Bad boy Ruth – that was me.

Don't get the idea that I'm proud of my harum-scarum youth. I'm not. I simply had a rotten start in life, and it took me a long time to get my bearings.

Looking back to my youth, I honestly don't think I knew the difference between right and wrong. I spent much of my early boyhood living over my father's saloon, in Baltimore- and when I wasn't living over it, I was soaking up the atmosphere. I hardly knew my parents.

St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore, where I was finally taken, has been called an orphanage, and a reform school. It was, in fact, a training school for orphans, incorrigibles, delinquents and runaways picked up on the streets of the city. I was listed as an incorrigible. I guess I was. Perhaps I would have been but for Brother Matthias, the greatest man I have ever known, and for the religious training I received there which has since been so important to me.

I doubt if any appeal could have straightened me out except a power over and above man- the appeal of God. Iron-rod discipline couldn't have done it. Nor all the punishment and reward systems that could have been devised. God has an eye out for me, just as He has for you, and He was pulling for me to make the grade.

As I look back now, I realize that knowledge of God was a big crossroads with me. I got one thing straight (and I wish all kids did) – that God was the Boss. He was only my Boss but Boss of all my bosses. Up till then, like all bad kids, I hated most of the people who had control over me and could punish me. I began to see that I had a higher Person to reckon with who never changed, whereas my earthly authorities changed from year to year. Those who bossed me had the same self-battles – they, like me, had to account to God. I also realized that God was not only just but merciful. He knew we were weak and that we all found it easier to be stinkers than sons of God, not only as kids but also all through our lives.

That clear picture, I'm sure, would be important to any kid who hates a teacher, or resents a person in charge. This picture of my relationship to man and God was what helped relieve me of bitterness and rancor and a desire to get even.

I've seen a great number of "he-men" in my baseball career, but never one equal to Brother Matthias. He stood six feet six and weighed 250 pounds. It was all muscle. He could have been successful at anything he wanted to in life – and he chose the church.

It was he who introduced me to baseball. Very early he noticed that I had some natural talent for throwing and catching. He used to back me in a corner of the big yard at St. Mary's and bunt a ball to me by the hour, correcting the mistakes I made with my hands and feet. I never forgot the first time I saw him hit a ball. The baseball in 1902 was a lump of mush, but Brother Matthias would stand at the end of the yard, throw the ball up with his left hand, and give it a terrific belt with the bat he held in his right hand. The ball would carry 350 feet, a tremendous knock in those days. I would watch him bug-eyed.

Thanks to brother Matthias I was able to leave St. Mary's in 1914 and begin my professional career with the famous Baltimore Orioles (at that time a minor league team). Out on my own…boy, did it go to my head; I began really to cut capers.

I strayed from the church, but don't think I forgot my religious training. I just overlooked it. I prayed often and hard, but like many irresistible young fellows, the swift tempo of my living shove religion into the background. So what good was all the hard work and ceaseless interest of the Brothers, people would argue? You can't make kids religious they say, because it just won't take. Send kids to Sunday School and they will too often end up hating it and the church.

Don't believe it. As far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as most kids go, once religion sinks in, it stays there – deep down. The lads who get religious training, get it where it counts – in the roots. They may fail it, but it never fails them. When the score is against them, or they get a burn pitch, that unfailing Something inside them will be there to draw on.

I've been criticised as often as I'm praised for my activities with kids on the grounds that what I did was for publicity. Well, criticism doesn't matter. I never forget where I came from. No one knew better than I what it meant to have your own home, a backyard, and your own kitchen and icebox. That's why all through the years, even when the big money was rolling in, I'd never forget St. Mar's, Brother Matthius, and the boys I left behind. I kept going back.

As I look back those last moments when I let the kids' down- they were my worst. I guess I was so anxious to enjoy life to the fullest that I forgot the rules- or ignored them. Once in a while you can get away with it, but not for long. When I broke training, the effects were felt by myself and by the ball team – and even by the fans.

While I drifted away from the church, I did have my own "alter", a big window of my New York apartment overlooking the city lights. Often I would kneel before that window and say my prayers I would feel quite humble then. I'd ask God to help me not make such a big fool of myself and pray that I'd measure up to what He expected of me.

In December 1946 I was in French Hospital, facing a serious operation. Paul Carey, one of my closest friends was by my bed one night. "They're going to operate in the morning Babe," Paul said. "Don't you think you ought to put your home in order?"

I didn't dodge the long, challenging look in his eyes. I knew what he meant. For the first time I realized that death might strike me out. I nodded, and Paul got up, called in a chaplin, and I made a full confession.

"I'll return in the morning and give you Holy Communion," the chaplin said, "but you don't have to fast."

"I'll fast," I said. I didn't even have a drop of water.

As I lay in bed that evening I thought to myself what a comforting feeling to be free from fear and worries. I now could simply turn them over to God.