The Selling of the Babe (2 page)

It was an act of genius. No one realized it yet, but the 1918 World Series was the last quiet gasp of the Dead Ball Era, the lowest-scoring World Series in history, as both teams tried to scratch out runs through a combination of seeing-eye ground balls, short flares, bunts, stolen bases, and hit-and-run plays, punctuated by the rare long hit that rolled between outfielders to the distant fence. The baseball itself, the dead ball, made even deader by the use of inferior wool wrapping and horsehide due to the war, made scoring a premium. Only 19 runners would cross the plate in the six-game Series, neither team scoring more than three runs in any one game, and every man on either team who took the mound during the Series pitched well. It would prove to be the last World Series in history in which no one on either team struck a home run.

The lack of scoring, combined with the distraction of the war and some political misplays by the men who ran baseball, left fans less than enthusiastic. Attendance in the Series had been poor, and on this day, Fenway Park was barely half full for what would prove to be the finale, and the last world championship the Red Sox would win in eighty-six long and frustrating years.

Only George Whiteman had made it seem worthwhile. As veteran baseball writer Paul Shannon wrote in the
Boston Post
, “In nearly every run the Red Sox scored in the six games, Whiteman, the little Texan veteran, has figured mightily.” Fans identified with the stocky minor leaguer finally getting his chance to play, the ultimate Everyman underdog, only receiving the opportunity because the real heroes were buried in the mud of a trench somewhere in France. After the Series, Whiteman's face would grace the cover of
Baseball Magazine
, which asked the question “Hero of the Series?????” In his ghostwritten account of the Series, Ty Cobb, the game's greatest star, would answer that he was.

Ruth? Oh, he played well, too, when he played. Pitching a shutout in Game 1 and then collecting a second victory in Game 4, albeit with relief help after he took the mound with his finger swollen to nearly twice its size due to some mysterious altercation on the train from Chicago to Boston, one that put his fist into contact with either a solid steel wall, a window, or the jaw of another passenger. Although he still set a new record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched in the World Series at 29, one that would grow in stature over the years, it went almost unnoticed at the time.

As George Whiteman left the field that gray afternoon, the spotlight shone only on him, the unabashed star of the Series. Hell, hardly anyone even noticed that Ruth had entered the game. He was upstaged, a bit player in Red Sox owner Harry Frazee's latest baseball production, standing in for the star as the curtain fell.

It would be the last time.

Whiteman's catch left the Cubs with the knowledge this was not their year and they went out quickly. Boston followed, and in the bottom of the ninth, Mays, the submariner and Boston's best pitcher in 1918, retired Max Flack on a foul. Then Charlie Hollocher lofted an easy fly to Ruth for the second out. For many fans, it was the first time they noticed he was even in the game.

The crowd stood to witness the final out as Ruth stood before Duffy's Cliff and watched the Cub's Leslie Mann bounce a lazy grounder to second base. Forty-year-old Dave Shean, another wartime fill-in, fielded the ball cleanly and flipped to first. Stuffy McInnis, foot on the bag, caught the ball with both hands and the Series was over, Boston winning four games to the Cubs' two.

Another quick cheer rose from the stands, and a few strands of confetti and torn newspapers floated through the air. As the Sox ran in, the other Boston players trotted from the dugout to congratulate each other, but as celebrations went, particularly in Boston, it was muted, more handshakes and hurrahs than screams of joy and dancing in the street.

Although the Red Sox won the World Series, the endless war in Europe, an emerging outbreak of Spanish influenza, an abortive player strike that delayed Game 5 and caused fans to heckle the players with calls of “Bolsheveki!” combined with chesslike play had kept the crowd down and interest in the Series low. Even the Royal Rooters, Boston's famous group of rabid fans that had followed professional baseball in Boston for nearly three decades, failed to make their usual appearance. After the final out, there was not so much a celebration as a collective sigh of relief that the most trying season in memory was finally over.

About the only player already looking forward to the 1919 season was Ruth. He raced in from left, clutching his mitt in his gigantic hands, ready for a party whether his teammates wanted one or not. While the 1918 season had been something of a disaster for most of baseball (and, despite their victory, even for the Red Sox), Ruth had a great time anyway. Hell, he almost always did.

He might have been a forgotten man at the end of the 1918 season, upstaged by a minor leaguer who would never play another inning of major league baseball. But never again. Over the next two years, the twenty-three-year-old pitcher many newspapers still referred to as George would thoroughly transform himself, the fortunes of two teams, and, most importantly, the game of baseball itself, ushering the sport into the modern era. Ruth, whom the papers had started calling by his nickname, “Babe,” often still placing it in quotation marks, would become THE BABE, the greatest name in the game and the most dominant figure in American sports.

He sprinted to the infield as if he already knew it, as if it was already Opening Day, as if he already could see what lay head.

He couldn't wait.

 

1

George Herman Ruth

“I saw a man transformed from a human being into something pretty close to a god.”

—Red Sox outfielder Harry Hooper

When George Ruth arrived at Boston's South Station to catch a train to spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on March 9, 1918, he carried two large bags, a set of left-handed golf clubs, and a smile that covered most of his cartoonish face from ear to ear. After spending much of the winter with his wife, Helen, at their farm in Sudbury, Massachusetts (called “Home Plate”), the notion of a month in Hot Springs almost made the long wait worthwhile. Oh, he looked forward to playing ball again, and a little golf and soaking in the steaming natural mineral baths, but it was everything else in Hot Springs that he really relished: the whores and the card games, the booze and the dance halls and the food. “Spring training” itself would consist of a little more than some long hikes and a few hours of fooling around on a ballfield each day—hell, the players didn't even get paid to do that. That left plenty of time for everything else, which was one of the reasons ball clubs tended to go to places like Hot Springs or Tampa or other resort and vacation towns for spring training. They needed the nice weather, sure, but they also needed to entice the players to show up on time and stay reasonably happy while they were there. You couldn't play baseball all the time.

Ruth had plenty of reasons to smile, anyway. By the end of the 1917 season, at age twenty-two, he was arguably the best pitcher in baseball. And if he was not, he was close to the top of a very short list, one that included the Senators' Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland “Pete” Alexander of the Phillies, and perhaps one or two others—White Sox knuckleballer Eddie Cicotte, or perhaps the Indians' Stan Coveleski. But there is no question that Ruth was the best young pitcher in baseball, and it wasn't even close.

In a little more than three full seasons in the major leagues he had already won 67 games—18 in 1915, when the existence of the Federal League diluted major league talent, making it an ideal time for a young pitcher like Ruth to break in and, significantly, learn to pitch against diminished competition, 23 in 1916, and another 24 in 1917. Moreover, he had helped Boston win the world championships in 1915 and 1916, collecting a legendary 14-inning, 2–1 victory in the 1916 World Series, giving up a first inning inside-the-park home run and thereafter tossing a shutout. And even though the Red Sox had missed out on the pennant by nine games in 1917, finishing second behind the White Sox, after three full big league seasons Ruth's performance finally earned him a big contract—$5,000, a $3,000 raise over what he had made in 1917. He would start collecting it as soon as the season started.

The young boys who gathered at South Station to catch a glimpse of Ruth before he left and their fathers who trudged to work every morning and passed around the newspapers during lunch break knew all that. But that wasn't what made Ruth interesting.

What did was everything that didn't make the papers and what wasn't told through statistics. He just wasn't like other players; he was an evolutionary leap. At six-two and more than 200 pounds, he was a giant at a time when the average American infantryman in the Great War stood only five-six or five-seven and weighed barely 140 pounds—for the time, Ruth was the equivalent of a man six-six or six-seven today, and strong beyond measure. Players any larger than Ruth, such as former Boston catcher Larry McLean, six-five, or the Browns' six-six Dick Davenport, were routinely referred to as “giants,” and few clubs counted more than a player or two much above six feet. Although ballplayers tended to be bigger than the average American, Ruth still stood out. He was not only tall, but both rangy and barrel-chested, with massive forearms and thick wrists. One writer noted, “he bends things of metal in his hand as if they were switches and has a hand grip that crushes.”

He was hard not to notice, drawing attention even when he wasn't trying to do so. Neighborhood boys shagging flies when Ruth took batting practice in Fenway Park before the games saw someone swinging a bat like no one else. He didn't push at the ball like most other hitters. They swung as if afraid of missing, their hands held apart for better bat control, and took a controlled, level swing, parallel to the ground, designed simply to make contact and slap ground balls or line drives between fielders. Ruth
attacked
the ball, swinging a baseball bat almost like a lumberjack wielding an ax, but loose and free with a pronounced uppercut, gripping it at the end, wrapping it around his neck before he swung, and then just
unloading
, swinging as hard as he could, the momentum of his swing causing him to twist and spin into the ground, almost toppling over.

And that was when he missed. When he connected—and in batting practice, he did far more often than he ever did during the games—the ball soared through the air and over the boys' heads deep into the outfield, sometimes even into the right field bleachers. While the fence in right at Fenway was only a bit more than 300 feet down the line, the bleachers, in what would now be termed the power alleys, were nearly 400 feet away. When it did, the crack of the bat was soon followed by the sound of the ball striking the pine benches, echoing through the park like two rifles shot in rapid succession. Moreover, Ruth actually tried to hit the ball over the fence, not stepping into the ball as much as leaning away and pulling his arms and hand through the strike zone so he didn't just make contact with a pitch, but so it hit the bat in a specific place, down toward the end. When it did, when he timed if just right … well, the ball took off and there was no other feeling like it in the world. For both Ruth and his fans, it was almost orgasmic.

He didn't even use the same bat as other players. Most favored maple or hickory cudgels that weighed up to 40 ounces or so, thick in the handle, with barely any taper toward a heavy barrel. Ruth's bat was even heavier in weight, usually 44 ounces or 46, and in practice sometimes more than 50. But over time he began to shave and sand the handle down like the fungo bats coaches used to hit fly balls in practice. His hands made it seem even thinner, and he whipped the bat through the strike zone in a blur.

As he took batting practice, Ruth's coaches and teammates just shook their heads and rolled their eyes. You couldn't hit like that; everybody knew it. But since Ruth was a pitcher—and something of an incorrigible pitcher at that—they let him be. They had all learned that it was often easier to let Ruth do what he wanted than to hover over him like a schoolmarm. When he didn't get his way, he'd mope and moan around the ballpark and be a bother to everyone. It was easier just to let him have his fun. Besides, if they needed him to drop a bunt or hit behind the runner, he could do that when asked. There was no harm in letting him fool around, and every once in a while, even in a game, he'd connect with one, and even if it didn't clear the fence, it often carried so high into the sky it almost disappeared. The fans seemed to like that, and you could hear the gasps of wonder well up from the stands.

No one yet realized it, but Ruth's swing was revolutionary. The uppercut not only put the ball into the air, but as hard as Ruth swung, into the air for a long, long way. Moreover, the angle of his swing nearly matched the downward drop of the pitch toward the plate, meaning that Ruth's bat stayed in the hitting zone for a longer time than that of other hitters. That's just common sense, but baseball tradition and common sense have long been at odds as much as the game's history has been to its myths.

Yet even more drew the boys to Ruth. His personality was as compelling as his performance. He didn't keep them distant like the other players, spit tobacco on their shoes, brush them off, or lecture them like a teacher or a cop on the corner. His persona was as oversized as his physical dimensions. He laughed and joked and used language they didn't dare use around their own parents. He tossed them baseballs and nickels and took them out for ice cream and roughed their heads and let them follow him down the street. He seemed to enjoy all the things boys enjoyed as much as they did.

He was no less fascinating to their parents—fathers and mothers. In the neighborhoods near the ballpark, the Fenway, Governor's Square (now Kenmore), the South End, and Roxbury, Ruth was a familiar face—and so were the bottoms of his feet after he had too much to drink. His exploits were already legendary.