Museum to take a swing at new venue

During Babe Ruth's reign as baseball's Sultan of Swat, nothing was bigger than the Great Bambino. Nobody could match his big frame, his big appetite or the big numbers that he put up year after year.

Thus, the future plans for the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum are logical: it is getting bigger. Much bigger.

The museum, which is located downtown at 216 Emory St., in the house where Ruth was born, will soon begin moving to its new location at Camden Station, the defunct train station adjacent to Oriole Park. The 22,000 square-foot museum -- which will open on May 7, 2005 -- will be called "Sports Legends at Camden Yards," and will house over 10,000 artifacts pertaining to the history of sports in Maryland, as well as many high-technology, interactive exhibits.

"When we open the doors of the new museum, we will be the best sports museum in America," said Gregg Wilhelm, the museum's communications director.

Wilhelm's claim echoes the spirit of George Herman Ruth, a man who famously "called his shot" in the 1932 World Series by pointing to the centerfield bleachers -- right before cranking a well-aimed home run that helped the New York Yankees on their way to sweeping the Chicago Cubs.

The museum currently takes up four row houses on Emory Street, about three blocks away from Camden Yards. One of the row houses the museum preserved was the former residence of Ruth's maternal grandparents. Ruth's parents lived several blocks away in an apartment over the saloon they owned, which Babe's mother decided was an poor place to give birth to a child. If the Ruth family apartment was still standing it would be halfway between second base and centerfield at Oriole Park.

"With Sports Legends at Camden Yards, our mission as a museum reaches even further to showcase the entire history of Maryland sports -- from the championships teams like Orioles and Ravens, to the collegiate champions like Hopkins and Maryland," said Wilhelm.

The museum will feature around 15 staged exhibits, one of which, "College Game Day," will include information on the long history of Johns Hopkins lacrosse. At the exhibit, visitors will be able to sit in front of a lacrosse goal and try to stop beams of light, which will fire at them like simulated lacrosse balls.

Another equally innovative exhibit will give guests the chance to tuck into a huddle with the Baltimore Colts offensive unit -- mannequins, of course -- and have plays barked at them by legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas.

An exhibit called "The Marching Band" will honor the Baltimore Colts marching band, which stayed in Baltimore after the Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984 and before the Ravens played their first game in 1996. Next to the exhibit will be electronic footprint marks, which will light up in order to illuminate the band's routines.

This will all be a big step up from the current museum, which opened in 1974 to honor the paunchy, pug-faced hero who became a poster boy for "Pigtown," the nickname for the working-class Baltimore neighborhood that he grew up in.

At first, the museum only housed artifacts commemorating Ruth, such as a hymnal from his days at St. Mary's Industrial School, in which he scrawled, "World's Worse [sic] Singer, World's Greatest Pitcher."

The relics in the museum chronicle Ruth's 22-year career as a professional baseball player, which started when he was bought by the Baltimore International League Orioles in 1914. The team had to cut some of its top players to make payroll, and Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox for $25,000 -- a price which also included two other Orioles.

Over the years, the Babe Ruth House became the official museum for the Orioles and the official archives for the Colts, at which point it garnered some of its most impressive items -- including the Colts' Vince Lombardi Trophy from Super Bowl V, and the Orioles' 1983 World Series Trophy.

The Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum will remain open after Sports Legends and Camden Yards opens in May, but all of the memorabilia that doesn't honor Ruth will be moved across Pratt Street to the new site. Sports Legends will also appeal to a wider audience, as it will feature sports that aren't currently being exhibited, such as indoor soccer, horse racing, jousting (Maryland's official state sport), and of course, lacrosse.

However, one staged exhibit at the museum will be dedicated to Ruth, one of the city's most prominent native sons, entitled "Babe Ruth: American Icon." While the Red Sox may have broken the Curse of the Bambino by winning the World Series in October, his allure will be guaranteed to live on in his hometown, in appropriately grandiose fashion.