The Selling of the Babe (32 page)

He had to get used to it. In New York, everything was bigger, brighter, and more intense. Of course, there were benefits to that, as well. New York was eight times the size of Boston and there was more of everything, women, bootleg liquor, money, and speakeasies. Put it this way: New York already had the biggest ballpark (the Polo Grounds) and tallest building in the world (the fifty-seven-story Woolworth Building). Fenway Park was in shambles and the Custom Tower, less than 500 feet in height, would remain Boston's tallest building until 1964. Culturally, economically, and in every other way imaginable, New York had surpassed Boston. Getting Ruth was just more evidence that was so.

Still, Ruth had his usual round of fun on the train ride down, and arrived in Jacksonville on March 1, one of twenty-two Yankees on hand for the start of spring training. The Yankees worked out at Barrs Field, a rather common spring training park, featuring a small grandstand and ringed by a low fence plastered with advertisements, the dimensions of which are not precisely known. Jacksonville itself, while not quite as torrid as Hot Springs, was not exactly a sleepy little town where they rolled up the sidewalks at dusk, either. In the last decade, it had emerged as a popular resort town, easy to reach by boat or train from the Northeast in only a few days. It even served as the winter home for what remained of the silent picture industry on the East Coast.

Ruth spent relatively little time at the Hotel Burbridge, where the team boarded while in town. Most of the time, his teammates saw him leave in the late afternoon and then didn't see him again until breakfast, although they usually figured out where he'd been pretty quick—the straw hat Ruth wore everywhere but the ballfield hardly rendered him anonymous, and made his more sophisticated teammates, wise to the ways of Manhattan, see him as something of a rube. Helen Ruth was back in Massachusetts and Ruth had yet to work out the same kind of ruse concerning his night hours with Huggins as he had with Barrow. Yet already he was going his own way, a member of the team, but not a part of it like the other guys, already a law unto himself. He just went out and stayed out and nobody bothered to tell him anything different. On the Red Sox, that had eventually caused trouble. On the Yankees, so far nobody said anything

Little wonder where he went. Jacksonville's Houston Street was notorious for its bordellos, which operated more or less openly from the 1880s into the 1960s—the poet and novelist Stephen Crane's wife, Cora, owned one. And Pablo Beach was where everyone went to catch the sun or spend time in the cabarets. In short, there was plenty of temptation for Ruth and the other Yankees in Jacksonville and the ball club had little trouble convincing them to show up on time. Most raced down as fast as possible.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—it was cold and damp that spring and except for their time on the field, most players found their pleasures indoors. Of course, by then, liquor was illegal, something the players soon learned just made everyone a little more eager to drink it, and as the really illegal stuff started making the rounds, it was increasingly difficult to tell exactly what you were drinking or how powerful it was.

On Ruth's first day, while most of his teammates went to the ballpark, Ruth ignored the cold winds and went golfing instead—why get off on the right foot? He was part of a threesome with teammates Bob Shawkey and Del Pratt, as a trio of pitchers, Ernie Shore, Hank Thormahlen, and George Mogridge, tagged along to keep score and carry the bags … as did a few members of the press. Ruth must have been surprised the next day to see his golf game so closely scrutinized, written about more in a single day with the Yankees than it had been over the course of his whole career in Boston. Bill Hanna of the
New York Tribune
noted that Ruth “has a long drive but is not the phenomenal driver he is in baseball” and added that “inaccuracy handicapped him.” He even made mention of Ruth's attire—“white flannels and a thin silk shirt”—and added, “The Babe has a new silk shirt for every day of the week.”

And that's who he was now in New York: the Babe. Not George, not “Babe” Ruth, but more often simply the Babe.

Later that night at the hotel and at the ballpark the next day, he officially met many of his teammates, garrulous outfielder Ping Bodie taking him around. Of course, he had played against most of them, and with guys like Shore and Mays, so it wasn't as if he was walking into alien territory. Besides, once he got to the ballpark, Ruth always felt at home.

He pulled on the Yankee pinstripes for the first time on the afternoon of March 2, skipping the optional morning workout so as not to set a dangerous precedent of being on time. Wrote Damon Runyon of the
New York American
, “the first official motion” of Huggins “was to flatwheel around the behemoth,” and get a good look at his new prize. The same could be said of the press. Over the course of spring training, they, too, “flatwheeled” around Ruth. He was the main reason they were there; as Runyon later explained to readers, they wrote so much about Ruth because “all our life we have been so poor and Babe cost so much that even to talk about him gives us a wealthy feeling.” Guys like Bugs Baer, assigned that spring to cover the Giants, who were training in Gainesville, felt left out. Being around Ruth meant a party was never far off.

He took batting practice, and everyone crowded around to watch. In fact, it can probably be said with some certainty that more people saw Babe Ruth bat in person during his career than any other ballplayer ever, for in Ruth's time batting practice usually took place in public before crowds with the gates already open, unlike today when more teams take batting practice out of the public eye. Anytime Ruth held a bat in his hand, almost everyone stopped to watch.

On this day, however, as one paper reported, “he hit them rather high than far,” failing to reach the fence, or as Runyon put it, “There was no excessive Babe Ruthing during the afternoon.” Then again, Ruth was using his spring training bat, all 54 ounces of it, preferring the workout provided by the extra weight. He then enthusiastically took fielding practice, yelling at Bodie, who was slapping him infield grounders to “Hit 'em harder, hit 'em harder!”

This was to be no repeat of spring in Tampa, where Ruth hit everything but the oranges on the trees. He began like it was the regular season and stopped hitting from the start. A lot of Yankees were finding the fences to their liking—even Carl Mays was knocking them out—and in 1920 everybody seemed to notice a difference in the ball. Old Cy Young, winner of 511 games and only retired a decade, made the rounds that spring and later noted, “When I had a chance to take a gander at that lively ball shortly before the '20 season began, my first thoughts were that I was sure glad I was retired.” Of course, under the new rules the ball was also dry and pitchers were no longer allowed to scuff it, cut it, sand it, shine it, or do anything else that made it dart erratically over the plate.

They weren't doing much of that in batting practice, anyway, but it didn't matter much to Ruth. Regardless what they threw to him, he wasn't hitting it. In the first intra-squad game, the Yannigans vs. the Regulars, Ruth came up twice with men on base and Mogridge, a back-of-the-rotation starter hardly known for his strikeout ability, got Ruth both times on curveballs and he popped up in a third at bat. Not to worry, cautioned the press, “The Babe simply isn't in slugging trim.”

Ruth started to press. Two days later, on March 12, in another contest against the Yannigans, only one day before their spring opener against Brooklyn, who also trained in Jacksonville, Ruth had another bad day. The ball club even brought out what one special correspondent termed “a bagful of Babe's own special fence wrecking brand of ordnance.” Presumably, they were referring to a new bag of balls, but perhaps there actually were juiced balls made just for Ruth to crack home runs and entertain crowds. On this day, it didn't matter, as all Ruth could do was pop up.

He was getting frustrated and tossed his bat into the weeds. It showed in the field, too, as he threw to the wrong base. Sniffed the
Times
, “his fielding is decidedly good but his batting continues to be poor.” When people were making more of Ruth's fielding rather than his hitting, something was wrong. Huggins, afraid of putting him in proximity to any kind of wall or fence, was trying him out in center field. Although Ruth ran well for his size, he hardly had the speed for the position.

Largely, however, the press held back. They weren't down there to rip Ruth before the season started. That wasn't going to do anyone any good. But the truth was that Ruth was terrible thus far. He hadn't even hit a home run in batting practice. A year earlier, against live pitching, he'd hit seven in 10 at bats.

His slump continued when the Yankees started playing exhibitions, first with Brooklyn, and then in Miami, where they met the Cincinnati Reds, the newly crowned champions of the baseball. The Yankees returned to Jacksonville feeling pretty good, rapping the Reds 9–0 on March 16 behind five innings of shutout ball from Bob Shawkey—one of those “10-cent” players Barrow wasn't interested in, then coming from behind to beat them again 7–4.

Well, everyone was feeling good but Ruth. He went hitless in the first game, “his swings cutting the air with a mighty swish,” according to one report, and showed up for game two clearly under the weather, which meant under the lingering influence of some good Cuban rum currently flooding the city. He did manage a hit in the second game, his double starting the Yankee rally, but it was hardly the kind of hit the Colonels were playing $20,000 for, a hard ground ball that caromed off the shins of Reds first baseman Jake Daubert and then into no-man's-land in center field. Ruppert was none too pleased with Ruth's headache and promised the Yankees would never play another game in Miami.

It was seventeen long days, and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of batting practice swings before Ruth finally broke through. Even then, it came not in a game, but in practice, against a pitcher, Mario De Vitalis, on a brief tryout with the Yankees, someone who not only never made the major leagues, but pitched only two seasons in the minors. And, oh yeah, the wind was blowing so hard that Huggins canceled an intra-squad game scheduled for the afternoon.

Nevertheless, the papers finally had something to trumpet, and Ruth's home run, hit to dead center field where it allegedly landed 50 feet beyond a fence 428 feet from home plate, led everybody's coverage. The
Times
even said, “Ruth figures it's the second hardest he ever hit,” comparing it to his “550 foot” blast in Tampa.

Damon Runyon could hardly contain himself … or find the words, writing “What a swat it was. My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! My! Plumb over.” For the record, a blast worthy of 18 “Mys.” Had it landed atop the fence in right field, wobbled a bit, and then dropped over due to a housefly giving it a push he'd have been no less enthusiastic. It's what the people wanted.

But Ruth still wasn't happy. He wasn't right and he knew it. One day later the Yankees played the Robins in an exhibition. Ruth managed a single and even stole a base, but he also struck out twice, this time against real pitching.

Out in the left field bleachers, a fan had been letting Ruth have it all afternoon, calling him, in the newspaper's delicate euphemism, “a big piece of cheese,” likely referring to something with a more striking odor. He was particularly brutal after the last strikeout, and when the Yankees came in to bat in the ninth inning, Ruth decided he'd had enough.

He stalked down the line toward his tormentor, matching him word for word, and when the fan challenged Ruth to come into the stands, Ruth vaulted over the barricade and started after him. As he did, his nemesis pulled a knife.

Ernie Shore, sitting in street clothes in the stands nearby, jumped to Ruth's defense and quickly got between Ruth and the knife. The situation rapidly defused, but if not for Shore's quick thinking, Ruth could have gotten hurt.

It was just the kind of thing that had worried Frazee, that worried everyone invested in Ruth. Could he keep himself under control? Huston watched the whole thing, and after the game was none too pleased. “That kind of stuff has to be stopped right away,” he said. “If criticism down here gets under Ruth's skin what will he do in the big league parks?”

Ruth left March just as he entered it, all lamb and no lion. So far, he had been a colossal bust. When the Yankees first arrived in town, every fence board and light pole was plastered with notices of Ruth's arrival, an invitation to come out to the park and see “the Home Run King.” By April, those posters were tattered and no one was bothering to replace them. Jacksonville fans had turned out in droves for the first games, but with only a few days remaining before the Yankees broke camp to spend the better part of two weeks barnstorming north, enthusiasm had damped considerably.

It was April Fool's Day before Ruth hit another home run. Fans had to be reminded that it wasn't a joke, but had really happened, as the Yankees beat Brooklyn 6–2 in their seventh meeting of the spring.

They were still settling into their seats when Ruth came up in the first with a man on third. Al Mamaux threw a ball shoulder high and as William Macbeth described it, “he leaned against it.… There was the usual sharp crack of the bat, the usual hurtling of the ball, the usual craning of the necks.” It was a home run, what the papers called the first in a game ever hit at Barrs Field.

Hi Myers, Brooklyn's center fielder, cooperated. When he reached the place at the fence where the ball passed over, he scratched a Big X in the wood, as Runyon noted, at “The approximate point of exodus of the pill,” to commemorate Ruth's blast. As if inspired, Ruth played his best ball of the spring the rest of the game, making two fine running catches. The
New York Daily News
breathlessly announced, “all doubt as to whether batterin' behemoth Babe Ruth has lost his batting eye was dispelled today.” Speculation immediately centered on whether the ball would have made the center field bleachers at the Polo Grounds, but no one at the time was certain exactly how far from home that was—the
Times
said 385 feet, and estimated Ruth's drive at 415.