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| 4th August, 2008 - 11:51 am | Journal News - Babe Ruth came to Yankee Stadium in 1948 wearing his pinstripe uniform to hear the cheer of the crowd one more time.
He died two months later at age 53, reportedly of throat cancer, brought on in part by a fondness for tobacco and liquor.
But that's all wrong, says an Ossining dentist who spent a year researching the circumstances of Ruth's death.
Dr. William Maloney uncovered little-known information about the experimental treatment that the doomed baseball titan agreed to take part in, the way Ruth conducted himself during his final days and the rare form of cancer he actually died from, nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
"In all his biographies, they completely skip over his illness, and they got it all wrong," said Maloney, 41, a Scarsdale resident. "They all said he had throat cancer - an easy conclusion, because he was well-known for drinking, smoking and using tobacco. In fact, he died of a very rare cancer. And what I found out was that this larger-than-life celebrity was a pioneer in early cancer research."
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma causes less than 1 percent of the cancer deaths in the U.S. although the cancer is far more prevalent in parts of Southeast Asia and northern Africa. The nasopharynx is a small area inside the head, above the soft palate and leading to the sinus. [READ] |
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