The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (36 page)

An attempt was made to stuff Miller Huggins into some overhead compartment, but failed. (He was not hung off the back of the train, as legend has it.) A successful attempt was made to rip the silk brocade nightshirt of Col. Jake Ruppert. Ruth was the perpetrator.

“Don’t you do it, Root,” the Colonel said, discovered in his drawing room. “This is custom-made silk.”

“Aw, I only want a piece of it,” Ruth said.

“Mr. Root, you are suspended!”

Riiiiip.

The train stopped at assorted towns and cities during the night. Assorted Yankees, many wearing their suit jackets but no shirts, came out to wave. Ruth, in an undershirt, spoke and directed cheers with a spare rib. In Mattoon, Illinois, he started to lead a cheer for the defeated Cardinals, then said, “No, they quit, the hell with ’em.”

It should be mentioned here that during this season the Bam had become political for the first time. He had never voted in his life, but encouraged by Christy Walsh and other friends in New York, he had become a backer of New York Gov. Al Smith, who was running for president. Ruth had made headlines across the country by refusing to pose with President Herbert Hoover at a game in Washington in September (“I’m an Al Smith man”), and later he apologized.

In Terre Haute, Indiana, before a crowd estimated at 2,000, people just waiting to see the new world champions pass, he added Al Smith to his list of people to cheer for. And three cheers for the next president of the United States…silence. The Babe left with the words, “The hell with you,” returning to the fun.

It was quite a ride. Miller Huggins awoke in the morning and couldn’t find his false teeth. Ruth couldn’t find his dog.

“Where the heck is my dog?” he shouted.

“Doc Woods has it in his stateroom, giving it a dose of bicarbonate,” Joe Dugan said. “Your dog couldn’t stand the pace last night. It has a hangover.”

There were crowds in Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, and Albany as the train from St. Louis continued to move closer to New York. At each stop there were cries first for Ruth, then for Gehrig. Each would come out for a wave and a few words. A kid in Rochester asked how Ruth had hit those three homers.

“I just took a good sock at ’em, boys,” the Bam explained.

The train reached Grand Central Station an hour and 15 minutes late at 9:05
P
.
M
. Only a few hundred fans were waiting, but when word circulated that the Yankees had arrived, a crowd estimated at 3,000 soon mobbed the runway up to the station. Ruth was surrounded by six policemen as he made his way through the cheers. He then led a bunch of his teammates across the street to the Hotel Biltmore to see Al Smith. The governor was getting dressed to take his own train trip to campaign in the South. He was glad to see Ruth, whom he called “the boss of the youth of America.”

“Are you all through for the season now?” Smith asked.

“All except for a little barnstorming,” Ruth replied.

“That’s what I’m going to do too,” Smith said. “Only instead of hitting the ball, I’ve got to hit the other candidate.”

Waite Hoyt always remembered that the Babe talked on a radio broadcast from the room too, but that almost certainly took place on another day. Ruth spoke a number of times for Smith, even went to a convention in Louisville to speak for him. Whenever and wherever it was, the broadcast Hoyt remembered included Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri. Ruth introduced Gehrig, who said a few words for Al, then Ruth introduced Lazzeri.

“Here’s Tony Lazzeri, great second baseman, world champions, blahblah,” the Bam said in introduction. “Tell us, Tony, who are the wops going to vote for?”

Tony presumably said the wops would vote for Al.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
SEQUENCE
of different typefaces led the reader of the
Boston Post
down the front page and into a tragic story on the morning of January 12, 1929, a Saturday. This was the
Post
style, a one-column progression of tight headlines that virtually told the story before the reader reached the story. Except this time it didn’t.

The two paragraphs on the front page described how Mrs. Helen Kinder, 31, wife of Dr. Edward Kinder, prominent dentist, had burned to death in her bedroom at 47 Quincy Street in the Boston suburb of Watertown. Her husband was attending a night of boxing matches at the Boston Garden, and she was alone. The fire started downstairs in the living room, probably from faulty wiring.

A woman, passing along Waverly Avenue, saw the flames coming from the Quincy Street home at around ten o’clock and pulled the corner alarm. The story was continued in the fourth column of page 6. That was where the picture was.

The picture of Helen Kinder.

Who was Helen Woodford.

Who was Helen Ruth.

Poor Helen. Even in death there were complications. She smiled from the printed page the same way she had smiled on opening day and other stiff-upper-lip occasions, the stylish little hat on her head, the diamond brooch the Babe had bought attached to her sweater, and if one of her sisters in South Boston or a bunch of other people hadn’t spotted the picture and disregarded the caption that said “Helen Kinder,” the onetime waitress from Landers Coffee Shop who married the young baseball player from Baltimore would have been buried under the wrong name in a West Roxbury cemetery, invisible to the end.

The true identification of her remains by her sisters wasn’t made until Sunday morning, two hours before she was due to be interred, but by that time a rush of activity had occurred. The Boston newspapers had gotten hold of the story on Saturday night after calls from readers and were blanketing the Watertown neighborhood. Dr. Kinder, wanted for questioning, had gone into hiding. Members of Helen’s family were asking questions and making charges. Helen wasn’t married to this Dr. Kinder! What had happened here? The word “murder” was mentioned more than once, quickly denied, then mentioned again. The word “drugs” was mentioned. The quiet life of the quiet wife of the famous man was laid out for tabloid autopsy. The burial, of course, was put on hold, and confusion was everywhere, bound to grow larger before it ceased—because the Babe arrived at Back Bay station at seven o’clock on Sunday morning on the overnight train from New York.

He looked terrible, dressed in black, rumpled from the ride, cigar ashes on his suit jacket, grief obvious on his famous face. He had learned about Helen’s death at nine o’clock on Saturday night at Joe Dugan’s house. One story said there was a call, another said a telegram, a third said an unnamed emissary from Dr. Kinder had appeared, carrying Helen’s diamond brooch, singed from the fire. The news, however it arrived, had sent the Babe to the train station.

He was met now in Boston by Arthur Crowley, a friend, the son of Boston police commissioner Michael Crowley. Crowley shook the big man’s hand, and they hugged.

“Arthur,” the Babe said, “isn’t it a tough break to get?”

He wanted to whip into action, wanted to go to Watertown, wanted to go to see his daughter Dorothy—Dorothy! Where was she? She was at the Academy of the Assumption, a boarding school in Wellesley—wanted to do something. Crowley urged him to check into the Hotel Brunswick, his usual suite waiting for him, room 574, and clean up and quiet down.

Crowley ordered him breakfast at the hotel, a double portion of ham and eggs, but Ruth could touch nothing. He drank only coffee. He paced. At 8:45, he and Crowley left the hotel and went to the nine o’clock Mass at St. Cecilia’s. The Babe prayed the rosary in a monotone, fingering the large brown beads as the Mass progressed. Once he let out a large sob, startling the people around him.

What the hell had happened?

Helen and Kinder had been living as man and wife in Watertown for at least a year and a half. He was the same age as Helen, and they had grown up together in South Boston. He had served in the war and was cited for bravery in France for crawling into no-man’s-land and treating three fallen American soldiers under heavy gunfire. He had returned to dental school at Tufts University. His father said that Kinder and Helen had been legally married in Montreal, a statement that proved to be wrong.

Helen, though, was known in the Watertown neighborhood as “Helen Kinder” and Dorothy was known as “Dorothy Kinder.” Neighbors suspected that Helen had money because she dressed well, owned a new car, and bought the 50-cent magazines at the local newsstand rather than the 10-cent or 15-cent magazines. One neighbor knew that Helen really was the Babe’s wife because she had seen a picture in the paper of Helen with the Babe at a ball game. The neighbor had never mentioned this to Helen.

The couple seemed to stay up and go out late, but otherwise seemed unremarkable. They had few guests, no parties. No one remembered seeing the Babe in the neighborhood, but one man did remember Kinder saying that he was friends with the slugger and that a family Doberman, in fact, had been given to him by the Babe.

Kinder, when he finally showed up at the Watertown police station, said he had been almost incoherent when he returned from the fights and found out Helen was dead. That accounted for the fact that he had said Helen was his wife. No, she was not his wife. He said he was “helping her out.” He had no comment for the press.

The Woodford family in South Boston had a lot to say. Helen had four brothers and three sisters. One of the brothers, Thomas Woodford, who was a Boston policeman, brought up the subject of murder. He didn’t like the string of circumstances around his sister’s death: the fact that Kinder conveniently was at the boxing matches, the fact that the house was relatively new and shouldn’t have had any wiring problems, the fact that Helen never had mentioned a relationship with Kinder.

“I want the truth,” Tom Woodford said, “and I’m going to get it, no matter who it happens to hit.”

A sister, 19-year-old Nora Woodford, said Helen certainly wasn’t Kinder’s wife. Nora said she had traveled to New York with Helen and Dorothy only three weeks earlier in December. They all stayed at the Commodore Hotel. She said Helen wanted her along as a witness, because they went to Christy Walsh’s office to meet with Walsh and the Babe. The subject was divorce.

The Babe, she said, wanted to marry another woman and “give her child a legal name.” Helen, she said, agreed to a quiet divorce in Reno, but only if the Babe would give her $100,000 to take care of her and Dorothy and pay expenses to Reno. The Babe said, “I’m not going to give you another cent,” and negotiations fell apart. Christy Walsh tried to be a voice of reason for both parties, but failed.

“And there’s one other thing that I want to add and that is that the Babe threatened Helen with a gun while they were at the Sudbury farm about three years ago,” Nora Woodford said. “He chased her all over the farm and said that he would shoot her. I don’t know what the trouble was about at that time. The maid knows all about it and could tell you the whole story.”

The district attorney, confronted with all of these accusations, ordered a second autopsy of Helen’s body, this time by a medical examiner who had equipment to analyze the contents of her stomach for traces of poison. A second fire inspector was called to reexamine the house to make sure that an overloaded socket caused the fire. A local hospital, in other news, confirmed that Helen had been a patient for nervous exhaustion three months earlier and had been advised to enter a sanitarium. Instead, she had checked herself out of the hospital and gone home. A second Woodford brother said Helen had told him in the past year that “she knew a doctor who could get her opium tablets.” Ruth Olson, a neighbor, said Helen had been in poor health for the past year and a half.

“Mrs. Ruth faded away to a shadow in the year and a half I was her neighbor,” Olson said. “She was a healthy, robust woman when I first moved into the house next door to her. But after her last illness, when she was in the hospital, she weighed only 100 pounds.”

One of the many mysteries was the relationship of the Babe and Helen to daughter Dorothy. Various reports had Dorothy born in Boston, Brooklyn, or New York City. She was Helen’s natural daughter. She was not Helen’s natural daughter. No resolution ever was made. No records of adoption ever were found. Members of the Woodford family declared that they would adopt her, that the Babe was not home enough to be a fit parent. The Babe’s attorneys said she would live with him.

In New York, reporters staked out Claire Hodgson’s apartment on West 79th. She and her family had disappeared on Sunday night, and their whereabouts were unknown. The newspapers in both Boston and New York were riding the story hard.

The headline in the
New York Daily News
was “Mrs. Babe Ruth Dies in Love Nest Fire.”

The Babe invited 20 reporters to his suite at the Brunswick Hotel on Monday. It was a cramped, embarrassing moment in room 574. Just a look at the troubled Ruth made the reporters pause. None of them wanted to intrude on his sorrow, so everybody sat and respectfully waited for the big man to compose himself. This really didn’t happen.

“I’m in a hell of a fix, boys…” he said.

He clenched and unclenched his hands. He clenched harder until his knuckles turned white.

“All I want to say is that it was a great shock to me…”

He started to sob. He tried to speak again, but couldn’t. He pulled out a handkerchief. His face contorted. He sobbed again.

“Please let my wife alone,” he said. “Let her stay dead.”

He cried a little more.

“That’s all I’ve got to say.”

The reporters filed out of the room. How could they push him? In the midst of all the charges and accusations and false reports, the Home Run King was a character of sad dignity in this situation. He had no bad words for anybody. Maybe it was years in front of a crowd that made him act the way he did, maybe it was good advice, maybe it was simple good-heartedness at his core, but he walked through the days of mourning, putting one foot in front of the other, with nothing but unadulterated grief. Maybe it was guilt.

The check marks in researching the tale quickly arrived. The second medical examiner announced that there was no evidence of foul play. There was no poison, no alcohol, no drug in Helen’s body. She had died from smoke inhalation and the burns she received. The fire inspector again ruled that the fire had sprung from an overloaded connection and faulty wiring. The investigation was done. Death by natural causes.

The many voices in the situation suddenly went silent. The members of the Woodford family made no more claims, telling reporters they accepted the decisions. They said they would not fight for custody of Dorothy. Kinder and his father backed away from the scene with no more comment. The lawyers, hired by everyone in the matter, had nothing more to say. If there had been a financial settlement by Ruth with all parties, which seemed to be the case, it was never discussed. The silence simply came, and Helen could finally be buried.

Ruth paid for all the arrangements. Helen was buried out of the Woodford family home at 420 West Fourth Street in South Boston on Thursday morning, January 17, 1929. At midnight the night before the burial, Ruth arrived at the house to pay his respects. A crowd, estimated as high as 5,000 people, held back by 25 Boston patrolmen, was waiting as his car turned off F Street and came down West Fourth. Flashbulbs lit up the night as he walked up the stairs to the house.

The parlor was filled with flowers, mostly from the Babe. He had received dozens of telegrams of condolence, including messages from Miller Huggins and Lou Gehrig. He moved across the room and knelt next to the body of his wife, which lay in the $1,000 bronze casket he had purchased. It was an open casket; her death was mainly due to smoke inhalation. He stared at her for a full five minutes, looked directly into her eyes. And then he began to wail.

“Oh…oh…oh…oh…”

He was sweating, crying, holding on to his rosary beads. The room became quiet. Everyone simply watched.

“Oh…oh…oh…Helen…”

When he tried to stand, he collapsed. Arthur Crowley and his father and assorted men grabbed him. They virtually carried him from the parlor, down the stairs, and into the car. His attorney, John Feeney, told him that it was all right to leave. Everything had been arranged for the funeral in the morning.

“What funeral?” the Babe asked.

He was not in much better shape in the morning when he returned to the house for a short, 15-minute service, followed by the cortege to Calvary Cemetery and the 10-minute burial service. The day was cold, and snow was falling as Helen was laid to rest. The Babe stood with his sad face in a group of sad faces. He looked as if he would collapse again at any moment. Photographers took his picture. He was 34 years old, and he had been married to Helen Woodford for 15 tumultuous years.