The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (19 page)

Ruth clouted the record-tying number 54 on September 9 in Philadelphia with—stop if you’ve heard this before—the longest home run in the history of Shibe Park. On September 16, “the Caliph of Crash,” with the “whiz of an ashen club,” smoked number 55 in the first game of a doubleheader romp over the St. Louis Browns. The day was filled with home runs, but Ruth’s stood out like “an antelope in a field of ants” (all quotations courtesy of the
New York Times
).

To finish off the pennant race on September 26, he hit numbers 57 and 58 in an 8–7 victory over the Indians, a third and final win in a crucial four-game series. “The titanic figure of Babe Ruth stood out in the triumph as the Leviathan would stand out in a flock of harbor tugs” (again, the
Times
). He cranked number 59 on the final day of the season, falling one short of the number both he and Dunninger had predicted. He led the league in home runs, RBI, total bases, slugging percentage, and runs scored. He finished third in batting average at .378 behind Harry Heilmann’s .394 and Ty Cobb’s .389.

All of this set up the biggest sporting event in the history of New York City, the World Series between the New York Yankees and the National League champion New York Giants. Since this was the first Series in the Yankees’ 19-year history, this was uncharted excitement. New against Old. Renter against Landlord. Ruth against McGraw. Brawn against Brains. The mind of any Leviathan in any flock of tugboats reeled at the many confrontations.

The Yankees, informed a year earlier by Giants management in the crush of Babe-o-mania that they should eventually look elsewhere for a permanent home, already had obtained land in the Bronx for a new stadium that would open in 1923. The Series would be their best-of-nine-games chance to make a lot of statements, to show that they were the team of the future, the look of the future. The newspapers had invented a nickname, “Murderers’ Row,” for their lineup. All of New York was paying attention.

“With the Yankees much depends on whether Ruth is in a pummeling mood,” Grantland Rice wrote in the
New York Tribune
. “Some say the Yanks are banking too heavily on one man and this is no small talking point in favor of the Giants. If Ruth is poling ’em—great for the Yankees. But suppose he isn’t?”

The interest was so high, the publicity so great, that as many as 10,000 seats at the Polo Grounds were empty. People had stayed home for fear they never could get seats. This did not mean they did not pay attention. A throng estimated at 15,000 gathered around the
New York Times
building to watch updates and stopped traffic on Broadway, and a crowd of 10,000 at Madison Square Garden paid to see a mechanical simulation, little pieces moved around the board. The speculation about how hard tickets would be to obtain, how much scalpers would charge, simply had scared people from going to the actual game.

The Babe, in the first game, was a buzz of activity. He walked, paced, shouted, swung at the first pitch he saw, and singled. He was so antsy that Huggins let him coach third base. The Yankees were 3–0 winners as Carl Mays’s submarine ball befuddled the Giants and Mike McNally stole home. The Babe, noisy as he was, was quiet at the bat. The single was his only hit of the day.

He was “covering” the game and the Series for a string of newspapers in the fevered beginnings of the Christy Walsh ghost syndicate. McGraw also was “covering.” Ring Lardner, sportswriter and humorist, was on the job as well, writing as himself. He noted the Babe’s literary efforts:

At the risk of advertising a rival author, I will say that the Babe is turning out a daily article which appears in a whole lot of papers and if you don’t read it you are missing practically all the inside stuff. Like for inst his write-up of the first game opened up with these words:

“When I sent Mike McNally home in the fifth inning it was taking a big chance.”

The word “it” probably refers to McNally and the play spoke of is the one where Mike stole home and if Babe hadn’t of been writing, we wouldn’t of known that it was him that thought up the play.

McGraw decided in the second game the best way to handle Ruth simply was to walk him. The Babe walked three straight times. Frustrated with the third walk in the fifth inning, he immediately stole second, then stole third. The steal of third ultimately decided the Series.

While the Polo Grounds crowd cheered such a display of speed from a big man, Ruth was looking at a cut on his left elbow that he had sustained while sliding into the bag. The Yankees won the game, again by a 3–0 score, to take a 2–0 lead in the Series, but the cut quickly became infected. Ruth opened it again with another slide in the next game, a 13–5 loss. A day of rain intervened, but the cut did not heal. Ruth had the injury lanced, but the procedure did not help.

He played in the fourth game, heavily taped, and had a single and his first World Series home run in a 4–2 loss that evened the Series. He also played in the fifth game, a 3–1 Yankees win, and started the winning rally with a bunt that surprised everyone, scoring from first on Bob Meusel’s double. It was obvious, though, that he was done. He had played with a tube hanging from the wound to drain the pus. He was so exhausted from running the bases that time had to be called so he could recover and go back to left field. His doctor soon ruled him out of the Series.

“To play while the arm is in its present condition would be to invite a spread of the infection,” Dr. Edward King declared. “We have ordered Ruth that under no condition shall he attempt to play ball tomorrow.”

Barred from coaching third, unable even to drive his car, Ruth was driven to the park and watched games six and seven in the stands. The Yankees lost both of them. During game six, Christy Walsh showed him a newspaper article by veteran sportswriter Joe Vila of the
New York Sun
that said Ruth’s injury wasn’t serious and such reports should be taken with “a grain of salt.” Ruth, furious, found Vila and rolled up his sleeve and told him to “take a picture of that and put it in your newspaper.” Vila declined.

Ruth did suit up for the eighth game in what turned out to be the final best-of-nine series in major league history, the wound wrapped in gauze, his left arm below the bandage blue with blood poisoning and swollen to twice its normal size. He pinch-hit in the ninth inning, but grounded out to first, and the Giants won the game, 1–0, and the Series, five games to three. Done.

“The last day of the World Series showed the awful effects of reform on murderers’ row,” Westbrook Pegler wrote for the United News syndicate.

They were murderers no longer. They were just ballplayers, playing strategy out of the manual, their old, slugging, slaughtering ways forgot.

They were trying to win on pitching alone, like a successful axe murderer turning to such subtle tools as the poisoned needle, Oriental incense or mental suggestion. They were pathetic.”

The irony was that if the concluding games had been held only a week later, the lead murderer would have been fine, healed, able to play. He announced that he would play, in fact, embarking on a barnstorming exhibition that would last right up until November 1.

And then the fun began.

CHAPTER TEN

T
HE PLAN
was to do a barnstorming tour in two parts. The first part was a succession of visits to cold, industrial hamlets around the Northeast. The second part was a visit to Oklahoma, a warmer sequence of oil and cow towns starting with a game in Oklahoma City. The fee for all this would be as much as $30,000, more than George Herman Ruth had gathered for laying out those 59 home runs and sending all of New York City into a tizzy for the World Series.

The schedule began almost immediately. The man who had appeared with the bandaged left arm in the ninth inning on October 13 would be the leader of the “Babe Ruth All-Stars” in Buffalo two days later. He said, “I heal quick. I always heal quick.” Carl Mays, Wally Schang, Bob Meusel, and reserve pitchers Bill Piercy and Tom Sheehan from the Yankees roster would accompany him, with the rest of the all-stars recruited from the Buffalo area.

Barnstorming tours were a standard practice, a chance for the players to make supplemental money, a chance for the outlying fans to put faces and bodies with the names they had read about all year in the newspapers. Ruth obviously had done a tour every year since fame had arrived at his locker. Today Utica, tomorrow Havana, no problem.

Now, as he prepared to leave for Buffalo the day after the Series, hangovers strewn around the Hotel Commodore with last night’s dinner jackets after the Yankees’ breakup party hosted by the Colonels, he was told he couldn’t go. This tour would be illegal under section 8B of article 4 of the Major League Code. If there were any questions, he would have to deal with Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the recently ordained commissioner of baseball.

“Law-abiding baseball men have no fear that the laws of the game will not be enforced,” the Judge said ominously in perfect legalese. “The law of gravitation is still in force and what goes up must come down.”

The rule stated that players from the two teams competing in the World Series could not play games elsewhere. Anyone from any team that finished lower in the standings was free to tour as much as possible, but the Series participants were banned. The intent of the rule was to keep the players on the two teams from restaging the Series on their own, town to town, cheapening the event that had just concluded and confusing fans about who was really the world’s champion. With only six players from the Yankees on Ruth’s All-Stars, one of them not even on the Series roster, there didn’t seem to be much chance of confusion here, but Landis was firm on his decision that a rule was a rule.

Ruth was firm on his decision to play the games.

“We are going to play baseball until November 1,” he said, “and Judge Landis is not going to stop us…. I am out to earn an honest dollar and at the same time give baseball fans an opportunity to see the big players in action.”

This was a public confrontation of intriguing proportions. Ruth, the star of stars, had not been told no in a long time, not since his days with Brother Matthias and the Xaverians. Landis, like the Xaverians, was an expert in saying no.

A federal judge, he had been plucked by baseball’s owners from the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois early in the year after the Black Sox scandal hit in Chicago. He was an odd, foul-mouthed little man, an ego-driven, tobacco-chewing puritan with electric white hair shooting out of his head, a hanging judge with the wrath of God carved across his face. The best description of him was that he looked “like Whistler’s Mother in slacks.” His favorite phrase when he sentenced some seditionist, some violator of the Volstead Act, some miscreant, to the stiffest penalty possible was “Take that man up to Mabel’s room.”

His name itself had a touch of anger. Abraham Landis, his father, had been a surgeon in the Union Army attached to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s sweep through Georgia during the Civil War. Before reaching Atlanta, the army encountered resistance at Kennesaw Mountain. A Confederate bullet caught surgeon Landis in the leg, and he walked forever after with a pronounced limp. To commemorate the incident, he gave the name Kenesaw Mountain (misspelling it in the process) to his sixth child, even though the rest of the family objected.

The owners of baseball had noticed Kenesaw Mountain when his inactivity on a suit by the renegade Federal League caused the league to flounder and die, which was very good news for the owners of baseball. When they needed a strong figure, a czar, to replace the three-man National Commission and give the sport a cleaner-than-clean, gosh-darn-honest image after the scandal, they remembered him. The wrath of God face probably earned Landis the job by itself.

Taking on Ruth was not a bad strategy. The eight Black Sox players were still in court proceedings in Chicago. Landis already had banned them for life from organized baseball no matter what the outcome of the court case. (They were acquitted.) A move against Ruth was a consolidation of power. Nobody was “bigger than baseball.” Nobody—translation here—was bigger than Landis.

The two Colonels were terrified about what he might do to Ruth. Would Landis ban him for an entire season? They tried to convince Ruth not to go. Huston even hurried to Grand Central Station for a final plea before the train left for Buffalo.

Ruth still went. Ruth played. He hit a home run as the All-Stars beat the Polish Nationals, not to be confused with the Giants, 4–2. Mays and Schang, after meeting with Landis at the Commodore, had decided to drop out. Meusel and the two young pitchers also played. The next day they played in Elmira.

“I see no reason why this rule should be invoked against us when [George] Sisler of St. Louis and others who shared in World Series money are playing exhibition games unmolested by Judge Landis,” Ruth said. “I see no reason not to play, no matter what Judge Landis’s views may be.”

“What did Judge Landis say to you in your New York talk?” someone asked.

“He hung up on me twice when I tried to telephone to him,” Ruth said. “I did not see him personally.”

Huston, Ruth’s bigger backer in the partnership of Colonels, now traveled to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to try again to make him quit. This time the big man listened. He had been working with an idea that Landis was going to fine him, probably take his $3,362 check for the World Series. Who cared? He would make that much in one exhibition. Huston explained that the big worry was a suspension. What would the Yankees do without their fabled home run slugger? He would be letting his teammates down.

Ruth said he hadn’t considered that problem. He agreed to call off the rest of the tour. The weather had been cold, the crowds smaller than expected as cities had to scramble for alternative fields since their minor league teams were afraid to rile Landis. Okay, fine. The tour was done.

Huston also asked Ruth to go to Chicago to apologize to the commissioner. Ruth said he would. He then went hunting with Herb Pennock. He hadn’t said exactly when he would go to see Landis. He never did. On October 27, he returned to New York for a press conference at the Palace Theater to announce that he had signed a contract with the Keith Theaters to do a vaudeville act starting November 14 for 20 weeks at $3,000 per week.

This was legal.

Landis didn’t make his decision until December 5. He suspended Ruth, Meusel, and Piercy until May 20, 1922, approximately the first seven weeks of the season, and ruled they had to surrender all monies earned in the World Series. Sheehan, who was not on the World Series roster, was neither fined nor suspended.

Cols. Ruppert and Huston were relieved. The punishment was harsh, considering the fact that players in the past had been fined no more than $100 for consistently breaking this rule, but the Colonels had feared that Ruth was going to be suspended for the entire year. Ruth refused to comment.

“Lots of potatoes” was his most definitive remark, made to a waiter taking his order for steak à la Garusse when reporters found him sitting in a “delicate pink chaise lounge” in his Washington hotel room in the midst of his tour. He did say that he wasn’t worried and that he wouldn’t let the decision affect his vaudeville act.

The act, Ruth paired with veteran comic Wellington Cross, was not
Hamlet,
but critics were mostly kind, except for the man from the
New York World
who said Ruth had “a grace of carriage somewhere between John Barrymoreish and Elephantish.” A one-armed aerialist, a roller-skating comedy duo, and Anita Diaz and her trained monkeys were some of the other acts. Ruth sang a couple of songs, one about feeling bad after striking out. He also did some routines with Cross, who acted as straight man. One involved a telegram from Kenesaw Mountain Landis himself.

“Is it serious?” Cross asked.

“I should say it is,” Ruth replied. “Seventy-five cents, collect.”

And so it went, across the country, $3,000 per week.

Ruth left the tour early in Milwaukee in February and went to Hot Springs for two weeks to soak in the tubs and the sun before heading to spring training. Under the suspension, he was allowed to train with the Yankees, play exhibitions, even practice before regular-season games. It was only the games themselves he had to miss for the seven weeks. He also was allowed to negotiate a new contract.

His last negotiation, well, renegotiation, which had landed him $10,000 per season for three years, had been the loud and noisy deal with Harry Frazee, who finally sent him from Boston to New York. This negotiation was a bit easier. Col. Huston journeyed to Hot Springs to do the business. He met with Ruth at the Eastman Hotel at eight o’clock at night—maybe in the tubs, maybe not—and the two men soon reached the same salary range. Huston had come up to $50,000 per year for three years, plus a two-year option. Ruth had come down to $52,000 per year, same number of years. He said he wanted $52,000 so he could say he made $1,000 per week. Huston and Ruth went back and forth.

“Let’s flip for it,” Ruth said.

Huston was not averse to the idea. (Might there have been drinking during these negotiations?) He said he had to call Col. Ruppert in New York to make sure a flip of the coin was all right. Ruth went back to his hotel, long-distance telephone connections being what they were, and at eleven o’clock Huston told him to come back. Ruppert had agreed to the procedure.

So somewhere around midnight the Colonel pulled out a half-dollar from his pocket and said, “Call it,” and the Babe called, “Tails,” and Huston flipped. The coin landed on the carpet and rolled underneath a rocking chair. Huston and the Babe went down on all fours. Tails it was. The Babe stood up as a man making $1,000 per week.

The figure was extravagant for baseball perhaps, probably the biggest contract any player or manager ever had signed, but it wasn’t outrageous. Huston declared Ruth was getting “the salary of the president of a railroad.” It would have been a smaller railroad. He wasn’t close to joining the country’s 67 millionaires. He did much better than the 5 million people who filed tax returns for 1921 of $4,000 or lower, which was over 70 percent of the taxpaying population, but he in no way approached the baseball stars of the future.

A conversion system from the American Institute of Economic Research translates the Babe’s $52,000 into $564,737.43 in 2005 dollars. Only two members of the 2005 New York Yankees, outfielder Bubba Crosby at $322,950 and second baseman Andy Phillips at $317,000, made less than $564,737.43. Reserve second baseman Rey Sanchez made $600,000. The median salary for a member of the 2005 Yankees was $5,883,334; the highest-paid Yankee, third baseman Alex Rodriguez, made $26 million. To make the same amount in 1922 dollars as Alex Rodriguez, Ruth would have had to sign for $2,246,913.58. Baseball simply didn’t pay that kind of money. Home Run Baker, second on the salary list after Ruth, made $16,000, the equivalent of $185,142.86.

Added to the contract was a clause, written just for Ruth, that he had to abstain from intoxicating liquors and not remain up later than one o’clock during the playing season. This mostly seemed to be an interesting technicality. Two weeks later he was with the team in New Orleans where a famous headline, “Yankees Training on Scotch,” was written. He always liked New Orleans.

“Babe, somehow he’d get invited to those fine old southern homes, mansions, really, and somehow I’d get invited with him and be treated to a long, long, real old southern meal,” one New York sportswriter said. “The host, coming from an old-time family down there, would put on an act. He’d have Negroes in hose, dressed just as they were at the end or before the Civil War. There would be a big show in the kitchen, waiters, all sorts of attendants, sometimes a small orchestra. So we’d sit there and get a sample of food that very, very few people really ever get a chance to eat.

“The Babe was a good trencherman. So he enjoyed this. We had opportunities down there to see that life that very few outsiders ever saw.”

Judge Landis appeared in New Orleans for an exhibition game, bought a ball for $250 signed by Ruth as part of an auction for the Salvation Army, and rejected Ruth’s plea for a commutation of sentence. The Babe was involved in an auto accident in New Orleans, was late for an exhibition with the Superbas, then pounded out a home run—the longest in the history of Heineman Park—in the sixth. All of the usual stuff.