The Babe’s Daughter, Dan Jenkins: Great Tributes

3/11/2019

Julia Ruth Stevens, 2006

Two daughters who adored their fathers.

Julia Ruth Stevens died Saturday at 102. She was the adopted daughter of Babe Ruth and, as long as she lived, referred to him as “Daddy,” as Richard Goldstein notes in his masterful obituary.

Dan Jenkins, one of greatest sportswriters, died Thursday at 90. He was eulogized by many admirers in his business, the best coming from, of course, his daughter, Sally Jenkins, sports columnist at the Washington Post.

Sally, terrific writer that she is, described the hectic and eccentric life of a sports columnist who was usually at a golf tournament or football game when the family gathered for Thanksgiving and other holidays.
.
Her dad was as glib about the indignities of old age as he was about golfers who mis-read the terrain of the course. Sally tells about her dad wheeling himself down the hallway of the hospital heading toward a presumed quadruple heart bypass.
When he emerged, he was told he had needed only a triple.

"I birdied the bypass," he pronounced.

That’s it. I’m not going to try to duplicate the Jenkins family, father or daughter. Read Sally’s tribute to her dad. The Washington Post has a pretty strong paywall, bless its heart, but you might be able to read it there, or the Chicago Tribune. Or pay for it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-spt-sally-jenkins-remembers-father-dan-jenkins-20190309-story.html

Plus, Bruce Weber’s excellent obit in the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/obituaries/dan-jenkins-dead.html

Babe Ruth’s daughter also receives a brilliant tribute in the Monday NYT. She was the daughter of Babe’s wife, Clare Hodgson, and was adopted and treated royally, as a daughter by the gregarious, larger-than-life Babe.

No doubt she witnessed, and heard about, examples of Babe’s excesses, even after he stopped playing. As subtle as a diplomat, she discussed “Daddy” as she saw him – a man who made egg-and-salami sandwiches and took her golfing out in Queens. And when she started dating, he insisted she be home by midnight. Imagine: The Babe. Enforcing a curfew.

They lived on the Upper West Side, in a 14-room apartment; whenever I am in that neighborhood I envision The Babe, with a cap on his head, walking on Riverside Drive or thereabouts, just another West Side burgher.

She was an ambassador not only for “Daddy” but for baseball itself, waving to adoring crowds at the closing of “The House That Ruth Built,” waving to adoring crowds at Fenway Park, where The Babe first pitched shutouts and hit home runs.

When my alma mater, Hofstra University, held an academic conference on The Babe in 1995, she and her son, Tom Stevens, represented the Babe and gave out Babe Ruth bats to a few lucky people, including me.
https://lwww.nytimes.com/1995/05/01/sports/sports-of-the-times-the-babe-redbirds-and-a-sunday-game.html

But that’s enough from me.
Better you should read Richard Goldstein’s obituary of Mrs. Stevens:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/obituaries/julia-ruth-stevens-dead-babe-ruth.html

Sally Jenkins, Dan Jenkins, Marty Jenkins (yes, twins)

Josh Rubin

3/11/2019 01:31:34 pm

I enjoyed the piece, George.

Babe Ruth really was an upper westsider. As you know, my dad's on vacation, so in a way I hope he isn't reading your blog at the moment. But if he is, I hope he chimes in with a story or two about how Babe Ruth was a customer in his store at 83rd and Broadway when my grandfather owned it. Jen has a bit of this in her book, I think.

George Vecsey

3/12/2019 08:47:37 am

Josh: quite right. Page 38 of "We Are Staying," Jen Rubin's book about the family electronics store, Radio Clinic, on the Upper West Side, she writes: "My grandfather's favorite celebrity customer was Babe Ruth."
The Babe lived in at least 3 different buildings on the West Side:
https://howtheyplay.com/misc/The-Homes-of-Babe-Ruth
My praise for Jen's book:
https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/new-book-the-man-who-kept-his-store-open-after-the-blackout

Jeff Geller

3/11/2019 07:37:28 pm

Hello George, I almost choke on my hoagie sandwich when I read Sally Jenkins describing her dad*s last manuscript; invoking the names of the main character*s dogs. From what I learned about him is that he did not believe in diplomatic prose,

George Vecsey

3/12/2019 08:55:17 am

Jeff: Tom and Giselle? Names strike a familiar chord.
Bruce Weber's obit says that Dan Jenkins' was from a particular milieu -- golf/foo'ball/Texas. Coming from the Chipmunk Angst School of northeast sports "scribes" of the 60s, I enjoyed reading about a different world, overlapping in press boxes and press rooms at major events. GV

Altenir Silva

3/11/2019 09:19:27 pm

Dear George: It's a touching tribute to the Babe's daughter and Dan Jenkins as well.
Altenir

George Vecsey

3/12/2019 08:56:19 am

Altenir, good to hear from you. I thought I might hear from you at the end of Carnival....best, GV

Altenir Silva

3/16/2019 10:13:36 am

Dear George,
The carnival this year in Brazil was weird because of our President and his tweets. The people always have fun on this date.
Best wishes. Altenir

bruce

3/12/2019 09:48:26 am

george,

enjoyed that.

i read semi tough and read SI for years, years ago. always like jenkins.

i recall reading a bio of the babe somewhere around 1960 or so. one of those typical of the time. it was 'written' by a family member, but i don't recall which.

i do know i was playing little league baseball at the time. we didn't have numbers, but i pestered my mother to find a #3 and sew it on the back of my uniform.

she did.

i was the only player on 10 teams with a number.

the babe might also have been the subject of the worst sports 'bio' movie when william bendix played him.

bruce

bruce

3/12/2019 11:36:45 am

george,

just read the sally jenkins' column about her father.

don't often get teary or sniffles, but i did when i got near the end and read this.

......I don't know that you can say anything higher about a guy than that his children preferred his company to all others,....

it doesn't get better than that.

bruce

bruce

3/16/2019 11:24:08 am

altenir,

greetings from the great white north where we're as stupid about winning at hockey as brazil is about soccer.

I think you'll just have to accept that your boy will always be #2 in the 'what a dick' category as long as the great republic has the liar in chief wielding his enormous intellect and hate on behalf of the usa.

bruce

Altenir Silva

3/16/2019 01:55:35 pm

Dear Bruce,
Our President from Brazil - Jair Bolsonaro - hates the Carnival. Our soccer league is going very bad, the teams are showing a bad performance, but the people love it.
Best wishes - Altenir

altenir,

3/16/2019 01:58:24 pm

altenir,

I read the stories about his posting some bits of it.

trump lite so far.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

The Babe’s Daughter, Dan Jenkins: Great Tributes

Categories

Buy the Book