If you look far enough back into the branches of a family tree, you are bound to find a few characters. In my case, tracking down my lineage eventually led to a distant cousin by the name of George Herman Ruth—better known to history as the Babe. As a lifelong baseball fan, I’ve collected the standard Babe Ruth memorabilia over the years: a replica bat, a Hall of Fame commemorative cap, and a signed replica ball.
So, when my travels recently brought me to Louisville, Kentucky, making a pilgrimage to the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum was a required stop. Walking through the factory floor on the 30th anniversary of the museum, surrounded by the scent of freshly turned ash and maple, I had the chance to stand next to a life-sized likeness of the Bambino—sporting my trusty Hall of Fame cap—and even grip an actual game-used bat from his legendary career.
Naturally, I wanted something tangible from the occasion to accompany my photographs—I suppose it’s in my DNA. So, I stepped up to the custom engraving counter and ordered a mini-bat, asking the clerk to engrave it with a simple inscription: Steve Mortensen, 14th cousin of Babe Ruth.
That’s when I ran headfirst into the modern bureaucracy of legacy.
The manager politely intervened. Company policy and licensing restrictions prohibited them from printing full names or familial claims unless I could produce documentation proving a close, immediate family tie. I opened my iPhone and logged into FamilySearch to show my genealogical chart. She looked it over, smiled, and admitted it was a genuinely cool connection—but rules were rules; the corporate seal remained locked.
However, seeing the genealogy image seemed to soften her up a bit.
"Is there another angle?" I asked. "What if I just engrave ‘The Babe’ instead of Babe Ruth?"
She tapped away at her terminal to check the restrictions. To my surprise, that specific moniker wasn't locked down by trademark licensing. She smiled and gave me the green light. That is what my mini-bat says today.
Later on, out of sheer curiosity, I decided to check whether I had inadvertently invented a brand-new nickname for baseball's greatest icon. A quick dive into historical records revealed that contemporary sports reporters often used "the Babe" in their coverage during his playing days. In fact, the very first evidence I found of its use appeared in the second paragraph of the definitive article detailing Ruth’s legendary "called shot," immortalized right on the National Baseball Hall of Fame's official website. It is perhaps his most famous single moment from a life overflowing with legendary stories. I had chosen wisely, though entirely by accident—maybe through a lucky guess, or perhaps just a bit of channeling from the distant cousin himself.
It makes for a fun road story. But the real reason I was in Louisville that day was located literally across the street: I came to visit the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (NSSAR) Museum and Library to learn more about my Revolutionary ancestors, which according to FamilySearch number more than twenty-five participants.
This wasn't the first time that the Bambino had crossed paths with my American Revolution historical journeys, either. A few months prior, visiting the Freedom Truck exhibition at Liberty Village in Utah, I found the final display culminating in a wall of American heroes—and right there among them was Babe Ruth, serving as a modern bookend to the long arc of the American story.
It raises a fair question: What does a gift-shop skirmish over a baseball trademark have to do with the freezing winters and musket smoke of the American Revolution?
As it turns out, quite a bit. Standing at that counter in Louisville mirrored similar but massively more important tensions that led to the founding of our republic.
The Legalities of Legacy: Licensing vs. True Heritage
The manager’s refusal to let me use "Babe Ruth" without a direct corporate-approved lineage highlights how modern institutions love to commercialize and gatekeep historical icons. They hold the copyright and the retail patents; but we hold the actual bloodline and the memory.
This is a pretty fair reflection of how the British Crown viewed colonial rights versus how the Patriots viewed them. King George III and Parliament operated as if they held the exclusive "patent" and licensing rights over governance, legislation, and taxation in the colonies. They treated the Americans as distant, unruly relations with no inherent say in the family business. Meanwhile, the Patriots knew their constitutional inheritance and historical rights gave them a legitimate claim. When the "official channels" locked them out, they simply forged a workaround.
Discovering Credible Sources
When the modern corporate gatekeeper blocked my first attempt, I had to come up with an authentic approach that wasn't locked behind a trademark. I took my best guess. Later, when turning to sports archives and the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s own historical coverage, I found "the Babe"—a designation featured in a highly credible source rather than a gatekeeper marketing department's glossy brochure.
History itself seems to operate in a similar way. Popularly dramatized histories and commercialized myths often miss the true texture of the American Revolution. True history isn't found in sanitized or sensationalized legends or corporate gift shops; it is uncovered in the yellowing pages of highly credible sources—eyewitness accounts, muster rolls, and field dispatches tucked away in archives like the NSSAR Library. You sometimes have to bypass the gatekeepers to find the real historical record, just as the Founding generation had to bypass royal restrictions to forge their own identity.
The Audacity of a "Called Shot"
Babe Ruth pointing to the center-field bleachers before launching a critical home run is an act of supreme, almost reckless confidence. It sounds like pure folklore until you dig deeper into the primary sources. In this case, even that approach does not definitively clarify the truth, leaving it obscured in the mists of an entertaining legend.
Yet, the entire American experiment was the ultimate "called shot." For a ragtag coalition of farmers, frontiersmen, and colonial militias—including ancestors who served in the Continental Line and (home guard) frontier militia units—to openly “point their bat” at the most formidable global superpower of the 18th century and declare independence took an astronomical amount of audacity. Like Ruth pointing to the fence, Washington and the Continental Congress were making a public declaration of intent that looked utterly impossible to the "managers" of the British Empire. But our founders backed it up through sheer willpower, tactical improvisation, and an unshakeable belief in the outcome. Even if many of the details remain enshrouded in the mists of time, including who fired the "shot heard round the world."
Bloodlines and Archives
Whether one is tracing a 14th-cousin link to a baseball legend or verifying a 5th great-grandfather's service during the founding era, we all have occasion to navigate the distance between mythic heroes we admire and the cold, hard trail to the truth. It is often impossible to get all the historical facts we want, and so we have to discover and use the most credible information we can find to help enrich our lives today and successfully navigate our future.
The museum gift shop wanted a birth certificate to sell a trademarked piece of wood; the NSSAR requires genealogical bloodline proof to become a member. In both cases, the archives hold the truth. And whether you're hunting down the provenance of a baseball legend just steps away or tracing the footsteps of ancestors who answered the call when the nation was born, the truest history is never handed to you across a retail counter. You have to dig for it. In my experience, it’s worth the effort as part of our own personal journey to liberty.