Read Babe Ruth’s 1948 Obituary: ‘He Was Unforgettable, Even When He Struck Out’

He was unforgettable, even when he struck out. His swing whirled him around until his slender legs were twisted beneath him. And the times when his big bat did connect were baseball’s biggest moments. The spell lasted until the Babe had trotted around the base paths, taking mincing steps on his small feet, tipping his cap to the mighty, reverent roar from the stands.

Sportwriters knocked themselves out thinking up new names and superlatives for him: The Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, The Colossus of Clout. He didn’t need all that; he was color itself—a fellow built on heroic, swaggering lines, an enormous head on a barrel of a body.

In the golden ’20s, the years of the big names—the years of Dempsey, Tilden and Bobby Jones—Babe Ruth was the biggest draw of them all. With his big bat, he put baseball back on its feet and back in the hearts of the fans after the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal.

He began his big-league career as a crack southpaw pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. But he was also a slugger without peer, and when he clouted most of his record 714 home runs, he wore a New York Yankee uniform, played the outfield. Son of a Baltimore saloonkeeper, he was brought up in a Baltimore school for delinquents, and he never quite grew up. In his first years in baseball, he scoffed at training rules, took his drinks where he found them, abused umpires, once chased up into the stands after an abusive fan.

His emotions were always out on the surface, which was one reason all the fans thought they knew and understood him. Even when the late Jimmy Walker gave him a talking-to before a banquet, the Babe gulped, and with enormous tears rolling down his enormous face, promised the kids of America he would reform. He tried to. But nothing could stop him from living handsomely.

He made more than $2,000,000 and spent most of it. He once confessed: “I lost $35,000 on one horse race alone.” Ban Johnson, late president of the American League once said with asperity but accuracy: “Ruth has the mind of a 15-year-old boy.” The Babe couldn’t even remember the names of his teammates. He greeted everybody, old or young, with his famed welcome: “Hello kid.”

Read the rest of the obituary here in the TIME Vault