“Babe Bows Out” June 13, 1948
There have easily been more than a billion photographs taken of the various aspects of baseball. From that large supply only a scarce few are truly indelible. Nathaniel Fein’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Babe Ruth bidding farewell on June 13, 1948 is one of them. Celebrating the Silver Anniversary of Yankee Stadium Ruth’s number 3 was being retired. He was dying from a rare form of cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, had undergone pioneering chemotherapy, and was horribly frail. Dressing in the Visitor’s Locker Room he borrowed a bat from Cleveland’s Bob Feller to use as a cane. Staring out at a big crowd, the rafters were filled with banners from triumphs gone by the ways. The crowd sang “Auld Lange Syne” as Fein captured the moment. Two months later — Ruth would pass. Today that site is a collection of sandlot baseball fields dubbed, “Heritage Fields” with few markings to indicate the history of the spot. Towering nearby the haunts of “The House that Ruth Built” is the new Yankee Stadium disparagingly referred to as “The House that Greed Built.” It is a safe bet that the youngsters running the bases on the sandlot fields have dreams of making it to that bright and shiny park. Few things frame the cycle of life more effectively than baseball.
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