Babe Ruth and the bellyache heard ‘round the world – a century on

Monday, 1 June, 1925, dawned hot and stifling in New York City – temperatures approaching 100°F amid an early summer heatwave. That afternoon, a paltry crowd of 10,000 braved the punishing conditions to gather at Yankee Stadium, where the hometown club faced Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators.

George Herman Ruth – the incomparable Babe – trundled out to right field in the ballpark built to house and harness his largesse. The most beloved athlete in America, the Great Bambino was always extraordinary, even in the conventionally mundane, but this vignette felt particularly noteworthy, as Ruth made his belated season debut. 

For the previous seven weeks, such a possibility – the Babe suiting up and bestriding a big league field – had lurked in epochal doubt. Since April, Ruth had battled a mysterious gastrointestinal ailment that, depending on the gossip columns one read, had hastened retirement, disability or death. It was the ‘bellyache heard ‘round the world’ – a lightning rod for conspiracy, hysteria and hyperbole – and it changed forever how athlete’s health intrigued a panicked public.

Ruth famously embodied excess, of course, with a voracious appetite for homers, hot dogs, hookers and hops. The Sultan of Swat already had two 50+ home run seasons under his gargantuan belt by 1925, his age-30 campaign, in addition to four World Series rings – one with the Yankees, and three with the rival Red Sox. Ruth enjoyed every second of his attendant acclaim, pushing the boundaries of gluttony.

“Breakfast, awed onlookers reported, consisted of eighteen eggs, three big slices of ham, and a dozen slices of buttered toast,” wrote Paul Aron. (1) “Ruth once consumed four porterhouse steaks, four orders of salad with Roquefort dressing, four orders of fried potatoes, four slices of apple pie a la mode, eight hot dogs and four bottles of Coke.”

Such boundless indulgence became legendary, rivalling on-field production as the driving force of Ruth’s mythology. “I’ve seen him at midnight, propped up in bed, order six club sandwiches, a platter of pigs’ knuckles and a pitcher of beer,” Ty Cobb once wrote. (2) “He’d down them all while smoking a big black cigar. Next day, if he hit a homer, he’d trot around the bases complaining about gas pains and bellyache.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ruth’s weight ballooned in correlation with his salary – a tale of unfettered hedonism accompanying a rugged Baltimore orphan who got his first taste of ice cream and bought the entire store. In 1925, Ruth arrived at Yankees spring training – in St Petersburg, Florida – weighing between 240 and 260 pounds, depending on the source. Insiders began to chatter about the Babe being done, finished, a shell of his former self. Whispers of gambling debts also followed Ruth, whose first marriage, to Helen Woodford, was falling apart amid rumoured infidelity. Manager Miller Huggins became disgruntled, and the Babe compounded matters by breaking a finger during camp. (4)

After spring training, while journeying north to start the regular season, the Yankees and Dodgers played a series of exhibition games, showcasing their vaunted wares in outposts like Knoxville and Chattanooga. Ruth felt lousy throughout the trip, often running a fever, and a doctor was called after a game in Atlanta. “He incorrectly diagnosed a recurrence of Babe’s annual flu bug,” wrote Bill Jenkinson. (3) But defying advice to rest, Ruth barnstormed on with his teammates.

Alas, in Asheville, North Carolina, on 7 April, the years of excess finally caught up with the Maharaja of Mash. While disembarking a train in the industrial town, a flustered Ruth collapsed in the waiting room. Catcher Steve O’Neill and reserve John Levi caught the Babe, who clutched a radiator to break his fall. (4) “Allegedly, Babe had eaten one of his customary huge midnight meals the night before and developed an intense stomach ache,” per Jenkinson. (3) “The pain worsened throughout the night as he was jostled on the rough train ride over the Smoky Mountains.”

A cab took Ruth to the Battery Park Hotel in Asheville, where Dr Charles Jordan, a local physician, diagnosed influenza and indigestion. “All I can say is that, unless somebody is appointed to act as guardian over him at the dining table, he won’t be a baseball player very long,” Jordan told a media horde. The next morning, Ruth enjoyed a light breakfast – he asked for more, but Dr Jordan said no – then set out for New York, accompanied by Yankee scout Paul Krichell and Bob Boyd, a local sportswriter. (4)

“The news of the Babe’s collapse, of course, already had made headlines,” wrote Leigh Montville. (4) “Because, as with any head of state, the reports of all his ailments made headlines.” Indeed, concerned fans flocked to train stations from Washington to New York, eager to learn more about their ailing hero.

When Ruth’s train missed a connection in Salisbury, Maryland, and assembled onlookers could not find the big guy onboard, many assumed he was dead. Such tales reached a Canadian news agency, which ran with the story. Incredibly, British newspapers picked up the wire and rushed through front-page obituaries against tight deadlines. (4) 

“The great pitcher has struck out Babe Ruth,” proclaimed the Evening News of London. “The death of the beloved and incomparable Bambino is a national calamity, for it wipes out the highest paid athlete in the world.” (5) The Belfast Telegraph followed suit, calling Ruth the ‘national hero of every schoolboy’ while explaining that his salary doubled that of the Prime Minister. (6) 

Upon hearing the news, scores gathered along the northeastern railroad. The Yankee offices were inundated with telegrams, asking if the Babe had died. (7) It was the ‘bellyache heard ‘round the world,’ wrote W.O McGeehan of the New York Herald Tribune, coining an immortal phrase. (8) And attention quickly turned to the causes of Ruth’s supposed expiration, with nascent theories ranging from potential poisoning and the sudden ingestion of 18 hot dogs to an overdose of soda and covert alcoholism.

Meanwhile, very much still alive, though deeply uncomfortable, Ruth rumbled towards New York. Upon arrival at Penn Station, while freshening up to face the converging throngs, Ruth collapsed again. An ambulance was called, though it broke down en route, causing delays. A stretcher was found, and four men tried to slide Ruth through a train window, to no avail. The frame had to be unscrewed to accommodate the Babe’s goliath gut, while seven men had to hold down a convulsing Bambino in the replacement ambulance. Sedatives were administered while Helen, Ruth’s wife, cried on the platform. (4)

The Babe was rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, where he was ensconced in room 19. As nurses rushed to accommodate their esteemed patient, Krichell was given the unenviable task of shopping for pyjamas. Why? Well, the Babe preferred to sleep naked, and he carried no appropriate night attire. Krichell struggled to find size 48 pyjamas, and had to settle for a size 42 – in pink. The enterprising scout cut the trousers to make them fit, though the home run king was in no mood for sartorial discernment. (9)

“Ruth’s condition is not serious,” said Dr Edward King, the Yankees’ team doctor, after examining the Babe. “He is run down and has low blood pressure, and there is the indication of a slight attack of the flu. What he needs is rest. He should have been in bed a week ago.” (4)

Despite such a pronouncement, rumours continued to mutate. “As days passed, the speculations for Ruth’s poor health began to mount up,” wrote Thomas Barthel. (10) “Acute indigestion, a bump on the head, the flu, groin injury, grippe, nerves, convulsions, groin infection, fried potatoes for breakfast, attack of nerves.” Talk of a ‘social disease,’ perhaps taboo in nature, also gained traction, as conjecture filled gaps in the official narrative. (11)

“If proof of Ruth’s popularity were needed,” concluded Marshall Smelser, “it came from the people’s response to his illness. The nation kept up with every bulletin. Every paper carried the story as though it was the report of a grave illness of a close friend. In some cities, President Calvin Coolidge could not make the front pages on the days when Ruth’s life seemed to be in danger. Watchers stood outside St Vincent’s, some of them children with April flowers. Drivers of passing cars slowed to call out for news. The press kept a death-watch crew at the hospital. Brother Paul, the superintendent of St Mary’s Industrial School, telephoned every night from Baltimore to ask about the condition of his former pupil.” (12)

When Opening Day arrived, on 14 April, a little-used reserve, Ben Paschal, replaced the Babe in right field for the Yankees. The obscure Alabaman even produced an admirable Ruth impression, slugging a home run in a 5-1 Yankee win over Washington. Still, few bought tickets to see Ben Paschal patrol the outfield, and Yankee executives contemplated a lost season without their talisman.

Meanwhile, back at St Vincent’s, Ruth underwent a battery of tests, the results of which did little to quell surging conspiracy. Subterranean gossip turned to a possible brain concussion or fractured skull, sustained during the fall at Penn Station, though doctors homed in on a stomach abscess as the root of Ruth’s woes. An intestinal operation was scheduled for 17 April, as secrecy shrouded St Vincent’s. (4)

At 08:30 on the appointed day, Dr George Stewart operated on Ruth. The procedure took 20 minutes, and the Babe snoozed until noon due to the lingering effects of anaesthesia. (7) Walter Johnson, the formidable Senators ace, visited Ruth shortly after he came around, while journalists clamoured for insight. (13) 

“Ruth suffered from influenza, brought on by a general rundown condition,” said Dr King, scotching rumours that the Babe would be forced to retire. “After that, an abscess formed, and an operation was necessary. The combination of these ailments, naturally, have left him in a weakened condition, but as to anything so serious as to prevent him from playing baseball again having developed, there is no foundation for the statements.

“Ruth probably will be in hospital two or perhaps three more weeks. After that, it will be a question of time before he will be able to play baseball. Some persons recover more quickly than others, and it depends on how soon he gains his strength, which may be a month. The patient is making satisfactory progress at the present time, and I see no reason for any complications to retard his recovery. Nothing that I know of could see Ruth to retire from baseball or to stop playing the game.” (14)

Nevertheless, Ruth could not even sit up in bed through the end of April, while photos of him confined to a wheelchair stoked panic. (3) (15) Adding to the chaos, Helen, Ruth’s estranged wife, was also admitted to St Vincent’s after suffering a ‘nervous collapse’ related to the Babe’s condition. When Claire Hodgson, Ruth’s mistress and future wife, visited the hospital, awkwardness ensued. (12)

Reporters were finally summoned to St Vincent’s on 2 May, as Ruth, propped up in bed, said he felt ‘as weak as a kitten’ and like a ‘featherweight.’ Periodic updates continued to trickle through – the most notable coming on 19 May, when Ruth briefly returned to Yankee Stadium to take meek batting practice against his chauffeur. (4)

The slugger was finally released, for good, on 24 May. (4) He lost 30 pounds during his convalescence, and returned looking gaunt and wobbly-legged. (16) Given a week by Huggins to reacclimatise, Ruth shocked teammates by showing a large scar across his belly, just under the ribs. (17) Bob Shawkey, a longtime teammate, said a male nurse accompanied Ruth in the Yankees’ dugout, while – strangely – the Babe was not allowed to shower with others. Such arrangements raised suspicions about possible venereal diseases suffered by Ruth, though the true nature of his ailment and its treatment remained sketchy. (4)

Here, it is important to remember that, to sportswriters of the age, Ruth was an elixir, a dream, the greatest gift they ever received. Writing and manicuring his mythology kept scribes in business, filling notebooks otherwise dusty from drudgery. Back then, reporters travelled with the teams they covered, and an unspoken kinship moderated the stories that made print. Yankee writers sank beers with the Babe, watched him devour sin by the spade-full, but incubating that truth – guarding those secrets to burnish an agreed national embellishment – served everyone. By sanitising Ruth’s seedier mores, the media earned currency with which to exaggerate his fabled escapades – catnip to everyday John Does who extracted escapism from idolatry. 

Ruth, that outsized deity, returned to the lineup on 1 June, with Johnson, his respected adversary, on the Yankee Stadium mound beneath that burning Bronx sun. The Babe went 0-for-2 in the game, and made a sparkling catch in right field, before being lifted by Huggins late on. (8) Decades later, in 2014, rare footage from that day – showing a relatively emaciated Ruth chatting with teammates – was unearthed by Tom Shieber of the Baseball Hall of Fame. It serves as a fascinating time capsule of a tumultuous time in the Babe’s incorrigible life. (18)

That very day, indeed, a certain Lou Gehrig pinch-hit for Paul Wanninger – a seemingly innocuous occurrence given meaning the next day, when Wally Pipp, the Yankees’ first baseman, arrived at the Stadium with a headache. Huggins told Pipp to take two aspirin – and the day off. He never started at first base in pinstripes again, while Gehrig – enlisted in his stead – played the next 2,129 consecutive contests, spanning 14 years, without exception. “The two most expensive aspirin in history,” Pipp later quipped, en route to becoming a verb for unfortunate obsolescence. (19)

In truth, Ruth, Gehrig and the 1925 Yankees struggled, collectively, in the months after the Babe returned. Ruth did not hit his first home run until 11 June, and finished the season with 25 – good for third in the majors, but an anticlimactic sum in Ruthian terms. The Yankees spluttered all year, in fact, finishing second-to-last in the American League with an uncharacteristic 69-85 record, 28.5 games behind the pennant-winning Senators.

A century hence, mystery still surrounds Ruth’s earthshaking illness. While likely apocryphal, the ‘too many hot dogs’ theory may not be so far off the mark, after all – in a totemic and cumulative sense, if not directly incurred in one debauch sitting. Ruth did destroy the boundaries of consumption – in every possible way – and that unrepentant decadence undoubtedly contributed to his notorious ailment.

Still, other theories persist, though verifying their accuracy is highly improbable at this stage. Decades after the event, a distant cousin of the Babe said Crohn’s disease ran in the family, perhaps contributing to the infamous illness. (20) Then, in 1970, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ira Berkow wrote that ‘Ruth’s famous bellyache was actually a venereal disease.” (21) Such an occurrence would seem to jive with Ruth’s promiscuity, and with his capitulating marriage, but abdominal surgery is rarely recommended to treat sexually transmitted infections, adding to the intrigue.

“The hospital, Dr King at the podium, talked about an abscess, an infected area, in the stomach that had to be treated,” concluded Montville. “The hospital never deviated from this diagnosis, which led to the popular thought that piles of hot dogs and gallons of soda pop, all part of a general gluttony, had sent the Sultan to his knees. This served the public well, a cautionary tale for mothers to tell their indulgent children.

“Baseball people always whispered a more titillating story involving gluttony of another kind. The Babe had syphilis. The Babe had gonorrhoea. The Babe had any – maybe every – disease ever associated with carnal moments. [Yankee GM] Ed Barrow whispered this to at least one reporter. Claire Hodgson stopped short of naming diseases but, years later, talked about secrecy and ‘different mores’ when the operation took place.

“Possibly some other situation altogether could have been involved, some hernia or rupture or some need for a colostomy bag for a time, some kind of nether-region difficulties that no one wanted to detail for strangers. The net result, whatever the problem, was that the Babe stayed in St Vincent’s Hospital for a lot longer than expected.” (4)

The story still beguiles. In fact, just last year, Don Nakayama, a clinical professor of paediatric surgery at the Mercer University School of Medicine, explored the bellyache heard ‘round the world in terrific detail. “The details of Ruth’s illness are lost to history,” he concluded, in a paper published by The American Surgeon, “but clues from newspaper articles suggest he suffered from complicated diverticulitis and underwent open drainage of a pericolic abscess. Like most cases of diverticulitis today, Ruth recovered without further surgery. His postoperative regimen, predating antibiotics, relied instead on the healing effects of the sun and topical bismuth.” (22)

Ruth never suffered a reoccurrence of his gastrointestinal meltdown. He recovered to a remarkable extent, actually, slugging 60 home runs in 1927 while leading the Murderers’ Row Yankees, and finishing an unbelievable career with a slew of all-time records. The Babe wrought an unprecedented legacy, still largely unsurpassed, and myriad trends in modern sport can be traced to his insurrection.

That trailblazing impact extends to the detailed coverage of injuries sustained by elite athletes. Rodgers’ Achilles, Beckham’s metatarsal, Gibson’s knee – all can be traced back to Ruth, and his bellyache heard ‘round the world. An entire industry has proliferated in recent years, with doctors turned content creators scrutinising every rolled ankle and hamstring twinge across professional sports. The Babe started that, 100 years ago, and we should take a moment to remember the great man and his prodigious consumption.

Sources

1. Aron, Paul. Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?

2. Berkow, Ira. The Journal. 26 August 1973.

3. Jenkinson, Bill. The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs.

4. Montville, Leigh. The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth.

5. Philadelphia Inquirer. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/sports/20160612_Separating_Babe_Ruth_truth_from_fiction.html.

6. Pinstripe Alley. https://www.pinstripealley.com/2021/11/13/22779848/yankees-babe-ruth-bellyache-heard-round-the-world-hospital-stomach-baseball-media-reporting.

7. New York Times, 18 April 1925.

8. Berk, Josh. SABR. https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-1-1925-babe-ruth-returns-from-bellyache-heard-round-the-world/.

9. Sarnoff, Gary. The First Yankee Dynasty: Babe Ruth, Miller Huggins and the Bronx Bombers of the 1920s.

10. Barthel, Thomas. Babe Ruth and the Creation of the Celebrity Athlete.

11. Appel, Marty. Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss.

12. Smelser, Marshall. The Life That Ruth Built.

13. Thomas, Henry. Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train.

14. New York Times. 29 April, 1925.

15. [Online] https://goldin.co/item/1925-babe-ruth-type-i-original-photo-8-x-10-psa-dnaq2i9f?queryId=eyJxdWVyeUlkIjoiOWY0MDBhZmI4N2UyZGJkYjkxZWEwMzE5N2IzZDYwMTkiLCJjYXJkSW5kZXgiOjEwfQ%3D%3D.

16. Creamer, Robert. Babe: The Legend Comes to Life.

17. Eig, Jonathan. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.

18. Axisa, Mike. CBS Sports. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/video-rare-footage-of-babe-ruth-and-lou-gehrig-from-1925/.

19. Anderson, Chris. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. 22 April 2009.

20. Uncle Mike's Musings. https://unclemikesmusings.blogspot.com/2025/04/april-9-1925-babe-ruths-bellyache-heard.html.

21. Berkow, Ira. Newspaper Enterprise Association. 23 July 1970.

22. The Babe's Case of Complicated Diverticulitis. Nakayama, Don. s.l. : The American Surgeon, 2024.