Babe Ruth's former high school site, Baltimore's Cardinal Gibbons High, will shutter forever in June, the Baltimore Archdiocese announced earlier this week.
Perhaps America's most famous athlete of the 20th century, Ruth attended St. Mary's Industrial School, located on the same site that transformed itself from St. Mary's to Cardinal Gibbons.
I didn't grow up in the Catholic church and I'm not an advocate for Catholic education, but the way Catholic schools are falling by the wayside is a bell-weather awakening for several social and economic barometers.
Some of the Catholic school failings are self-induced. Catholic priest sex scandals were swept under the rug for years and it has stained the church irreparably. Donations from public and private corporations, as well as those from proud, successful alums have dwindled as the church tried unsuccessfully to keep the epidemic under wraps. And, in too many instances, teacher certification was ignored in the name of keeping a successful coach, alum or donor happy.
The economic malaise affecting every sector of public and private life in this country has further strained the private school system. As older buildings need more upkeep and energy costs spiral higher, the cost of infrastructure replacement becomes too much to bear. The archdiocese is forced to make unpopular decisions, largely based on accounting instead of education.
Often, the neighborhood the school served suffers the most. In Detroit I watched Dominican, Holy Redeemer and Hamtramck's St. Florian shutter in neighborhoods that desperately needed them as an outpost from the war zone flanking several Detroit public high schools in those areas. Florian was one of the schools to suffer the sting of the sex scandal when the school's boys' basketball coach was accused of an assortment of transgressions.
These three schools, along with Harper Woods Notre Dame just due east of Detroit's proper border, represented the last, real plurality of Catholic education in Detroit. Today only Loyola and University of Detroit - Jesuit remain.
Baltimore is the birthplace of America's Catholic education system. Now that I'm an Annapolatin (that's Anna-pol-i-tan if you're scoring at home) living 25 miles due south of Baltimore, I wonder if the Charm City's catholic schools will begin to close in the same manner.
Despite the problems, it was the discipline and regimented structure of Catholic education nationwide that drew parents into the fold as loyal, paying customers. Anyone who spends substantial time in a public high school can see how unruly kids and litigation-happy parents have turned education in the public sector into a referendum on civil rights and liberties more than receiving a quality education.
As a sports official, I watched it unravel in Detroit and now it's beginning to dwindle in Baltimore, too. Working the Catholic Leagues was often a marquee assignment when compared to the garden-variety public school game. Often the facilities were less than desirable and the pay was below grade, but the competition and recognition from working in the inner city Catholic Leagues was usually well worth in inconveniences it entailed.
Regardless of the context you know Catholic education from, when the school that includes Babe Ruth on its alumni list is required to close, you know the Catholic school machine as we knew it is changing forever.
Regards...
~T.C. Cameron covers prep athletic for The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland and officiates three sports. Cameron's two prep rivalry books, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries and Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries can be purchased at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and Amazon.com.
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