The Selling of the Babe (26 page)

And the Babe? All he wanted was more dough and he was more than willing to break his contract in order to do it. Over the next three months, each of these figures would spend enormous amounts of energy and no small sum of money trying to get what they wanted, complicated by the fact that while they were all rich in their own way, none had the ready cash to fully realize their plans. Yet, rather incredibly, in the end, most of them would get what they wanted. Only Ban Johnson and a generation of Red Sox fans who were later sold a bill of goods about the history of their team to excuse the failures of the next generation of management, rather than the truth, would be left holding the bag. Boston would go eighty-six seasons between championships as a result.

As soon as the season ended, there were rumors that the Red Sox had suitors looking to buy the team—there were every year, as the battle with Johnson was common knowledge. Most were either hoping to pick up the club on the cheap or just looking for a little publicity—the race driver Barney Oldfield was supposedly part of one bid with former player Frank Chance. They reportedly offered $500,000, less than the purchase price of the club, a bid that might have been made at the behest of Johnson. To no one's surprise, Frazee turned them down. He had made it clear in the past that although in theory he wasn't averse to selling the Red Sox, he would only do so if he got a price that would recoup his investment, plus a good deal more.

In fact, however, it is unlikely that Frazee could have sold the team at this time even if he wanted to, or even if he had to. There were too many fingers in the pie, and too many strings attached.

In early November, several events taking place almost simultaneously threatened to cause a crisis. For one, Joseph Lannin's note became due on November 1, and he wanted his money from Frazee. At the same time, Frazee, Ruppert, and Comiskey, all serving their one-year term as the American League board of directors, called a special meeting with the other owners. Detroit, likely acting on Johnson's behalf, protested that since Mays should have been suspended, the games he pitched should not count in the standings and that the Tigers, who finished fourth behind New York, should have finished third and therefore deserved the third place share of Series money won by the Yankees. And by the way, the second game of that doubleheader against the Yankees near the end of the year? That shouldn't count either.

By opening a probe, it allowed Comiskey, Ruppert, and Frazee to do a little more investigating and relitigate everything. And although they couldn't act on their own, as a board they could pursue investigations and inquiries and then set the agenda with the other league owners, and Detroit's complaint gave them an excuse to do just that. They hoped to accumulate enough evidence of Johnson's poor leadership to entice one of the other club owners to jump ship and join them, creating a quorum that could lead to Johnson's ouster. But that was a tough challenge.

There was a lot more money at stake than there had been in 1918. In the 1919 Series, in something of a surprise, the Cincinnati Reds, significant underdogs, had knocked off the Chicago White Sox. A best-of-nine affair designed to milk as much money from the public as possible, the Series went eight games, the Reds winning five games to three, with the winning club taking home $5,207 per man, and the losing White Sox $3,254, about five times more than the Red Sox and Cubs had received a year before. The three runners-up who finished second, third, and fourth, also earned a nice chunk.

It had not been a particularly memorable Series—at least not yet—and although there were rumors of a possible fix, well, there were similar rumors after every postseason series and had been since the first World Series in 1903. But this time, the fix was in, at least for a few games, the plot actually hatched in the shadow of Fenway Park by notorious Boston gambler Joseph “Sport” Sullivan when he set everything in motion in a meeting with the White Sox' Chick Gandil at the Hotel Buckminster. Sullivan, well known in Boston gambling circles, had been hanging around baseball in Boston for almost two decades, a man everybody in Boston knew. Although he'd been arrested numerous times, he was often still sought out by Boston newspapers to give odds on the World Series. Sullivan was familiar to every Red Sox player of the era—he liked to have an edge, and if a conversation with a player revealed an injury or something else of significance unknown to the public, all the better. He had to know Ruth, even if Ruth did not know him by name. Sullivan reportedly cleared $50,000 on the World Series he helped fix. And while it would later become a baseball cliché to say that Babe Ruth saved baseball after the scandal, that's not true. By the time the scandal came to light, Ruth, the lively ball, and the home run had already saved it.

By the end of the month, however, no one was talking about the World Series anymore in any capacity. New York Supreme Court justice Robert Wagner ruled on Johnson's attempt to block the Yankees from using Mays. He issued a permanent injunction barring him from doing so and further found that Johnson “did not evince a desire to do equity to all parties concerned.”

The ruling cut Johnson off at the knees, something that esteemed baseball historian David Voigt accurately called “a blow from which he would never recover.” For the first time since forcing his way into major league baseball, Johnson had lost an important battle and seen his authority legally diminished. He would take a while to fall, and was still far from defenseless and still capable of throwing a few damaging haymakers, but the ruling marked the beginning of the end.

And he blamed Frazee for it all. The battle lines were drawn more sharply than ever, with revenge his only remaining option. With more than a month until the annual league meeting, there was plenty of time to make plans for that.

And what of the Babe, now that the season was over? As usual, he was out in pursuit of two things, money and personal pleasure.

His first order of business was money. Any added fun along the way was simply a side benefit. After the barnstorming season ended, he stayed in Boston to attend a dinner sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. The group showered him with gifts, including a diamond ring worth $500, in the hope Ruth might one day return the favor to the group or the Church in the form of some fat checks. Then he and Johnny Igoe traveled to California. Until recently, it had been sort of standard fare for baseball's flavor of the month, a recent World Series hero or batting champion, to tour the hinterlands of vaudeville usually embarrassing himself by singing a few songs and then taking questions or reciting a stilted script while miming his recent achievements on the diamond before a painted backdrop. It wasn't high art, but it was a way to earn some extra money and give fans outside the major league cities a chance to see their heroes in the flesh.

But this was a new age. Ruth was the hottest commodity in the game and in the wake of the war, the film industry was really starting to take off. Over the last decade, the industry had abandoned the nickelodeons that showed relatively simple shorts to an industry that now produced full-blown extravaganzas shown in some of the largest theaters. Production had started to move from New York to Hollywood. There was big money to be made and Ruth had some offers. Who needed vaudeville?

He wasn't asked to appear in any extravaganza, however. Shorts and lighter fare still made up a substantial part of the film industry, and just as newspapers learned that the name Ruth in a headline or on the lips of a newsboy could sell papers, Hollywood understood that Ruth's name on a marquee would draw a crowd. That he wasn't leading man material was clear, as film seems to emphasize the worst features of his face, but that didn't matter—Hollywood wanted his name, not an actor. While Ruth dreamed of the silver screen, he and Igoe also overestimated his value, asking $10,000 per picture. A lot of meetings turned into “don't call us, we'll call you” affairs. Meanwhile, Ruth went back to playing ball in exhibitions with other major leaguers. Although Pacific Coast League baseball was popular, Californians still turned out to see major leaguers when they had a chance, and it was a lucrative market for barnstorming.

Ruth joined major leaguers Buck Weaver of the White Sox, the Phillies' Irish Meusel (older brother of Bob), and some members of the PCL Vernon Tigers and toured the coast. Ruth alone received a guarantee of $500 a game—coupled with the barnstorming trip in New England, Ruth had already earned nearly his regular 1919 salary. He had to ask himself why he wasn't worth that much in the majors.

Ruth, reported
The Sporting News
, “was played up like a movie actor,” on the tour. He even arrived in San Francisco ahead of the rest of the team and held court at the ballpark, demonstrating his prowess by taking batting practice and knocking six balls over the fence in a matter of minutes. One correspondent noted, “During the entire season of 1919 Coast League players did not put six balls over the same fence.”

Although fans warmed to Ruth, the press wasn't quite as smitten. “Ruth is a big, good natured boy,” wrote one reporter, “and he is unquestionably a marvelous ballplayer. But he could endear himself a little more to those he comes in contact with by the cultivating of a trifling of modesty.… . We may appreciate just how big a person Babe is, but we'd appreciate it more if somebody other than the Babe told us about it.” Ruth, asked about Ty Cobb, had responded dismissively. “Cobb, he gets 'em [hits] beating out bunts and the scorers help him out. He gets 50 to 75 hits every year he isn't entitled to.… I have to hit 'em and hit 'em a mile to get my hits.”

Once Ruth and Igoe saw that Ruth was just as big in California as he was east of St. Louis, their eyes grew big. “I feel I made a bad move last year when I signed a three-year contract to play for $30,000,” said Ruth. In all likelihood, Ruth was already out of money and probably borrowing against the future of the contract and spending his barnstorming money as fast as it came in. After earlier saying that he wanted a raise to $15,000 a year, now Ruth upped the ante to $20,000.

On November 3, he went public. “Frazee knows what I want and unless he meets my demands I will not play with the Boston club next year,” he said to a reporter, Igoe likely moving his mouth from behind the curtain. “I'm signed up for two more seasons but I deserve more money and I will not play unless I get it.” He and Igoe even brought up the possibility of boxing again, floating a report that said Ruth was in training for a potential bout with Jack Dempsey, which was about as likely as Jack Dempsey taking over for Ruth in the outfield. Still, it underscored Ruth's desire for a bigger contract—and, perhaps, to leave Boston altogether. He certainly wasn't begging to stay, but spoke only of his desire for more money, and he seemed willing to go almost anywhere—and any length—to get it.

Although Ruth had no legal leverage—he was under contract to Boston for two more years—Frazee had to be concerned. Ruth had held out for more money in 1918, gotten it, jumped the team and been given a raise, then been given a new contract and still moped his way through the first half of the season, and according to some reports had been given a bonus of $5,000 by Frazee on Babe Ruth Day. Now he wanted more. First $15,000, then $20,000. When would it end? Actors signed contracts and when they left a show, you got a new actor. Was any amount enough to keep Ruth happy?

Frazee and Barrow may well have started to wonder just how much Ruth was worth to them, as opposed to what he was worth to others. Five cities in baseball supported two teams—New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and Boston; and of those markets, Boston was the smallest. The Red Sox already had a tough time making money with the Braves only a few trolley stops away. The Red Sox payroll hovered around $80,000 a year—and wouldn't substantially increase, compared to the other clubs, for another fifteen years. If they gave Ruth $20,000, that would leave only about $60,000 to spread among everyone else—about $3,000 each, guaranteeing a thoroughly disgruntled club. The Sox were further hamstrung by the blue laws; Boston and Philadelphia were the only two cities in the league where playing on Sunday was still banned, and other cities were adding more Sunday dates every year. It was already hard to compete and getting harder all the time.

As Frazee sat pondering the upcoming season, he had to keep coming back to the same thought: How could he afford to keep paying Ruth? Would he ever be able to draw enough fans to support a player who was already demanding nearly a quarter of his payroll? And if he played hardball and held him to his contract, given Ruth's petulant nature, he might just start swinging with his eyes closed. Frazee had to wonder whether it was even worth keeping an unhappy Babe Ruth.

It mattered not to Ruth. His loyalty was to himself, not the Red Sox. A hometown discount was as foreign to him as turning in before midnight or leaving half a steak on a plate.

The owners' meeting to discuss the Mays case settled nothing except to bring up a series of festering complaints against Johnson by his adversaries, and for Johnson to demand loyalty for those who remained aligned with him, and ossify the position of everyone involved. Try as they might, Frazee, Comiskey, and Ruppert, the three Insurrectos, could not gain a fourth in their alliance and the league remained divided, the Insurrectos on one side, and the “Loyal Five” on the other. Ruppert correctly assumed that Detroit was acting on Johnson's behalf and made a countercharge that the Tigers didn't have any problem with Mays until they fell behind the Yankees in the standings. After all, they even made a bid for him and then accepted the protection of the court injunction. The Insurrectos voted to formally award third place money to New York and asked that the Yankees receive their share from the National Commission. When the commission ignored them, as
The Sporting News
noted with a sigh, “Then presumably there will be another lawsuit.”