Roanoke Man Recalls Getting Babe Ruth’s Autograph

Robert Garland poses for a photo in Roanoke. Garland, who attended some of baseball’s most historic games, got an autograph from baseball legend Babe Ruth while visiting New York on his honeymoon in 1943.

Over sixty-nine years ago, Robert Garland got a pretty nifty wedding present—Babe Ruth’s autograph. Garland was a soldier boy on his honeymoon with his new bride, Frances, in New York City where they stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for $10 a night ($7.50 with the serviceman’s discount) and where he attended the first three games of the 1943 World Series between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Garland, a native of Roanoke, Virginia who had recently been inducted as a World War II intensified, was in his Army uniform when he scrambled down to the box seats where Ruth was sitting right before one of the games. Ruth, the great home run champion for the Yankees, had retired in 1935. Ruth chomped on a cigar and looked resplendent in his dark suit and striped tie as he signed autographs for the mob that had descended upon him.

Garland held up a pen and his address book, hoping to score a signature. Ruth spied him and hollered, “Let the soldier through!” Fans stepped out of the way as Ruth signed the address book while Garland snapped three quick photographs with his 35 mm camera. Garland, now 89, recounted that story recently, just a few days before he and Frances celebrated their 69th anniversary.

“I wish I had the sense to have my picture taken with him,” Garland said as he looked at the black-and-white photographs of the “Sultan of Swat” he keeps in a scrapbook, along with the autograph. The pictures are good, especially the one of Ruth turning toward the camera to hand the pen back to Garland. Attending a World Series was old hat for Garland, whose family ran a chain of drugstores in Roanoke. His father, Walter Garland, Sr., often received baseball tickets, even World Series tickets, from drug manufacturers he dealt with.

Robert Garland joined his dad for trips to see the Washington Senators play at Griffith Stadium in the 1930s. He attended the very first major league All-Star game in 1933 at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, a game christened by a home run from none other than the Babe. He even got a baseball signed at that game by more than dozen Hall of Famers that included Lou Gehrig, Carl Hubbell, Bill Terry and Lefty Grove. His father made Robert Garland of Roanoke took some 16mm film of the All-Star game, which Garland this photo of Babe Ruth when he got the legend's autograph. believes a relative still has.

He and his older brother attended a couple of games of the 1933 World Series, which featured the New York Giants, his favorite team, against the Senators. That was the last time a Washington baseball team made the post-season until this year, when the Washington Nationals won the National League East Division.

His love of baseball waned during the grown-up years of running a business and raising four children in the southwest Roanoke home where he and Frances still live. But he will never forget what it was like to look Babe Ruth in the eye and get his autograph.

“It was kind of an exciting time,” Garland said. “He was the most famous player then. He probably still is.