The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (6 page)

“Oh, too bad,” the brother said with a smile. “Now you’re wet and dirty.”

Muttering about the city’s sanitation practices in regard to horse droppings, the returned world explorer went back inside the grounds looking much the same as he always did after a normal school day. He revved up his beast and proceeded to take his friends for rides, blasting around the streets with the kids from his past hanging on for dear life in his newly discovered present. Talk about satisfaction.

He embarked on his postgraduate baseball degree as the Orioles played two weeks of local exhibitions, then moved into their International League season. Every day was a new lesson.

He pitched the third of three exhibitions against John McGraw’s Giants, losing 3–2 in a classic moment of miscommunication. With one out in the ninth, a runner on first, the Orioles ahead 2–1, catcher Egan gave the prearranged clenched-fist sign for “a waste pitch,” a pitchout. He sensed a hit-and-run might be taking place. To Egan’s surprise, Ruth delivered a pitch over the dead center of the plate that was whacked by Red Murray over the left-field fence for a two-run homer and the victory.

Egan was mad. Ruth was mad.

He thought Egan had ordered a “waist” pitch. That was exactly where he delivered it, right at the waist. Didn’t the catcher know any better than that?

(A similar story was told by Fred Parent about “waist-waste” confusion in a game against the Buffalo Bisons. Parent said Bill Congalton hit that pitch for a triple. One of the stories is probably true. The pick here is Egan’s.)

Ruth then pitched the second game of the season, a 6–0 shutout of the Bisons, and went to work in the regular rotation. He mixed startlingly good games with occasional stinkers, all part of learning. He hit well at times, but also had periods when he struggled. There were no Fayetteville homers. The best part was that he continued to take that big uppercut swing, and no one tried to change him.

The Orioles went on the road, and more adventures arrived in a kaleidoscope whirl. He was in Buffalo and Rochester, Toronto and Montreal, Jersey City and Newark. New towns, new country, new language. (Just the picture of him walking around Montreal is a smile.) The Orioles who had survived the final roster cuts were a veteran group, with only Dunn’s son, Jack Jr., close to Ruth’s age. Ruth played cards, was included in a clique of Baltimore-born players, but also spent a lot of time in his own travels.

A perfect story from Creamer’s book found him sitting on the curb outside the Forrest Hotel on West 49th Street in New York at two in the morning. Outfielder George Twombley, coming home, saw him there.

“What are you doing?” Twombley asked.

“I’m waiting for a girl,” Ruth replied.

“What girl?”

“I don’t know. I’m just waiting. The boys at reform school said if you’re in New York and you want a woman, all you have to do is wait for a streetwalker to come along.”

“Maybe you should go to bed.”

The team Dunn had put together was very good. On July 4, 1914, it was in first place in the International League with a 47–22 record. Ruth had a 14–6 record and was hitting long shots when he connected with the ball, which wasn’t too often. Alas, nobody in Baltimore had noticed or cared. The total number of local people who had seen Babe Ruth perform in his debut year was under 5,000.

A new restaurant in the neighborhood had taken all of the old restaurant’s business. Directly across the street from the Orioles’ home at Back River Park was Terrapin Park, the newly built home of the new Baltimore Terrapins of the new Federal League. The citizens of Baltimore, chagrined that the once-proud Orioles had been dropped from the major leagues in 1903 for lack of support (the franchise shifted to New York, a sign that Baltimore had fallen to second-class status), saw the new league as an answer. They thought the Federal League would evolve into a third major league and the Terrapins would be a proud member. The day Ruth confronted the “waist-waste” problem, 28,000 people were across the street watching the Terrapins. Fewer than 1,000 watched him battle the fabled Giants. He later pitched a shutout against Rochester with only 11 paid customers in the stands. Even the vendors had gone across the street to work the more profitable crowd in the park that had been built in slightly more than three months, paint still drying as it opened.

Dunn estimated he was losing $1,000 per day. He was a baseball businessman, not a rich man. He had put up his life’s savings, plus a $10,000 loan from Philadelphia Athletics owner Connie Mack, to buy the team. This cash drain could not continue. Faced with bankruptcy, he took a solid business approach: he decided to sell off his assets. His assets were his players.

One of the first he tried to sell, alas, was his discovery from St. Mary’s. In Newark for a Sunday doubleheader, Dunn invited Mack to come up from Philadelphia to take another look at the kid who had beaten the A’s in spring training. Dunn started the kid in the first game, but the kid was shaky, gone by the fourth inning. No matter. Dunn started him again in the second game. The kid pitched a 1–0 shutout.

“He’s everything you say he is,” Mack told Dunn at the end. “In fact, he’s worth more money than you’re asking. But…”

Mack also had financial problems and at the end of the year would sell off his own stars. Dunn had to look elsewhere.

He had an offer from the Cincinnati Reds for a package including Ruth, and John McGraw had expressed interest, but Dunn wound up doing business with the Red Sox. Owner Joe Lannin had advanced Dunn $3,000 to make a payroll, which didn’t hurt negotiations. The Red Sox also were in Washington for a July 4 doubleheader, a stroke of good timing.

At the Ebbett House Hotel in Washington, Dunn and Lannin hammered out the cash deal. The announced price was $25,000 for Babe Ruth, Ben Egan, and Ernie Shore, another young pitcher who had joined the Orioles in June after graduating from Guilford College. In later years, later stories, the price was dropped to $12,500 or $8,500 plus the cancellation of the loan.

“Ring up three sales on the cash register,” Dunn sadly told a friend. “I’m no longer a retailer.”

He hurried back to Baltimore to catch the end of the Orioles’ game with Montreal. He called Ruth, Egan, and Shore to his office when the game finished. He gave them the news that they were going to the big leagues, to the Red Sox. Egan and Shore were excited. Ruth was dumbfounded. Dunn asked him to stay in the office after the other two players left.

The owner explained his situation, that he had no choice. He told Ruth, whom he’d given a raise to $350 a month when the season started, that the figure now was $500 and that when he hit Boston that would jump to $625. He said the major leagues were the place to be, the place where the big money resided.

Ruth said he didn’t care about the money; he wanted to stay close to home. This was what he knew. This was where his friends were. He still was playing baseball at St. Mary’s sometimes on the same days he played for the Orioles. His team was in first place at both St. Mary’s and in the International League. Boston? He had never been to Boston. He didn’t know anything about Boston. With the Red Sox on the road, his departure delayed, Ruth still kept playing left field for the Orioles every day until it was time to go to Boston. Dunn wished him good luck.

On July 10, he was on an overnight train with Shore and Egan to his new home. Bill Wickes, the secretary for the Orioles, traveled with them. His job was to make sure that no agent from the Federal League offered them a contract on the trip.

In rapid succession, according to legend, Ruth stepped off the Federal Express at Back Bay station in Boston at 10:00
A
.
M
. on July 11, 1914, said good-bye to the bodyguard, went across Dartmouth Street with Ernie Shore, ordered a breakfast of ham and eggs at Landers Coffee Shop from the 16-year-old waitress he soon would marry, stopped off at the Red Sox offices on Devonshire Street, went to Fenway Park, was fitted for a uniform, was told he was going to start that afternoon against the Cleveland Naps, then pitched seven innings to record his first major league win, 4–3. Presumably, he then ate another good meal, unpacked his suitcase at the Brunswick Hotel, and slept very well that night.

The ham-and-eggs meeting with his future bride might be shaky—other accounts suggest it took place on another day or perhaps in another situation—but the rest is true. He had an eventful arrival in the capital of Massachusetts.

A picture in the
Boston Globe
taken before the game, under the caption “New Red Sox Players from Baltimore,” shows him staring at the camera with the solemn disposition of a Supreme Court justice considering an important case. Egan, who would never play a game for the Red Sox and was soon dealt to the Naps, is laughing. Shore, 6-foot-4, lanky, has a small smile. Ruth indeed looks like a young man who has just been told he is going to start his first major league game.

Behind the plate for the game was 31-year-old player-manager Bill Carrigan. A Holy Cross graduate from Lewiston, Maine, quiet and firm, he was the perfect candidate to catch the new arrival. His friend Fred Parent had advised him from Baltimore to catch Ruth, who needed more guidance, and to have Forrest Cady, another catcher, work with Shore, who was a more finished product. Parent predicted immediate success for Shore and long-term success for Ruth.

“If I remember, Babe was crude in spots,” Carrigan said years later, describing Ruth’s debut to
Boston Record
sportswriter Joe Cashman. “Every so often he served up a fat pitch or bad pitch when he shouldn’t have. But he showed a lot of baseball savvy. He picked a runner off third base. He also cut off a throw from the outfield and threw a runner out at second. Anybody could see he’d quickly develop into a standout with a little more experience. He had a barrel of stuff, his speed was blinding, and his ball was alive.”

The cutoff play came in the first inning of his first major league game. Naps leadoff hitter Jack Graney singled, then went to second on a ground ball. Shoeless Joe Jackson, the third batter, singled in front of Tris Speaker in center field. Speaker, who had a wonderful arm, fielded the ball and threw toward home. Jackson made the turn at first and started to head for second.

Ruth, 19 years old, saw in an instant that (a) Graney had pulled up at third in fear of Speaker’s arm and (b) Jackson had made the turn. He cut off the throw and rifled the ball to second. Jackson stopped, retreated to first, and was followed by a throw from second. Graney made a break for home. First baseman Dick Hoblitzel threw to Carrigan, nailing Graney at the plate.

This was cerebral defensive baseball executed at a high level. It was part of what mistakenly in years to come would be called Ruth’s “great baseball instincts,” a term that always would make him sound like some idiot savant, some animal of nature. (“He never throws to the wrong base” would be a common remark.) The truth was that this was what he had learned, what he knew, from all of those games at St. Mary’s. He had practiced this. He knew it.

“The Red Sox pulled off a clever play in the first when Graney lost a fine chance for scoring,” baseball writer Tim Murane said in the next day’s
Globe.
“Ruth was strong in the play.”

Shore pitched the next day and threw a two-hitter, beating the Naps 2–1. Ruth had a second start a week later against the Detroit Tigers and was knocked out in three innings. Shore had a second start and beat the St. Louis Browns 6–2, giving up seven hits and striking out five. He also won the one open spot in the Red Sox rotation.

Carrigan, it seems, had given his two young arrivals a fast audition. Shore was the winner. The fact that he was right-handed helped, because top starters Dutch Leonard and Ray Collins were both left-handed, but he also had pitched better. Parent was right. Shore was the finished product.

Ruth was moved to the bench. The idea of the relief specialist, consistently coming into games in the middle or at the end, was not a part of baseball thinking. The starters started and pitched complete games if they could. The other pitchers mostly sat.

For the first time, Ruth became an extra man. The Red Sox went on the road for a long stretch, hitting Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit, winning 10 of 15 games, and he never left the bench. This was a veteran team, making a midseason run at the Philadelphia Athletics. Another left-hander, veteran Vean Gregg, was acquired from the Naps, and Ruth’s seat became even more secure.

He was pretty much on his own. Dunn in Baltimore had taken the duties of guardian seriously, but there was no guardian here. Egan watched over him a bit until leaving for Cleveland after two weeks, and no one else took the job. Ruth was younger than everyone else (Shore was four years older, plus a college graduate) and didn’t fit. The baseball culture always likes its rookies to be quiet and appreciative of all favors. He was noisy and confident, forced his way into the rotation for batting practice, did things rookies weren’t supposed to do. He found his bats sawed in half one day.

One of his nicknames among the veterans like Smokey Joe Wood and Tris Speaker became “the Big Baboon.” Not a term of endearment, it was more like another statement about his mixed-race features, a cousin to “Nigger Lips.” Shortstop Jack Barry, when he came to the team a year later, would say the words “Big Baboon” sotto voce every day during team meetings. Big Baboon. Big Baboon. Big Baboon. This only stopped when Ruth, tears in his eyes, stood and challenged whoever had said it to step up and fight. Barry never moved.

“I felt sorry for the kid,” outfielder Harry Hooper said. “I went up to Barry afterward and told him that I knew it was him. I said if he didn’t stop it, I would tell the kid who was doing it.”

Ruth lived in a rooming house on Batavia Street and had to find his own friends and entertainment. He found the waitress at Landers Coffee Shop. Her name was Helen Woodford, and the fog settles in a bit around her. She lived in South Boston, was born in East Boston, maybe had lived for a while in Meredith, New Hampshire, and her parents were from Newfoundland. Or maybe Galveston, Texas. She was pretty and available. In the long tradition of lonely young men in faraway towns and bored waitresses looking for adventure, the baseball player and the South Boston girl became a couple.