This Day In Sports History: Ailing Babe Ruth Hits Three Dingers In ‘Syphilis Game’
Ask any baseball fan what comes to mind when they think of syphilis, and they’ll reverently utter “Babe Ruth.” The Sultan of Swat knew how to lay wood, a talent that helped spread his fiery legacy. And no performance looms larger in his illustrious career than a gutsy three-dinger outing for the Yankees on May 30, 1930, or, as it’s enshrined forever in the annals of Cooperstown, the “Syphilis Game.”
“That entire stadium could see the open sores glistening all over [Ruth’s] body,” recalled Yankees manager Bob Shawkey in an interview taken shortly before his death. “It was clear he was hurting. He had a fever of 102, and the ump kept calling time to sweep fallen clumps of hair from the plate. Anyone else would’ve taken the day off. Instead, Babe itched his crotch with the bat, pointed at the fences, and went yard with his big ol’ syph stick.”
While the game lives in infamy, the Great Bambino’s balls have sadly vanished from history, largely due to the circumstances surrounding the game. “You’ve never seen a crowd part so quickly in your life,” said John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian. “Everyone was thrilled with Ruth’s performance, but nobody wanted to get too close. In fact, they fumigated Yankee Stadium the next day just to be safe.”
“Even after he hit that walkoff bomb, no one in the dugout would high-five the poor bastard,” Ruth’s teammate, Herb Pinnock, told a Sports Riot journalist back in 1947. “You have to remember, this was right at the start of antibiotics, and we didn’t have the best trainers. All Babe could do to alleviate his symptoms was pour a fifth of bourbon onto his shaft and cauterize the sores with a lit cigarette. But I’ll be damned if that tainted johnson didn’t buy him a one-way ticket to Cooperstown.”
With the help of modern forensics, the Baseball Hall of Fame was able to test Ruth’s game-worn jock for syphilis. The results confirmed what fans have known for a century: The Colossus of Clout undoubtedly tested positive as the greatest of all time.
