(photo & description contributed by the Library of Congress)
"George Herman ("Babe") Ruth was the most celebrated American athlete of the 1920s, a period that has been called the Golden Age of Sports for its extraordinary hero-athletes in baseball, football, golf, boxing, horse-racing, and other sports. Ruth was born to German-American parents in Baltimore in 1895. He began his major-league career in 1914 as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, winning 89 games in six years. In 1920 he was sold to the New York Yankees and converted to being an outfielder, where he made his mark as baseball's first great slugger. In 1927, he hit 60 home runs, a record that stood for 34 years. Ruth's autobiography, The Babe Ruth Story as Told to Bob Considine, was published in 1948, the same year this picture was taken and in which Ruth died. George Herbert Walker Bush was accepted to Yale in 1942, but postponed college to join the U.S. Navy and fight in World War II. After being discharged from the Navy in September 1945, he enrolled at Yale, where he captained the baseball team. The meeting with Ruth occurred before a game in Bush's senior year." LOC Photo Summary Description
Life has a way of creating historical moments (like this one) bringing two great historically renowned men together before history would claim its place in their lives and legacy. The irony of Babe Ruth at the end of his life here in 1948, presents to a youthful Yale baseball's team captain, George Herbert Walker Bush, his autobiographical manuscript which holds the intimate moments of his illustrious life, knowing in a matter of time his public bout with throat cancer would end and with it Babe's short-lived life. Babe will die at the young age of 53 years old, while Bush would build a political career that would lead him to become the 41st President of the United States 41 years after this photo was taking and Babe's manuscript handed off. It's true destiny always finds the greatest of men!
