Sultan of Swat

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BabeRuth

When the Death Row All Stars were playing ball at the Crossbar Hotel in Rawlins, Wyoming in 1911-1912, Babe Ruth was sitting in class at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore, Maryland.

George Herman Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, remains baseball’s greatest legend and its home run king, hitting 60 in one year, 714 in total, without carrying the stigma of suspected steroid and amphetamine use or asterisks after his name. He was born in Baltimore to saloon keepers, raised on the streets, and was in enough trouble by the age of seven that his father signed away custody to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a reform school. There, an athletic priest used baseball as a way to teach rules to the incorrigibles and to channel learning or behavioral disabilities into the love of a sport. According to tests conducted by psychologists at Columbia University in 1921, Ruth had been born with an above-average eye, ear, and muscle coordination due to hyperactive brain function, primarily in the posterior parietal cortex, the middle to rear section of the brain most often associated with spatial interpretations. Biologically, he might have been an equally good safe-cracker if never introduced to the game. Ruth’s ultimate death from throat cancer at the age of fifty-three in 1948 was due most probably to his penchant for smoking cigars, chewing tobacco, and dipping snuff. However, studies have now shown that his facial carcinoma, located in the nasopharynx, or the upper part of the throat behind the nose, are more often linked to other risk factors. The enhanced gamma-band activity (electrical signals) of his posterior parietal cortex, something he was born with, enabled him to pack the sensory stimuli of three lifetimes into one and might explain his well known womanizing, love of food, drink, and his excellence at baseball. The high-functioning spatial portion of his brain triggered his odd case of malignant cancer. What made him great – the anatomy of his brain – is what killed the Babe at a young age.

To learn more about the death of legendary characters read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of some of the West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Outlaws.