The Man Who Made Babe Ruth:
Brother Matthias of St. Mary’s School
Matthias saw something that others had missed in the scrawny young left-handed kid. As his teacher and coach of one of the ball teams at St. Mary’s, Matthias felt there was potential in young Ruth and was the first to believe in the lost lad whose parents had given up on him.
Matthias became his mentor and the boy later to become the Babe never forgot St. Mary’s and the man who turned his life around.
Brother Matthias, the hulking Canadian, was the man who taught Babe Ruth to play baseball. And much more. He shaped Babe Ruth into the man he became, much the same way a father would.
“It was at St. Mary’s that I met and learned to love the greatest man I’ve ever known,” Ruth said of Matthias in his 1948 autobiography, his third and final telling of his life story. “He was the father I needed.”
He credited the big-hearted giant with teaching him to become both a man and a baseball player.
Young George Ruth, back left
Babe and his mentor meet a Civil War veteran
REVIEWS
“In Martin’s page-turner, we learn that not only did the hulking 6-foot-6 prefect of discipline and director of all physical activity at St. Mary’s Industrial Training School in Baltimore help shape Ruth mentally–instilling in him much-needed values and beliefs–but he was also responsible for introducing The Babe to baseball and for influencing Ruth’s home run swing…. This is another outstanding effort by Martin, who’s already one of Canada’s top baseball writers and historians.”
—Kevin Glew, Coopertowners in Canada blog
“Martin’s wonderful book has brought an important story to the surface. We may not know where Babe Ruth’s baseballs are in Lake Ontario, but we know a great deal more about the unlikely Canadian hero who helped him become one of the greatest players the game has ever seen.”
—Literary Review of Canada
“An enjoyable and easily read book which adds surprising new detail to a story we thought we already knew well.”
—SABR Deadball Era Committee Newsletter
“While the rags-to-riches story of Babe Ruth has been told in scores of books, this is the first to uncover the compelling story of the father figure in his life–Brother Matthias, C.F.X. The author’s meticulous and thorough research of the Xaverian Brothers, St. Mary’s Industrial School and Brother Matthias is apparent on every page.”
—Harry Rothgerber, editor, Young Babe Ruth: His Early Life and Baseball Career, from the Memoirs of a Xaverian Brother