The Selling of the Babe (21 page)

It got no better in the second inning. With two out, Eddie Collins hit another ground ball, this time to first. Stuffy McInnis bumbled the ball, and now Collins was safe.

Mays saw red once again. To him, it almost looked like McInnis had misplayed the ball on purpose, and in his mind he thought that maybe Shannon had, too. In fact, maybe his teammates had been sandbagging him for weeks, maybe it was all on purpose, and maybe they wanted him to fail … that's the way Mays's mind was working.

He threw another pitch and Collins took off for second. Boston catcher Wally Schang received the pitch, sprang to his feet, and threw toward second.

Mays, already turning to look at the play, took the ball behind his ear, hitting him solid then ricocheting away. It didn't look like an accident. At least Mays didn't think it was, and his teammates were fed up with him anyway. Maybe Schang did hit him on purpose.

Mays finished the inning, but when he got to the bench he just kept going, right into the clubhouse. Another player reported that he was sitting with his head in his hands, distraught and weeping. Barrow sent in another pitcher and by the end of the game, a 14–9 Boston loss, Mays was gone, already on a train back to Boston.

Over time it would come out that he was bothered by more than dissatisfaction with the indifferent play of his teammates—his wife was ill, they had been arguing, and their off-season home had recently burned down, something Mays thought had been done on purpose. There were also rumors that Chicago had been trying to trade for him. The combination of on-field frustration and off-field problems had sent Mays into a deep depression, something baseball was ill equipped to deal with at the time. Every year, several players would simply disappear from major league rosters due to “mania,” “exhaustion,” “tobacco poisoning,” or other euphemisms for emotional and metal ailments, some never to return.

Over his last three starts Mays had pitched well but had lost by shutout three straight times, dropping his record to 5–11, which in an era that valued wins more than anything else was likely to cost him money at contract time. This further unsettled the already unsettled pitcher. Being struck by Schang's throw apparently pushed him over the edge.

Back in Boston the next day, Mays said he intended to go fishing and explained, “I'll never pitch another ball for the Red Sox.… I believe the team ought to be up there fighting for the lead right now but there is not a chance of that the way things are being handled.” The local scribes let that linger, and none of Mays's teammates, including Ruth, either came to his defense or waved good-bye. Even the press, which usually sided with management, was strangely quiet and even tacitly supportive of his decision. A headline in the
Boston Post
put it this way: “Mays Refuses to Ride Longer on the Broken Donkey.” The implication was clear: Who could blame him?

Jumping the team was a big deal but hardly unprecedented. After all, Ruth had jumped just a year before and after a few days had returned and even scored a raise. There was no reason for either Frazee or Barrow to think this would end any differently. And in the event Mays didn't return, well, he could always be traded. Even if he were nuts, as long as he could pitch he'd still be attractive to a contender. A team would put up with just about anything from a pitcher as long as he pitched winning ball—Ruth himself was proof of that.

But jumping the team was a big deal to Ban Johnson. The acrimony between him and Frazee hadn't gone away but was simply simmering under the surface. When the ball club paid Mays's fine a few weeks before, Johnson hadn't been pleased—he'd fined Mays, after all, not the team—but he had stayed silent. Now, however, he saw an opportunity to use his power and put Frazee in his place. Maybe he could piss him off enough to make him think about giving up on the game and selling out. Johnson knew the Red Sox were hurting at the gate compared to other clubs and this might be just enough to provide the final push. Then he might be rid of Frazee for good.

Mays was a valuable commodity, worth plenty to a contending team in a pennant race, and Frazee was in position to reap a windfall and not face much local criticism for getting rid of a problem. If he was able to sell Mays for a good price, it would go a long way toward keeping him going, and help turn a profit. Besides, although no one yet knew it, Johnson still owned a piece of the Indians, and if Mays was going anywhere, he wanted to steer him to Cleveland. The Indians were in third place and trailed the White Sox, who had surged into first ahead of New York, by only five games. Mays could be a difference maker.

Afraid Frazee might sell off Mays to either the Yankees or White Sox first, Johnson acted in his own self-interest. He ordered the Red Sox to suspend Mays indefinitely.

He might as well have asked Frazee to dress the Red Sox in drag and put them in one of his shows. The owner had long ago lost all respect for Johnson and saw through the ploy.

Then he did something that really angered Johnson. He ignored him. Instead of suspending Mays, he acted as if Johnson didn't exist, as if he had no power or authority at all, and began entertaining offers for his missing pitcher. Although Frazee spent a lot of time in Boston, he lived in New York and he and Jacob Ruppert had grown close. Along with Charles Comiskey, all three were serving a one-year term on the American League's board of directors. Frazee not only had Ruppert's office phone number in his address book but Ruppert's private line and home phone, as well. He knew the Yankees would be in the market for the pitcher, but wasn't going to give them any kind of sweetheart deal.

For now, he planned to hold his cards close to the vest, dangle Mays in front of all interested parties, and see the price go up. Ruth hadn't been suspended when he jumped the team in 1918—how was this any different?

In the meantime, the Babe played on as if blissfully unaware that anything at all was happening. He might not even have noticed that Mays was gone. The worse the Red Sox played, and the further they fell behind in the pennant race, the better he hit and the happier he was. There was no moping after a loss from Ruth.

He felt no compulsion anymore whatsoever to give a nod to scientific baseball and take a pitch, hit behind the runner, or drop the occasional sacrifice. Now he was free to swing from his heels, and that's exactly what he did. The weather had warmed and all of a sudden—was it the ball? The fact he didn't have to think but could just swing? Or that the Red Sox were out of the race and in games that didn't matter opposing pitchers were less cautious? All of a sudden, home runs began flying off his bat. Headlines like “Ruth Home Run Only Consolation” became commonplace as his blasts came ever more frequently and Boston fans began to focus solely on that, and not on the performance of the team. And with each subsequent home run, fans in other cities followed suit.

But Ruth wasn't let entirely off the hook—and neither was Ed Barrow. As Frazee and Johnson squared off and Carl Mays dug for worms and baited hooks on the banks of some stream, the sports editor of the
Boston Post
, Howard Reynolds, weighed in with a rare byline. On Sunday, July 21, the front page of
Post
's Sporting Section screamed out “Barrow Responsible for Red Sox Downward Slide.” In a scathing report, Reynolds analyzed Barrow's moves since the end of the 1918 season and found fault with every one, writing, “The real reason of the tumble from the top to a place near the bottom of the American League is Ed Barrow.” Not only were his personnel decisions at fault—nearly every man the Red Sox either let go or traded seemed to play like a star when they faced Boston—but the Mays incident exposed his real weakness. Citing the earlier “Ruth dust-up,” Reynolds cautioned not to blame Frazee, but that “Under him [Barrow] there is no discipline in the Red Sox ranks, the players have no respect for Barrow because they know he does not know baseball.… No one gives a rap for his manager as long as he does not tack on the fines, and the way things are breaking now he does not dare do too much of that. Off the field the players do as they please. There are no hours.”

It was clear whom he was referring to. Ruth might have been writing Barrow a mash note every night telling him when he pulled down the covers, but it wasn't slowing him down, keeping him sober, or helping him stay in shape or win ballgames. Thus far, the occasional home run, while exciting for the fans, hadn't offset his indifferent play on the field and his abandonment of the pitcher's mound. The other Red Sox saw through the charade of the nightly note as special treatment for a player they didn't think had earned it or deserved it. They didn't really blame Ruth—hell, they'd have taken advantage of the situation, too—but they didn't like the way they had to follow rules and he didn't.

And Ruth wasn't just disruptive in Boston. On July 18 in Cleveland, the Indians erupted for four eighth-inning runs to break a tie and take a 7–3 lead into the ninth. To close out the game, Indians manager Lee Fohl inserted frontline pitcher Elmer Myers into the game to secure the win despite the fact that he'd just pitched a complete game two days before. The Indians needed mound help—that's why they were so interested in Mays.

However, Myers didn't have it, and gave up a walk, a double, a ground ball, and another walk, as Boston scored one and now had the bases loaded. With Ruth due up, Fohl got nervous. He called on another pitcher, Fritz Coumbe, a left-hander, to counteract Ruth, giving him the admonition to keep the ball low. A hit wouldn't lose the game, but a home run would. There was only one problem. Coumbe hadn't pitched in two months.

It showed. “Coumbe put everything he had on his first offering,” wrote a Cleveland reporter, “and Ruth put every ounce of his strength into a terrific swing,” but missed, spinning out of the batter's box with the effort. Then “Fritz apparently forgot that making fast ones out of slow ones is a Ruth specialty.” Ruth turned on the change-up and launched it over the right field screen and onto a house on the opposite side of the street for a grand slam. Cleveland, fighting for a pennant, lost a game it should have won.

And Lee Fohl lost his job. The Cleveland papers excoriated him and by the time the team took the field the next day, he'd said the hell with it and quit. Tris Speaker took his place. Ruth made his old teammate look like a genius in his first game as manager, this time striking out with a chance to tie the game and end the contest.

Frazee and Johnson continued to spar over Mays. Almost every day the press reported that yet another team had made Frazee an offer for the pitcher or that a previous offer had been increased. The White Sox reportedly offered Frazee first $25,000, then $50,000.

The Boston owner liked this game; he just sat back and watched the price go up and up. Johnson, in turn, sent a telegram to every team in the league telling them not to make a deal because Mays was going to be punished.

Just as Johnson had earlier expressed faux outrage over the gambling in the Boston stands, he now claimed that George Hildebrand, the home plate umpire in Chicago when Mays jumped the team, said he had been told by other Boston players that Mays had been planning to desert the team for weeks and force a trade. If Johnson suspended Mays over that, he would have to suspend just about every player on the Boston roster. The atmosphere was so poor that everyone was hoping to leave.

The Yankees came to Boston on July 24 and Ruppert and Huston tagged along to talk trade with Frazee. In addition to the offer of $50,000 in cash from the White Sox, the Indians, Tigers, and Senators had all made bids, primarily offering Frazee players. He considered the deals, but wanted more in return than they were willing to offer. Besides, he didn't want to increase his payroll.

It was no accident that the decision came down to the Yankees and the White Sox, the other two teams aligned with Frazee against Johnson and the two clubs most willing to ignore his admonitions against acquiring Mays. Comiskey still wanted to make a straight cash deal, but Ruppert was so eager to win now that he put together a package of $40,000 plus promising and affordable young pitchers Allen Russell and Bob McGraw. Frazee and Barrow were already rebuilding and had just purchased eighteen-year-old Baltimore schoolboy Waite Hoyt. Paired with Herb Pennock, the new charges made it appear as if Boston had the makings of another top-notch pitching staff in the waiting, and money was always useful—Frazee had already said he hoped to invest much of it in another pitcher. He didn't, but a month later he did outbid every other team in baseball for the player considered the best prospect in the game, Joe Wilhoit, who after failing in several earlier big league trials, had just set a record with a 69-game hitting streak for Wichita in the Western League and was suddenly a hot commodity. Unfortunately, he flamed out—and was much older than the Red Sox or anyone else thought—but the move is an indication of Frazee's financial health at the time. He wasn't sitting on his money.

There was also one more indication of that. A year before, Ruppert had supposedly bid as much as $150,000 for Ruth. Later reports would claim that now he wanted $200,000 for Ruth and Mays in a package deal.

The offer was breathtaking, three times more than any other transaction to date, yet Frazee had still said no. In fact, in addition to running the Red Sox, although Frazee had once said he intended to stay out of the producing business for a while, he never really did. That was a spigot that was almost impossible to turn off, even if he wanted to—there were shows in production and contracts to be filled.

At the time he'd bought the Red Sox he was already managing a bona fide big-ticket hit,
Nothing but the Truth
, which ran in New York for 332 performances, closing in the summer of 1917. By the end of 1918, with the end of the war in sight, Frazee produced the musical
Ladies First
, which captured crowds surging back into the theater after the end of the war and it ran for 164 performances. Keep in mind that New York theaters seated upward of 1,000 people. Frazee could get nearly as many people to see a play in a season as to see the Red Sox in Fenway. Any show that ran for 100 performances was a hit, with every subsequent performance almost pure profit. Failed shows shut down quickly before they could lose much money.