Babe Ruth, bloomers & Scallios

 The latest food police actions by NYC Mayor Bloomberg jump-started my fat pen into an enormous what if.

What if Babe Ruth, the Bronx Bomber, has sent his latest gal-pal. attired in bloomers,  down to the corner bar window with a pail or three, and the beertender had said "miss, I can only only pour 15 ounces at a time."

Laws varied from locality to locality but for a long time, women weren't allowed in bars, but they could go to a split- side door at a bar and get  their pail filled with beer.

I recall Scallios , a one-time bar on Hollins St in southwest Baltimore, had a front split-  door, a few feet from their entrance door. The co-owners Frank & Sonny Scallio would casually relate some of those pail-door stories from their childhoods.

BTW, Scallios was not too far from the bar/house where Babe Ruth was raised, and it's the wall across from the bar was lined with black & white photos from local and national boxers.

Reporting live from nanny-free, sugar- happy Baltimore.

7/14/13

Time for a  photo Chris (Crush) Davis in front of the Babe Ruth Museum

8/12/13

Anyone  from southwest Bmore recall Medusa, the after-hours dive around the corner from Scallios?

9/25/13

I wonder if Babe Ruth ever met Dashiell Hammett while in Baltimore.

10/27/13

Has Bloomberg had his Big Gulp today?

10/29/13

San Francisco wants to levy a 2-cent-per-ounce tax on all sugar-sweetened beverages sold in the city.  A can of soda, for example, would cost 24 cents more. Big city nannies  can't help themselves.

11/13/13

The Trans Fat cops are it. And I'm not talking about catching fast Pontiacs (Trans-Ams) or fat trannie hookers

1/25/14

Did Dashiell Hammett and Babe Ruth ever meet?

2/1/14

I bought many double shots of Jameson at Scallios and one night Sonny Scallio suddenly slid a fifth of  Jameson  with about 4oz remaining along  the bar top toward me, and it felt like something from a movie as I grabbed the bottle with my left hand and in what seemed like one motion guzzled the contents. 

3/7/14

I read a column in the Baltimore Sun print edition about Fayetteville NC celebrating itself as the place where Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run  for the minor league Baltimore Orioles  during an intrasquad game. A bit of a stretch.

3/8/14

Ruth’s first major league home run came against the Yankees at the Polo Grounds on May 6, 1915.

3/17/14

The 2/1/14 St Paddy post is a catalyst  for these memories:  political debates vs Warren at Max's. 
Doing the irish Jig in the parking lot with Kevin and the rest of the "pearl" kitchen crew as a Sowebo Festival (Memorial Day weekend ) was winding down.

10/7/14

Chris Davis was suspended for using an amphetamine. Is the lesson: hot dogs and beer work better?

2/6/15

Babe Ruth 's birthday- he'd be a 120

6/28/15

Back to Scallios memories:When Sonny or Frank Scallio turned on their satellite TV, the menu could vary from the Rush Limbaugh's half hour TV show to Sunday Night,  David Sanborn's eclectic music show.

10/2/15

Babe Ruth's called shot was hit in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 WS held on October 1, 1932. my take away: In 2015   the MLB regular season isn't over

4/23/16

A short walk from Sowebo to the then new OPACY for an O's and the cartoonist and I  started the walk  discussing the derivation of the word hipster from opium smokers who laid on their hip to smoke. As we were entering the stadium he waxed ecstatic on his lifelong ardor for the St Louis Cardinals  and we found our way to how the St Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.

6/13/16

Everyone is talking about the Orlando shooting so I'm suggesting the O's put Chris Davis into the pitching  rotation. What a lame weekend for the O's pitching staff!

10/1/16

#dashielhammett was a regular at the Enoch Pratt Free Library/Hollins Street Branch,  formerly at 1401 Hollins Street, in the early 1900s. #sowebo , a southwest section of Baltimore city.

12/18/16

While  looking at birthdays today  I discovered this quote from Ty Cobb born 12/18/1886

"When I began playing the game, baseball was about as gentlemanly as a kick in the crotch."

 #baberuth and #tycobb didn't get along well while playing baseball but did play a few amiable rounds of golf together in retirement .

2/4/17

Looking back to the late 80s and early 90s when I would take the paleocon, a less popular side,  in semi-organized debates in various bars in Sowebo, a bohemian section in SW Baltimore. And lived to tell about it. Seriously, I don't recall any of the visceral hatred I see brewing in Berkley and elsewhere. If you want your friends and associates to think exactly as you do, you're going to miss a lot of good experiences.

6/6/17

#rennerthotel mentioned in Hammet's Glass Key and other novels was located on the corner of Liberty & Saratoga in Baltimore City.

11/22/17

When I heard that #charliemanson died, I recall a bartender (circa 1990) playing a bootleg of Manson's "when I'm hungry I go to the dump" to clear out the Cultured Pearl, a Sowebo bar, at 2AM.

1/1/18

Last night I was asleep before midnight. About 30 years ago, I fell asleep drunk on the cold tile floor of the #telltalehearth bar in #Sowebo in Baltimore ,  woke up around 5AM, nodded at the Edgar Allan Poe mannequin sitting on a barstool, entered the alarm code, and drove home.

3/18/18

I heard some baseball pundits mentioning #baberuth would have a great #WAR stat ( Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic) , and can envision his response: give me a pail of beer and some hot dogs.

07/26/18

Hey #MLB don't outlaw the shift ! It's time for the players to do what #weewilliekeeler, a member of the Hall of Fame,  stated " hit 'em where they ain't,” 

8/18/18

Looking back 10/7/14: #ChrisDavis was suspended for using an amphetamine. Is it time to put some benzedrine in Mr Davis Ovaltine ?

1/14/19

#frankrobinson signed the first 100K contract in Orioles history on 1.14.67.  check out his comment at the time about possibly  getting a few bucks more: " I didn't think it was worth haggling over."

1/20/19

Did President  #herberthoover ,  serve hot dogs to the 1932 World Series champs, the  Babe Ruth Yankees on their visit to the White House?  Pretty sure  the tradition of WS champs visiting the White House started in 1924 when Cooldge was President.

1/26/19

#adamottavino is catching some flack for saying this: "Look, #BabeRuth with that swing, swinging that bat, I got him hitting a buck-40 with eight homers.". It took him a day or two to state the obvious:  "and it's not even something that can be proven anyway"

4/9/19

I recommend #baberuth 's diet of beer and hot dogs for #chrisdavis with 47 consecutive hitless at-bats.

6/16/19

   #BabeRuth road jersey dating to 1928-30 sold at auction for $5.64 million. That's nuts!

 6/30/19

  Two of Babe Ruth 's former MLB teams, Red Sox and Yankees, are playing  regular season games in #london this weekend.  If Ruth would've played in London in the 1920's, he would've given the local press some amusing quotes.
7/6/19: Maybe #ChrisDavis had a pre-game Babe Ruth diet, hot dog and beer, last night. He had a solo homer and two run single.
9/4/19:  Michael Lorenzen of the Cincinnati Reds  pulled off a feat last accomplished by the Babe Ruth by hitting a homer, earning a win, and making an appearance in the outfield.
2/21/20- Ok I missed this: #baberuth would've been 125 on 2/6/20. And, repeating a post from 2013

6/9/20: Thirty years ago:  #EddieMurray, a Dodger and a former Oriole, hit homers from each side of the plate for the tenth time in his career.

5/29/21: Biden relaxed Cuban policy and a Cuban baseball player, César Prieto, jumps off the Cuban team bus into a waiting car in a rapid defection  during trip to Florida. I started thinking about some great Cuban- born players, Tony Oliva, Luis Tiant, etc.

2/6/2022: Here's your 2022 funny from Sad Max Scherzer: "We don’t need mediation because what we are offering to MLB is fair for both sides" 

2/7/22: Half of a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card sells at auction for $475,960. 

May 30, 2022

Sowebo Festival memory from thirty plus years ago. Kitchen Kevin demanding I do the Irish jig in the parking lot near a music stage. I did a one-legged "jig" and Kevin did his version while a small contingent dug the scene.

June 9, 2022

 I'm unsure if you saw this from Nina's post. Parke Green, bartender at the Cultured Pearl in the early 1990's, died from an allergic reaction to a wasp sting while walking with his wife Nina.  Last time I saw him was when he visited Baltimore on business about five years ago. My last phone call with him was a year or so ago when he called to talk about the death of Poodles, a former waitress at CP. He was a great friend and a he!! of late night partymate in Sowebo. 

June 22, 2022

and now Michele H, a barkeeper who I often chatted with late night in the early 1990s at "The Pearl", Max's, and Scallios passed away a few days ago.

Oct 18, 2022

The Pfister Hotel, 424 E. Wisconsin Ave in Milwaukee, WI houses a vast collection of Victorian pieces and is also famous for spooking a lot of MLB players. When the Pirates were in town in 2016, Pirates MGR Clint Hurdle explained to a player who phoned him because a ghost had turned on his TV twice in one night. I bet Babe Ruth would have slept through someone turning on his radio.

Sept 28, 2024

While reading a book on the St Louis Browns- Baltimore Orioles history I stopped on this name. Buster Mills, an outfielder for the Browns, Bosox , etc and  the Redlegs MGR for 12 games in 1953.

 Elvis and Lucy Mills gave  Buster, their fourth child the first name of Colonel, after the rank of either dad's best friend or a Civil War great-uncle. During WW2, as a soldier, he introduced himself to officers as "Colonel Mills".