Do you believe in curses?

New York claims Babe Ruth as a Yankee, but never forget that he was a Baltimore boy from the cradle up.

"Hooligan," "rakehell," and "ne'er-do-well" are some turn of the 20th Century terms that used to be applied to kids who today would be described as "maladjusted" and "acting out." Young George Herman Ruth, down in inner-city Baltimore, was smoking cigars and guzzling booze at the same age that kids today are watching "Blue's Clues," and the only reason he was not involved in car theft was that there were very few autos on the road.

His parents turned him over to the St Mary's Industrial School for Boys, which is what they called juvenile reformatories in 1902. The Babe learned tailoring and baseball, at the hands of a giant of a man named Brother Matthias Boutlier, and he began his career here with the minor league Baltimore Orioles. He was soon in the major leagues - as a slugging pitcher with excellent skills at both positions. As a pitcher, he twice won 23 games, leading the Boston Red Sox to three world championship titles. 

Along the way, he became an outfielder to give the Sox the advantage of his batting in every game instead of once in every four as a pitcher.  And he was sold to the New York Yankees for cash in 1920, so that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee had the money to invest in the Broadway musicals that were more important to him than baseball.

The Bambino

BUT! during those early winters before he became the toast of baseball around the clock, the Babe spent some time in Baltimore, living in a third-floor room above a bar owned by his father at West Lombard St and South Eutaw St. The elder Ruth was killed outside that bar in 1918, breaking up a fight.

(Nothing much changes in our town.)

And that building, or I should say the interconnected buildings on that corner, suffered a serious fire - a five-alarmer  - on Sunday afternoon.

Around the corner, the Orioles were playing their final home game of the season at a stadium where, according to legend, the Ruth family outhouse was once located in what is now our right field. 

The allegory of the Orioles' season, off to such a good start in March, April and Mary, sputtering to a five-alarm burnout in August in September, is apt. They may back into the playoffs this year; as of this writing another consecutive Division title is a virtual impossibility, and we're all wondering what happened. There were injuries, sure, but every team has people hurt.

Selling the Babe to the Yankees put "The Curse Of The Bambino" on the Red Sox for decades, and I'm starting to think that his ghost was hanging around right field these past few weeks. I'm just saying.