Story, a biopic about his own life. William Bendix portrayed Ruth. Shortly thereafter, Ruth returned to the hospital for the final time. He was barely able to speak. Ruth’s condition gradually became worse; only a few visitors were allowed to see him, one of whom was National League president and future Commissioner of Baseball, Ford Frick. “Ruth was so thin it was unbelievable. He had been such a big man and his arms were just skinny little bones, and his face was so haggard”, Frick said years later.

Thousands of New Yorkers, including many children, stood vigil outside the hospital in Ruth’s final days. On August 16, 1948 at 8:01pm, Babe Ruth died in his sleep at the age of 53. Instead of a wake at a funeral home, his casket was taken to Yankee Stadium, where it remained two days; 77,000 people filed past to pay him tribute. His funeral Mass took place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, outside of which a crowd estimated at 75,000 waited. Ruth rests with his second wife Claire on a hillside at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.