The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (38 page)

Waite Hoyt, knocked out in the fifth inning, had come into the clubhouse a day earlier and found Huggins with his face under some kind of a heat lamp, trying to find relief from the carbuncle. The treatment, it turned out, was absolutely wrong. This wasn’t a normal growth, it was the symptom of a skin disease called erysipelas, also known as St. Anthony’s fire. Instead of drawing the carbuncle to a head, the heat helped the disease germinate and spread. His body was filled with poison.

Two days after he entered the hospital, Huggins’s temperature was 105 degrees. He was receiving blood transfusions, and his condition was listed as “grave.” Five days after he entered the hospital, the little man was dead. He was 50 years old.

“Huggins was the best manager I ever played for,” Hoyt said. “I played for Connie Mack, John McGraw, Bill Terry, Bucky Harris, and Pie Traynor and quite a number of managers. Huggins had an unenviable job in managing Ruth and a group of fairly temperamental ballplayers, but he did it great.

“The discipline on the Yankee bench was impeccable. You sat there as if you were in third grade in school, and you did nothing but talk baseball or talk about the game that was being played, and every once in a while, why Hug would call down to someone on the bench and say, ‘What’s the count on the batter?’ And you’d better know.”

“He didn’t have physical size, so he had to use other things to control players,” Marshall Hunt said. “He’d made some good investments, that was his hobby, so he’d made some money. He’d tell a player, ‘I’m all set. Financially, I don’t care about anything. So I can make a decision and not worry. I don’t care if I’m fired. I’m all set, and Colonel Ruppert is all set, and so we don’t have to put up with this. Do you understand?’”

The Yankees were playing in Boston when Huggins died. Men walking through the stands with megaphones announced the news to the 7,000 spectators at Fenway Park. The game was halted at the end of the fifth inning, the flag in center field lowered to half-staff.

“It is one of the things you can’t talk about much,” the Babe said about Huggins’s death. “You know what I thought of Miller Huggins, and you know what I owe him. It is one of the keenest losses I have ever felt. I, as well as the rest of the boys, cannot realize yet that we won’t have him with us again on the bench.”

The funeral was held at the Little Church Around the Corner on East 29th Street. Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Combs, Pennock, and Shawkey were pallbearers along with coaches Art Fletcher and Charlie O’Leary. The burial was in Cincinnati. Marshall Hunt was part of the group that accompanied the body.

“Babe Ruth took five years off my brother’s life,” Huggins’s sister, Mildred, told one reporter.

Huggins’s death seemed like a milestone. There is a time in most lives approaching middle age when the scorecard starts to fill up, when the eyes notice a list of departed figures from a circle that had seemed immune, bulletproof against normal attrition. One person dies, and maybe there is an explanation; two, an accident; three, a strange disease. But when four or five die, the eyes notice and the brain starts considering the limitations of mortality.

The Babe was 35 now, and that kind of time had arrived. Huggins was dead, and Helen was dead, and come to think of it, some other people from his life had died in the past year or so. Harry Frazee for one. The man who sold the Babe to the Yankees had died in June.

The cause was Bright’s disease, a problem of the kidneys often linked to excessive alcohol consumption. Frazee was 48, supposedly had beaten the disease, had taken a trip to Europe, and was back with more show-business plans. He suffered a fast relapse in New York, and Jimmy Walker, the mayor and a friend, hastened to be with him at his Park Avenue bedside at the end.

Jack Dunn had died too. The man who had signed the Babe off the back field at St. Mary’s School and brought him to professional baseball had a heart attack while riding a horse during field trials with his dogs in Maryland. Fell off the horse and was dead when he hit the ground, maybe before he ever fell. He was 56 years old.

Joe Lannin, the Red Sox owner who had purchased Babe’s contract from Dunn, the man who had sold the Red Sox to Frazee, had died. He had either fallen or jumped from a ninth-floor window at the Hotel Granada in Brooklyn. He was worth $8 million when he died and was the owner of Roosevelt Field in Long Island. That meant he had been the owner of the spots where both Charles Lindbergh and the Babe took off.

Finally, Urban Shocker had died a year ago in September 1928. The heart problem that had dogged the troubled spitballer while he pitched in 1927 and ended his career in 1928 had ended his life. He had argued with a nurse only 40 minutes before his death because he wanted to hear the big doubleheader between the Yankees and the A’s on the radio and she thought it would be too stressful. He was 38 years old.

There might have been other names too, names not associated with the Babe in public but people he encountered in the quiet parts of his life—a familiar waiter, a business guy, a golfing companion—who joined the list. Even if there weren’t, it was obvious that a darker time had come along, that the free ride of a young and constantly impetuous spirit had come to an end.

In a lot of ways the party was done. There would be no pennant to hang from the center-field flagpole when the new decade opened in April at the Stadium. The roster would shift again, with friends traded or released, replaced by kids with names that couldn’t be remembered. The end of his career was a lot closer now than the beginning was. The Babe still felt good, certainly still could hit the baseball, but there had been a change of seasons, a change of approach.

Life had become harder, hadn’t it?

This was 1929. Twenty-three days after the end of the baseball season, everybody in America would begin to feel that way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

J
OHN
J
AKOB
R
ASKOB
, the noted financier and capitalist, called “the creator of General Motors,” sometimes moved in the same circles as the Babe. He was an Artie McGovern guy, one of the Wall Street bigwigs who received a wake-up call to come to McGovern’s gym for conditioning. He also was, while it lasted, the head of the Babe-endorsed Al Smith campaign for president that failed in 1928 when Smith lost to Herbert Hoover. Raskob was the ultimate New York mover, shaker, doer.

In the August 1929 issue of
Good Housekeeping
magazine, he was the focus of an article that soon became infamous. The title was “Everybody Ought to Be Rich.” Raskob, interviewed by Samuel Crowther, advocated vigorous investment in the stock market by even the smallest investor. He pointed out that $10,000 invested ten years earlier in General Motors would now be worth $1.5 million. He forecast similar growth in the future.

“No man can become rich merely by saving,” he advised. “Putting aside a sum each week or month in a sock at no interest or in a savings bank at ordinary interest will not provide enough for old age unless life in the meantime be rigorously skimmed down to the level of mere existence.”

The words hung in the air two months later as the last happy whistle of the canary before the mine shaft exploded. Over a five-day stretch from October 24 to October 29, the final day forever known as “Black Tuesday,” the stock market crashed. The descent to what would be known as the Great Depression had begun.

Mere existence soon would become a desirable state.

“October 29, 1929, yeah, a frenzy,” industrialist Arthur A. Robertson said in
Hard Times
:
An Oral History of the Great Depression
by Studs Terkel.

I must have gotten calls from a dozen and a half friends who were desperate. In each case, there was no sense in loaning them money they would give the broker. Tomorrow they’d be worse off than they were yesterday. Suicides, left and right, made a terrific impression on me, of course. People I knew. One day you saw prices at a hundred, the next day at $20, at $15.

On Wall Street, the people walked around like zombies…. One of my friends said to me, “If things keep going as they are, we’ll all have to go begging.” I asked, “Who from?”

The national good times had stopped. The great unemployment and the shuttered businesses and the breadlines and the shantytowns in public parks did not appear, just like that, next day, but the reverberations from the implosion of the market had begun and would continue for an entire decade. The breadlines, shantytowns, and all the rest would soon arrive, and the great optimism, the do-anything confidence of the Jazz Age twenties, would be replaced by the pessimism and gloom of the thirties, the struggle for…mere existence.

Though the Babe basically was untouched by the Wall Street Crash—his money in annuities, his job secure for the moment—he would be in the midst of what would follow. As he grew older, heavier, slower with each year, he would present a convenient reference in the troubled today to the giddy, all-powerful yesterday. This would be inevitable, wouldn’t it? He was a picture from yesterday, a picture of the twenties, aging in front of public eyes. His good time and the country’s good time seemed forever entwined in the past tense.

Except now, none of this mattered…

“If the Yankees reject my request for an increase [in salary], I will remain idle, which at my age means retirement from baseball,” the Babe wrote in a letter that was mimeographed and sent to every New York sports editor in the shadow of the Crash. “I mean organized baseball. A few years ago I could not take this attitude. I would be obliged to sign at any terms for the same reason that 95 percent of all players have to sign—bread and butter. Every holdout in baseball had to sign because he had no money in the bank.

“Well, there is enough bread and butter in our home, even if I never touch another baseball in my life.”

Except this was 1930. This was just the start. Who knew what would happen next? Who knew the Great Depression had started? In March 1930, John Jakob Raskob sat in the Manhattan office of architect William Frederick Lamb. During meetings, Raskob liked to take notes with those oversized fat yellow pencils that children use in first grade, easy to grip, capable of drawing fat first letters. He stood one of those pencils on its unsharpened end on architect Lamb’s desk and said, “Bill, how high can you make it so that it won’t fall down?” Fifteen months later, the Empire State Building was open for business.

In March 1930, after Babe Ruth asked for a raise, he got it. Who knew?

The first meeting in the contract dance was held at Col. Ruppert’s office at the brewery on January 7, 1930, ten years to the day after Ruth had been purchased from the Red Sox. The only participants were Ruth, Ruppert, and Ed Barrow. The Yankees opened with $70,000 for one season, the same figure Ruth had earned for the last three years. He laughed. Ruppert and Barrow moved the number to $75,000, the same salary as the president of the United States, for each of the next two seasons. Ruth laughed again. His figure was $85,000 per year for the next three years. Ruppert and Barrow laughed.

Five days later, the Babe and Claire left early for Florida. All of the numbers sat on Ruppert’s desk as the standoff began.

The Babe took delight in the Florida sun. He played golf with Al Smith. He was a judge at a heavyweight fight, giving the decision to Big Jeff Carroll over Bert Finch, a St. Petersburg fireman. He went quail hunting with teammates Benny Bengough and George Pipgras and shot a rattlesnake dead in the head when it poised to strike. He sent his mimeographed letter to the sports editors, not the Yankees, in the first week of February.

“No comment,” Barrow said when asked about it. He was not happy with the Babe’s new strategy.

The situation rolled along, straight into the opening of training camp on March 3. The Babe showed up, participated in workouts. The Colonel showed up on March 7, the eve of the first exhibition against the Boston Braves, and offered $80,000 per year for two years. The Babe said he would give up the third year, but wanted $85,000 per year. The Colonel said he had made his final offer.

Dan Daniel, baseball writer for the
New York Telegram
, now became involved. Or at least that was Daniel’s story. He had a tendency to put himself into most stories, so they often were viewed as a bit too…elaborate. He swore that this was true.

He said that he and Ford Frick from the
World
ran into Ruth after Ruth had turned down the offer in the meeting with Ruppert. They questioned the big man about why he was going to play the next day against the Braves. Wasn’t he worried about injuries? He’d be a fool to play. The Babe agreed with their thinking. He said he would either sign in the morning or turn in his uniform.

Daniel went back to his hotel room and typed long and hard, telling this story about Ruth’s edict, that he was either going to sign or hand in his uniform. In the morning, Daniel had a congratulatory phone call from his editor for the scoop. No other paper had it.

Daniel became worried. Why hadn’t Frick written it? Had Ruth changed his mind? Did Frick know that? Ruth had. Frick, who was also Ruth’s ghostwriter, knew.

Daniel, in a panic, went to find Ruth. The slugger said it was a nice day and he wasn’t worried, really, about getting hurt and was going to play without a contract. Daniel, thinking that his editor might take back those congratulations in a hurry, had to do something. He urged Ruth to sign for the $80,000 per year for two years.

“What’s the matter with you?” Daniel said he said. “Did you know that yesterday in Union Square there was a riot? A lot of people were rioting for bread.”

“What’d you say?” Ruth said.

“A lot of people were rioting for bread,” Daniel said. “They’re broke. There’s a depression. And you’re holding out for $85,000 a year while they’re starving. It’s making a very bad impression, and it’s hurting baseball.”

“Nobody told me.”

Ruth agreed to sign. Daniel called Ruppert. Two years at $80,000 per year. The Babe and Claire showed up at Ruppert’s suite at the Princess Martha Hotel at noon, and he played that afternoon in the 12–9 exhibition win over the Braves. There was only one addendum. Ruth wanted the $5,000 fine levied on him in 1925 to be returned. The fine always had bothered him.

“If Huggins had lived, you would not be getting this,” Ruppert said. “But Miller is dead and he won’t know.”

That was Daniel’s story. It was as good as any.

Three weeks later, American humorist Will Rogers signed a one-year contract for $72,000 to deliver 14 radio talks during the coming year on the National Broadcasting System. Each talk would last from 12 to 15 minutes, which newspaper mathematicians soon figured meant that Rogers would receive $350 per minute for his services.

“Compared with Will Rogers,” one mathematician said, “Babe Ruth is a piker.”

Not everyone was jumping out of windows as the hard times hit.

In the next two seasons, the Yankees and the Colonel received good value for their two $80,000 payouts. The Babe led the league in home runs both years, with 49 in 1930 and 46 in 1931, a tie with Gehrig. He hit .359 in 1930, .373 in 1931. He continued an amazing stretch, leading the league in slugging average for the 13th season in the last 14, having missed only in the troubled 1925 campaign. Even with the formidable Gehrig behind him, he led the league in walks in both 1930 and 1931.

More importantly, from an $80,000-per-year perspective, he kept the Yankees alive at the gate. The A’s ran off into the horizon in the standings—finishing eight games in front of the Senators and sixteen in front of the Yankees in 1930, thirteen and a half in front of the second-place New Yorkers in 1931—but 1,169,230 people still went to the Stadium in 1930, and 912,437 in 1931. These were very good numbers in a market that would grow more bleak as the economy faltered. (The A’s, despite their success, drew pitiful crowds in Philadelphia. The Yankees wouldn’t have another 1,000,000-fan season until 1946.)

The Big Bam was still baseball’s best attraction. The team still played an average of 33 exhibitions every year, along with the regular schedule, and he still was the reason small-town fans came to the box office. A chance to see the Sultan of Swat still was considered the chance of a lifetime, even more so now that he was edging slowly toward the exit.

His range as an outfielder obviously was diminishing—his legs were a problem, and the geometry of a large man shifted toward his waistline as he became older—but he still could hit. In May 1930, in back-to-back doubleheaders at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, he hit six home runs in two days. The A’s and Yankees then went to the Stadium for yet another doubleheader—who made up this schedule?—and he hit two more. This made eight home runs in six games. Against the best team in the league.

“The only one who will beat Babe Ruth out of the home run leadership is Father Time,” John Kieran wrote in the
Times
. “The old gentleman with the scythe may cut him down at any time, but as long as he can stumble up to the plate and have his share of swings he will have more than his share of home runs when they come to check up on the totals.”

His pace toward 60 home runs in 1927 always offered illusionary hope because he had hit so many in September, but it was well noted that he was far ahead of the pace in 1930 with 31 by July 2. He ripped the nail off the ring finger of his left hand on the outfield screen making a catch at the Stadium that day, however, and missed more than a week while it healed. He manufactured home runs at a slower pace after that to reach 49 as the Yankees fell far behind the A’s.

This was not a happy Yankees team. Former pitcher Bob Shawkey was now the manager, having replaced the deceased Miller Huggins. The first choice had been coach Art Fletcher, but he declined. Shawkey, also a coach in 1929, was a Huggins recommendation from the grave, a candidate Huggins had endorsed to Ruppert before he died.

Thirty-nine years old, retired for only two years from the active roster, Shawkey was caught in the uneasy situation of the former player back as the boss of veterans who had been his friends. He was still “Sailor Bob,” “Bob the Gob,” former yeoman petty officer in the war on the USS
Arkansas
, the right-hander who always wore a red-sleeved sweatshirt when he pitched. The transition was hard for everyone.

“Shawkey and I didn’t get along too well,” Waite Hoyt said. “We used to have an apartment together before he married, and he was married about four times, and between marriages he and I and Fred Hofmann had an apartment over on Riverside Drive, and I knew him pretty well and Bob was a pretty good guy, but we just didn’t get along. He lived in a different world than I did.

“So we had an argument down in San Antonio during spring training, and that, of course, caused a breach between us, and in May of 1930 he traded Mark Koenig and myself to the Detroit Tigers.”

Ruth was friendly enough with Shawkey, had gone on hunting trips and golfed with him, but Ruth had wanted another choice for manager: himself. After Fletcher declined, Ruth (with Claire in back of him no doubt) pushed his own candidacy with Ruppert and Barrow. Why shouldn’t he be the manager? Any number of stars—Cobb, Hornsby, Speaker, now Walter Johnson—had become managers. That was a natural progression. Shouldn’t he follow it?