How Babe Ruth’s bellyache led to today’s baseball press coverage

Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a professional ballplayer in North Carolina. It is also where the Babe happened to be when his first obituary hit the press. “BABE RUTH REPORTED DEAD. BEST PAID PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE” is the headline that awaited newspaper readers in Northern Ireland who opened the April 9, 1925 edition of The Belfast Telegraph.

Of course, Ruth didn’t die in 1925, and the report of his demise in The Belfast Telegraph was erroneous. Ruth wasn’t dead. He had, however, become extremely ill. As the Yankees headed north from Florida at the end of spring training in 1925, Ruth had fainted in an Asheville, North Carolina train station. For a number of months, he had been…