Home Run Slugger Tunes Up With Bath…

July 13th, 2015

The following article appeared in the February 19, 1923 edition of the Richmond Times and was written by legendary writer and newspaper reporter Damon Runyon.

Runyon is best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. However he was also an accomplished sportswriter who was inducted into the writers’ wing (the J. G. Taylor Spink Award) of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967.

To prove that Ruth’s every move was amplified Damon Runyon exaggerated his writing power in a hilarious article about the big man.

Home Run Slugger Tunes Up With Bath

  • Bulletin- 8:40a.m. – The Babe Ruth opened his eyed, yawned six times in succession, arose and dressed.
  • Bulletin- 9:00 a.m. – The Babe Ruth repaired to the dining hall of the Hotel Majestic and made an order of ham and eggs look mighty silly.
  • Bulletin- 9:30 a.m. – The Babe Ruth sat down to a game of Hearts in the lobby of the Majestic Hotel with a bunch of traveling-looking men.
  • Bulletin- 9:35 a.m. – The Babe Ruth led the five of hearts and the deuce, trey and four were played on it by his companions.
  • Bulletin- 9:36 a.m. – This correspondent inquired of the Babe Ruth as follows: ’How do you feel, Babe?’ ‘Terrible,’ replied the Babe Ruth, as he raked in the four of hearts.

Thus we discharged our duty to the waiting world. We have passed out all of the immediate feed box into the doings of the Babe Ruth up to the hour of going to the typewriter.

It is rumored that late yesterday afternoon the Babe Ruth was observed in route to the bath house connected with the Hotel Majestic arrayed in a trailing robe and flapping slippers, and breathing threats of taking a bath, but as this information came to us second-handed, we refrain from expatiating on it at length.

It is know that the Babe Ruth did purchase robe, slippers, and a brace of fresh-laid Turkish towels soon after his arrival, but this is a formality required by law of every new arrival in Hot Springs. In fact, if a man goes around town without a robe, slippers and a pair of towels, he is at once an object of dark suspicion. Another requirement is a cane.

This writer has gone through life for many years without a cane, because he never needed a cane. We were brought up to believe that canes were only for the aged and decrepit, or for dudes, and back in our home town, dudes were killed on sight, with the concurrence of the authorities.

We never believed that we would sink into the depths of cane-carrying, but soon after our arrival in Hot Springs we learned that a cane was almost as necessary to citizenship as a Turkish towel.

Damon Runyon, Richmond Times Dispatch, 2/19/1923