Jidge: A closer, more personal look into the life of Babe Ruth - Softcover

“Jidge is a great read! Truly a book with something for everyone, it is a real story within a story, within a story!” ~~ Jidge is a crossroads of 5 different perpectives starting with The Babe's, Linda Ruth's, Hideki Matsui's, Tom Kirkpatrick's, and Joe G's, and all for a great cause of help Haiti in this time of Cholera~~ In the book Mr. Tom Kirkpatrick uses his unique writing skills and the vintage photos of Babe Ruth featured within to help reveal to us the not-so-well-known story of a young Baltimore delinquent who was destined to become Baseball’s beloved Sultan of Swat, a Baseball legend, and a true American Hero.~~ Tom, a graduate of Marist College in Journalism and wheelchair bound since age 11, tells of the circumstances that led him to author the book. He tells his own story of the accident that had him airlifted to the Westchester Medical Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital where he was in a coma for two months, and was successfully treated for Traumatic Brain Injury.~~ Our first goal is to join Linda Ruth Tosetti (Babe’s Granddaughter) in her work to reintroduce Americans to that largely overlooked personal side of Babe Ruth and examine the positive lessons that can be learned.~~ Our second goal and purpose of this book is to raise public awareness and funds to address the current Cholera outbreak in Haiti, and provide support to organizations such as Mission Haiti, Water without Borders, Community to Community, CCHER, the IJDH, and other organizations that support Clean Water initiatives for Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other areas as well.~~ This book takes a closer look at a more personal side of Babe Ruth’s life. Tom helps tell the story of the Babe’s little known philanthropy and concern for all people, in particular children. ~~ You will read about George Herman Ruth as “an unsupervised young George who would roam the streets and eventually earn the title “incorrigible”. He also tells how “at age seven the young trouble maker was put into a reform school made up of orphans and other troubled youth who needed good or better direction. Tom tells how Brother Mathias, the school’s disciplinarian, first placed a bat into the hands of this ill behaved social outcast forever changing his destiny and the course of Baseball history.~~ In the forward, Joe Gutierrez talks about his personal evolution to a more purposeful life inspired by these same photos presented in this book, and tells the true story of the most unlikely events in his own life (in some instances decades apart) that came together to produce this book for its stated purpose; to reintroduce Americans to that largely overlooked personal side of Babe Ruth and providing clean water to Haiti to stem the tide of the Cholera outbreak there.