What Killed Babe Ruth?

America thought Babe Ruth succumbed to throat cancer, caused at least in part by his smoking and drinking. But now a dentist who spent a year researching the circumstances surrounding the baseball legend's death tells the Sporting News that a different kind of cancer felled the slugger—and what's more, he died a self-sacrificing humanitarian.

Ruth died from nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a rare disease that causes less than 1% of cancer deaths in the US, said the researcher. Ruth signed up for a risky experimental treatment not previously tried on humans, essentially offering himself as a guinea pig for cancer research. Biographers "got it all wrong," said the dentist. "I used to see him as a giant on the field. Now I see him as a giant off the field." (More Babe Ruth stories.)