LoHud: Rare cancer took Babe Ruth, dentist says

(Belzer mind meld forthcoming) Yeah, yeah right, yeah, right...and Lou Gehrig died of a severe charley horse.

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.”

Maloney, a longtime Yankee fan, was familiar with the Ruth legend, and after a trip last year to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore, he resolved to find out more about Ruth’s final days. A love of history and sports - combined with his professional interest in mouth disease as an assistant professor at the NYU College of Dentistry - sent him into the archives for a year.