No one told Babe Ruth he had cancer,

The Great Bambino’s treatment came at a major turning point in medicine.

By: Eleanor Cummins

But he was no ordinary patient. He was the Babe, the greatest baseball player who had ever lived.

And his medical team at what is now Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, just a short train ride south from Yankee Stadium, intended to treat him as such.

While it seems possible that no one ever told Ruth himself, the baseball legend had terminal cancer. A tumor had grown from behind his nose to the base of his skull and was working its way into his neck. Treatment would be harrowing, but his doctors were determined the Sultan of Swat would get better. Though their effort to save him was ultimately unsuccessful, the record-setting Ruth became a cancer pioneer in the process.

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