Babe Ruth’s daughter comes to Quincy

   Babe Ruth’s only surviving daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, doesn’t want to be known for her relationship to The Bambino.
  “I was very proud of Daddy, but I never introduced myself as his daughter,” Stevens said before the opening banquet of the Babe Ruth World Series for 14-year-olds in Quincy.
   Still, this is Stevens’ second visit to Quincy for the  baseball series, which runs from  Saturday through Aug. 23.
   And then there’s the Red Sox.
   “I watch all the Red Sox games,” said the Babe’s  92-year-old adopted daughter.  She had always been a Yankees fan. “I switched over 10 to 12 years ago.”
    The impending demolition of Yankee Stadium  makes Stevens sad. But not too sad. “The Yankees had won so many pennants and World Series,” Stevens said.
   Baseball’s role in Stevens’ life didn’t start until her mother, Claire Hodgson, married Babe Ruth in New York City in 1929. Stevens was 12 years old.
   Stevens was born in Athens, Georgia in 1916. Hodgson was 16 when she had her. In 1917, Hodgson left her first husband and Athens to pursue a career in theater and modeling in New York.
   Her mother startled the Babe at one of showman Jim Barton’s parties when she told the baseball legend he drank too much.
   “His mouth fell open. No one told Daddy that!” Stevens said.
   After Ruth and his mother married, Ruth adopted her. (Ruth had already adopted a daughter, Dorothy Ruth, from a prior relationship).
   When the Babe entered the picture, Julia’s baseball life began.
   She often traveled with her parents wherever the Babe was playing.
   Joe Brill, who escorts Stevens across the country on press junkets, said she has a mind like a steel trap.
   “She remembers everything,” said Brill.  Stevens is legally blind and travels less than she used to.
   Daddy, Stevens said, was good at anything. He taught her how to bowl and dance and he  played bridge with her although he had never played before.
   The year her father died of cancer, 1948, was a tough year for Stevens. Her husband and uncle died within a year of Ruth’s death. Afterwards, Stevens remarried twice. Her third marriage lasted 48 years.   She now lives in Sun City, Arizona, where she’s a Diamondbacks fan. Her only son, Tom Stevens, 55, lives close by.
   The next of many books she’s written, “Babe Ruth,” comes out Sept.  27.  Even at 92, Stevens doesn’t tell people who she is. “I want people to like me for myself,” she said.