Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 7, 1995 TAG: 9502070095
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BALTIMORE LENGTH: Medium
As the nation's baseball players and owners met 50 miles away to resolve the strike, baseball fans, politicians, and the family of Babe Ruth called on the memory of The Bambino to save the national pastime again on his 100th birthday.
Everyone attending the Baltimore birthday bash Monday seemed to draw the same parallel: The Babe revived the game once before, perhaps his birthday bash can inspire the game's leaders to breathe life into it again.
The date coincided with President Clinton's deadline for both sides in the strike to cut a deal or let the government offer its own plan. Orioles announcer Jon Miller reminded grumpy fans that the game fell out of favor once before but The Babe removed the pall when the Chicago Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series, breaking all previous home run records with 54 in 1920.
``The game was in sorry straights when The Babe almost single-handedly lifted it up to new heights,'' Miller said.
The celebration was held under a plexiglass tent outside George Herman Ruth's birthplace, a three-story brick rowhouse that lies a long fly ball away from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The rowhouse opened as a museum in 1974 after it was already approved for demolition.
Party goers wore baseball garb bearing Yankees and Orioles logos. Ruth played for the Orioles only for two months in 1914, and then moved to the Boston Red Sox and on to the Yankees, where he played from 1920 to 1934.
As Mayor Kurt Schmoke and other political heavy-hitters cut a ribbon over the museum doorway to rededicate it, several hundred onlookers gasped and cheered as Ruth lookalike Willis ``Buster'' Gardner appeared in the doorway wearing The Babe's uniform and carrying a Louisville Slugger. His flared nostrils, jutting jaw and sagging belly bore an uncanny resemblance to the photos of The Bambino that line the museum's walls.
When two of Ruth's granddaughters saw Gardner on the street during a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., they insisted that he don the Yankees jersey and impersonate the Sultan of Swat at the birthday celebration.
``I remember my dad taking me out to see him when I was at Cleveland stadium,'' said Gardner, 57, a truck mechanic from Oberlin, Ohio. ``I feel proud to be here and proud to look like him.''
Along with political and sports figures, the celebration drew hard-core fans starved for major-league baseball. Chet Jelinski closed his Bloomfield, N.J., carpet-cleaning business, gave his twin sons the day off from school, and drove down for the celebration wearing Yankees caps.
``We just want to remind everybody that The Babe played most of his life for the Yankees,'' Jelinski said.
Ruth's cousin, 91-year-old Milton Brundige, recalled another side of The Babe. A teen-age Ruth ran away from the St. Mary's Industrial School and was hiding out at Brundige's Baltimore home when truant officers stopped by.
``George jumped out of bed and he ran out that back door, right into the cop's arms,'' she said.
by CNB