verything about Babe Ruth exuded sexuality — from fastball pitching and home run hitting to his insatiable appetite and constant need to placate his mouth with food, drink, and cigars. Yankee teammate Bob Meusel was fond of telling a story about the night he shared a hotel suite with Babe. The Bambino made love to one woman after another, contemplatively smoking a cigar after each dalliance. In the morning, Meusel asked Babe how many girls he had been with the previous night. Ruth glanced at the ashtray, and so did Meusel. There were seven butts in the tray. “Count the cigars,” said Babe.
This partially smoked cigar was left by Babe Ruth on April 27, 1924 at Rose Hicks’ brothel on Broad Street in Philadelphia. That evening, a Yankee player observed Babe sitting in a big chair in an upstairs room with a brunette on one knee and a blonde on the other. As the girls poured a bottle of champagne onto his head and shampooed his hair with it, Babe smiled and exclaimed, “Anybody who doesn’t like this life is crazy!” The next afternoon at Shibe Park, the Bambino, with barely two hours sleep, hit a pair of home runs. “That’s the way he lived all the years I knew him,” said Yankee teammate Joe Dugan. “Like I said, he was an animal!”
