The Selling of the Babe (36 page)

The countdown began the next day. The
Times
noted, “Babe needs only twenty-eight more homers to beat the big record he set last season. At the rate of one a day that mark won't last long.” They weren't trying to be funny. And oh yeah, the Yankees won again, 7–1.

As if exhausted, Ruth went hitless the next two days, but then again, Boston pitchers were getting wise. The two clubs split the last two games of the series, and New York stayed out of the cemetery by taking three of five from Boston and pulling into fourth place.

Ruth's struggles weren't quite over, however, as the Yankees went on the road and Ruth, perhaps a little homer happy, seemed to press. After doubling twice off Walter Johnson in Washington to start the road trip, he went hitless in his next four games and his batting average dropped to .210. But it was only a temporary lull. When the Yankees returned to the Polo Grounds on May 11, so did the Babe. It was September 1919 all over again, not only for Ruth, but increasingly for a lot of other guys, too.

On May 11 against Chicago, Ruth came up in the first and belted the ball into the right field bleachers at the Polo Grounds, only the second ball ever hit there. In the third, he banged one off the center field fence, 430 some feet away, and only the fact that Chicago center fielder Happy Felsch was playing halfway to the Bronx kept Ruth from circling the bases—he settled for a triple. In the fifth, he smacked a second home run into the upper grandstand in right. Ruth accounted for five of New York's six runs in the 6–5 win.

Roger Peckinpaugh, who hit a home run into the left field bleachers, accounted for the other and Chicago scored when Happy Felsch did the same thing. Although neither hit was as far as any of Ruth's shots, they were each more than 300 feet. For the day, Ruth and his other home run companions accounted for more than a quarter mile of hits and four home runs.

That was the kind of thing that just didn't happen—or at least, hadn't happened, except by some fluke in some bandbox. These were all legitimate home runs. If there was any question that baseball had entered a new, lively ball era, that question was answered.

It wasn't just the ball either, or that pitchers were no longer allowed to scuff it. In the Polo Grounds, in particular, the large crowds made it increasingly difficult to retrieve foul balls hit into the stands, still a common practice in some parks, and with fewer players just trying to make contact, but swinging freely, more and more balls were being fouled off and lost. That meant a new ball had to be put in play ten, fifteen, even twenty times a game. Only a few years before, games sometimes went from beginning to end with only a couple of balls. Not anymore.

The baseballs were not just harder and livelier. Now that they weren't being spit on with tobacco juice and rubbed into the ground, they were brighter, whiter, and easier to see. The age-old practice of selecting a pitcher due to lighting conditions passed without notice. Hitters for the first time could actually see the seams on the ball, and get that split-second tipoff whether the pitch was a breaking ball or a fastball.

Pitchers hated using the new balls. They were often slick, and hard to grip. With the dead ball, savvy pitchers knew how to raise the seams and/or scuff the surface to help their breaking pitches. Forced to use a brand-new or nearly new baseball all the time, a lot of pitchers discovered their breaking ball wasn't as good as they thought it was. The hitters found that out, too. They saw a lot more hanging curveballs and a lot more straight fastballs. Speed, rather than movement, was suddenly at a premium. A lot of pitchers didn't have enough on the ball.

The runs came in bunches, and so did the home runs and other long hits. The next day the Yankees pounded Chicago 14–8, the kind of score that used to happen to a team only a couple times a year, but now seemed to take place every week. Asked one paper after the game, “Naturally the question arises ‘was Ruth at bat all the time?'” He wasn't, but his style of play was, and he still hit a home run—into the second deck in right field again. Ho-hum. So did the Yankees' Aaron Ward. A new promotion gave Ruth a new pair of socks after every homer. Before long, he'd be wearing a new pair after every game.

After Ruth singled later in the game a reporter offered that “it is a good thing there is no home run hitters union for if there was Ruth would probably be heavily fined for such a puny hit.” But the fans seemed little bored. After Ruth's last hit, with the Yankees leading 14–5, the crowd started to clear out. If Ruth wasn't going to bat again, why stay?

Ruth was thrown out of the next contest for arguing a call, but the Yankee pitcher, Jack Quinn, picked up the cudgel and hit a home run before 25,000 fans. The 2–0 win—the players must have been exhausted from running the bases the day before—lifted the Yankee record to 12–11. They'd never fall under .500 for the rest of the year. Unlike the 1919 Red Sox, there would be no burying this team.

Even when they lost, they won, or at least Ruppert and Huston did. The first place Indians came into town on Sunday, and the fine weather, Babe Ruth, a four-game Yankees winning streak, and the novelty of Sunday baseball brought out nearly every fan in the five boroughs and even a few more than that. But really, it was mostly Ruth. Apart from Sunday baseball, all those other things had happened before and there had never been a crowd like this.

The first game drew what was then the largest crowd in the history of the Polo Grounds, and the largest in the history of New York, which meant the largest in the history of baseball, or pretty close to it, the tenant Yankees far outdrawing their landlord. By 2:30 there were more than 38,000 fans inside the ballpark and the game was still an hour off. They locked the gates and in the next hour between 10,000 and 15,000 blocked the streets, looking for a way in. Late-arriving sportswriters showed their credentials and were then told to scale a fence to get inside. Worried club officials feared that if they opened a gate to let them in they might never get it closed again.

Had Ruth blasted a home run, the ballpark might have fallen apart. He didn't, contributing only a ninth inning double, but by then the Indians, who scored five first inning runs, had the game in hand. That actually worked out pretty well for the Yankee coffers. After the Indians jumped out to the big lead, enough fans left the park early that the Yanks were able to reopen the gates and let several thousand more fans pay for the privilege of wedging themselves inside. Official attendance may have only been 38,500, but the club sold well over 40,000 tickets.

Although Ruth only had five home runs, the newspapers breathlessly reported that he was ahead of his record pace in 1919, when to this point in that season he had hit only one. But Ruth wasn't doing himself any favors. He pulled something over the weekend and had to sit out the next four ballgames. Or maybe he was sick. The papers couldn't decide and the sportswriters either didn't ask or didn't care. He could have been in a car wreck, been punched in the nose, or lost in a suburban bedroom. Whatever. He didn't play again until the following Sunday against the Browns, when another huge crowd of almost 30,000 turned out. Never before in the history of baseball had a team seen such crowds. It was as if every day was the World Series and it was only mid-May.

“Babe Ruth Makes Sick Ball Game Well” read one headline later. He returned with “violent health” and in the sixth inning, with the Yankees trailing 2–1, Ruth ended it with yet another blast onto the grandstand roof, causing a storm of straw hats to rain down on the field. Then the Browns' Baby Doll Jacobson hit a long home run as well, giving headline writers some fun fitting Babe and Baby Doll into the same head. Ruth inspired everyone.

Scientific baseball was starting to disappear, the Great Plains bison of baseball. In the last full season, 1917, American League teams had combined for 1,268 stolen bases and 1,731 sacrifice hits as they scratched out an average of 3.6 runs a game per team, while hitting only 133 home runs. In 1920, they would steal only 751 bases and complete 1,624 sacrifices while averaging an additional run per game and hitting 369 home runs. Ever so slowly, teams were learning to wait for the home run. In this, the Yankees were several years ahead of their competition.

Ruth finished the month in a flourish. After collecting the Yankees' only two hits in a loss to the Tigers on May 24, he homered in the final two games of the home stand, first putting the Tigers under with a first inning home run, then adding an exclamation point with an eighth inning blast in game two, both Yankee victories.

With the team scheduled to embark on a short, four-game road trip to Boston, the crowd at the Polo Grounds acted as if they might die of longing before Ruth returned. Everything he did solicited cheers, and everyone was running out of ways to say it, but Ruth was the most amazing thing that had ever happened in the game. One paper offered that the opposition needed three extra outfielders, one in the stands, another on the roof, and a third parked outside, just to have a chance. When Ruth hit his second home run, he doffed his cap at least a dozen times between home plate and the dugout. In the papers Ty Cobb, heretofore the greatest player in the game, got nary a mention. It was as if he didn't exist. Ruth eclipsed everyone else.

There was never any love lost between the two men, each emblematic of a different age and style, as Ruth's earlier statement to
The Sporting News
indicated. But Ruth recognized both Cobb's talent and his personality. Of the Tiger outfielder, Ruth reportedly once said “Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit.” Cobb was less forgiving. He thought Ruth was black, a rather common belief both among Southerners (as well as in the African American community, which claimed him as their own), and as a result Cobb generally dismissed his talents. He couldn't stand it that Ruth was now considered the game's greatest. That had long been Cobb's place, but no more.

Ruth and the Yankees capped off the month with the trip to Boston, but Ruppert and Huston must have already been over the moon. In 22 home dates at the Polo Grounds, the Yankees had already drawn nearly a quarter of a million fans, what the Philadelphia A's would draw all season. In ticket sales alone, conservatively, the ball club had grossed somewhere above $300,000. That was already enough to cover their payroll, to pay Ruth, to pay their rent to the Giants, and put some money in the bank. In addition, they still had another 50 home games to play. Baseball was suddenly more lucrative than beer had ever been.

The triple bank shot had worked. Everything fell into place. Johnson had been all but defeated. Ruth had made the Yankees a financial success. On March 31, Frazee purchased the Harris Theatre. On May 3, he signed a purchase and sale agreement to acquire Fenway Park and simultaneously settled his debt with Lannin. On May 22, just as the mortgage with Ruppert was being executed, the Giants, outmaneuvered, suddenly decided to extend the Yankees' lease another year. On May 25, at long last, the mortgage on Fenway from the Yankees closed. The only residual effect of the war would be a continuing chill between the Insurrectos and the Loyal Five. Over the next three years, the Insurrectos would be frozen out by the rest of the league, forced to trade almost exclusively with one another. The Sox and Yankees would complete seven trades during that time, and although some would use the deals as evidence that Frazee was giving the Yankees a gift, when one considers the deals in context, and compares the players' values and WAR at the time of the deals, most were equitable.

The Red Sox, unfortunately, would soon take on the Yankees' hoodoo. The Yankees went into Boston on Thursday, May 27, for four games, culminating in a doubleheader on Saturday. Babe Ruth was not just the biggest name in baseball, but just about the biggest name in the country. Although Boston had cooled after their quick start, at 21–9 the Ruthless Red Sox still led the American League, with the Yankees five games back, in fourth place, 17–15. Maybe the Red Sox really didn't need Ruth.

Their fans didn't. If Frazee had thought Ruth's return to Boston would mean a sellout crowd every time he played, he was disappointed, as Fenway wasn't even half full for the Thursday contest. They missed a gem.

Ruth was magnificent, cracking two home runs. One, a no-doubter to deep right field left Harry Hooper frozen, still as a statue, hands on his knees as the ball carried over his head. The second went to deep left center, where it struck the top of the left field wall out toward the flagpole and then bounced over Lansdowne Street. The crowd cheered Boston—except when Ruth came to bat, and New York knocked the Red Sox out of first place with a 6–1 win.

They hit them on their way down the next day, too, before another 10,000 fans, as Ruth remained silent with only a single to show for his effort. It was another cheap hit, as the papers noted that had the outfield not been playing so deep, the ball would have easily been caught.

Finally, on Saturday, Fenway Park was full, so full that the crowd stood behind ropes in the outfield as nearly 30,000 fans turned out for the doubleheader. Although the crowds to see Ruth were somewhat disappointing, for the season they would still account for about 130,000, or nearly one third of Boston's gate.

Ruth did not disappoint. Now, it seemed he never did. The Yankees swept both games and Ruth knocked another home run, this one to left, 20 feet above the clock atop the wall.

And if that were not enough, another record crowd followed Ruth to the ballpark on Memorial Day back at the Polo Grounds. The Colonels did not mess around, turning the doubleheader against Washington into a split admission, one game in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Ruth went hitless in the first contest before 11,000 fans as the Yankees won anyway. Instead, Ruth waited until the stands were packed with nearly another 40,000 in the afternoon contest before he provided an exclamation point to the most amazing month a home run hitter had ever had to that point in the entire history of baseball.