The Day the Babe Visited "the Home"

In the Tobin family, it has long been a cherished memory, and a story David Tobin, who died in 2002 at 89, told countless times to his children: the day he got a signed baseball from the great Babe Ruth. The Babe had come to visit the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, one of JCCA’s predecessor agencies, where David Tobin lived from the time he was six through his Bar Mitzvah. It was the early 1920s, a tough time for immigrant families. Like many others, David’s widowed mother simply couldn’t care for her children, and they entered “the Home.”

Babe Ruth was also raised in an orphanage though his parents were alive—a fact every kid in America knew—so his visit that day, accompanied by silent screen star Harold Lloyd, was especially thrilling. From that moment on, David Tobin, who went on to serve in World War II, raise a family, and work as a regional manager for a trucking company, was a dedicated Yankees fan. His son Jonathan, now editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, shared his father’s passion for both baseball and the Yankees.

Jonathan and his two older sisters had heard the Babe Ruth story many times, but when JCCA’s Publications Production Coordinator sent him a photo of the actual event, he couldn’t believe it. The coordinator had traced him when she read the award-winning piece he had written, “Baseball and the Jews,” which describes the scene that day at HOA.

“My father always spoke very fondly of his time at HOA, and especially of that wonderful day. Before, we just had the memory—now we have the actual picture,” says Mr. Tobin, who explains that the day his family got the picture, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. “To me, it doesn’t really matter exactly which child he is, though my mother is convinced she’s identified him by the way he’s standing. I know he was there and this brings it all to life again.”