 |
| (Journal and Courier. June 13, 1920) |
Babe Ruth hit baseballs over fences, drank with reporters, stayed out all night, ate whatever was put in front of him, and treated most team rules as suggestions.
Managers
fined him. Baseball suspended him. His waistline kept getting bigger, and every
few years somebody decided he was finished.
Then
he’d hit another ball into the seats.
For
twenty years, Babe Ruth made a pretty good living doing things baseball players
weren’t supposed to do.
George
Herman Ruth Jr. was a wild kid. He skipped school, got into trouble, and drove
his parents nuts. When he was seven, they sent him to St. Mary’s Industrial
School for Boys in Baltimore.
St.
Mary’s was run by Catholic brothers and filled with poor, orphaned, and
troublesome boys. George cared little for rules and discipline, but he liked
baseball. One of the brothers, Matthias Boutlier, could hit a ball a long way,
and George watched him closely.
Pretty
soon, George could hit one a long way too.
Jack
Dunn of the Baltimore Orioles signed Ruth in 1914. George was nineteen and knew
little about the world outside St. Mary’s, so Dunn had to look after him. The
other players started calling him “Dunn’s babe.”
Eventually, it was just Babe.
The
funny thing is that the greatest home run hitter of his time started out as a
pitcher.
(Press and Sun-Bulletin. August 30, 1930)
And he was damn good.
The
Orioles were a minor-league team, and Dunn needed money, so he sold Babe to the
Boston Red Sox. Babe won 18 games in 1915, 23 the next year, and 24 in 1917. In
the World Series, he put together 29⅔ straight scoreless innings.
If
somebody had taken the bat away from Babe right there, he still would have been
a hell of a ballplayer.
Fortunately,
nobody did.
Baseball
in those days involved a lot of bunting, stealing bases, and poking the ball
into open spaces. Teams worked pretty hard to move a runner ninety feet at a
time.
Babe
had another idea. Hit the damn thing over everybody.
The
Red Sox started putting him in the outfield when he wasn’t pitching because
they wanted his bat in the lineup. In 1918, he hit 11 home runs and tied for
the league lead. The next year he hit 29.
Nobody
had ever hit that many home runs.
People
started showing up early just to watch batting practice. Babe would take
enormous swings and send balls into places where fans weren’t used to seeing
them land.
Babe
was turning the sport into an afternoon activity. Then the Red Sox sold him.
Boston
sent Ruth to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season for $100,000 and some
other financial arrangements. The Red Sox had been winning championships. After
Babe left, they wouldn’t win another World Series for 86 years.
The
Yankees hadn’t won any. Babe was about to change that.
He
hit 54 home runs in 1920.
A
year earlier, 29 had been the record. Now Babe hit 54. There were entire teams
that didn’t hit that many.
New
York loved him.
The
city had a pile of newspapers fighting for readers every morning, and Babe made
their job easy. If he didn’t hit two home runs, maybe he’d get thrown out of a
game. If he didn’t get thrown out, maybe he’d wreck a car, demand more money,
or turn up somewhere at three in the morning.
And
when nothing happened, reporters wrote about what he ate.
Babe’s
appetite became part of the show. Hot dogs, steaks, eggs, candy, soda, and
beer. The amounts got bigger every time the stories were told.
And Babe didn’t want to ruin a good story just because it wasn’t
true.
He
was also very good for business.
(The Evening World. August 9, 1920)
In 1921, Babe hit 59 home runs, and the Yankees won their first pennant. The crowds got so big that sharing the Polo Grounds with the New York Giants wasn’t going to work much longer.
So
the Yankees built their own place.
Yankee
Stadium opened in 1923, and Babe hit a home run on opening day. The place
became known as the House That Ruth Built.
It
was a pretty good name.
Babe
gave people plenty to watch away from the ballpark too. He liked women, booze
and fast cars. He stayed out until morning and believed sleep was something he
could catch up on after retirement.
Yankees
manager Miller Huggins tried to control him—with little success.
Huggins
was a small, serious man who wanted his players to follow the rules. Babe was a
large, unserious man who wanted to know where everybody was going after the
game.
The
Yankees fined him. Threatened him. Every once in a while somebody suspended
him.
Babe
kept going doing his thing.
In
1922, he lost his job as captain of the Yankees after arguing with an umpire,
throwing dirt at him, and then climbing into the stands after a heckler.
In
1925, Babe got sick during spring training and ended up in the hospital.
Newspapers called it “The Bellyache Heard ’Round the World.”
The
story was that Babe had eaten too many hot dogs and washed them down with too
much soda. The truth was probably more complicated, but that didn’t make nearly
as good a story.
He
missed a sizeable chunk of the season. The Yankees finished seventh. Babe was
thirty, overweight, and had been treating every night like it was somebody’s
birthday.
People
figured he was done. He came back in 1926 and hit 47 home runs.
Then
came 1927.
The
Yankees were loaded that year. Lou Gehrig was at first, Tony Lazzeri played
second, and Earle Combs was in center. They called the lineup Murderers’ Row.
Gehrig
drove in 175 runs. Babe hit 60 home runs. The Yankees won 110 games and swept
Pittsburgh in the World Series. Ruth’s 60 became one of those numbers everybody
knew. Even people who cared little about baseball.
Nobody
hit more until Roger Maris got to 61 in 1961.
Babe
was paid like a star, too. In 1930, the Yankees gave him $80,000, $5,000 more
than President Herbert Hoover was making. A reporter supposedly asked Babe what
he thought about earning more than the president.
“I
had a better year than he did.” Maybe Babe said it. Maybe the reporter helped.
Either way, Babe got the line.
That
was the thing about Ruth. Somewhere along the way, the real Babe and the
newspaper Babe got mixed together.
The
best example came in the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs.
The
Cubs bench was riding Babe. Babe was riding them back. The crowd at Wrigley
Field was giving him hell. During one at-bat, Babe held up his hand and pointed
somewhere. Then Charlie Root threw him a pitch.
(Press and Sun-Bulletin. May 15, 1929)
Babe crushed it into the center-field bleachers.
By
the time everybody got home, the story was that Babe had pointed to the exact
spot where he was going to hit the ball.
The
Called Shot.
Root
said it was nonsense. Other people said Babe had been pointing at the Cubs’
bench. Nobody could agree on exactly what happened.
Babe
wasn’t in a hurry to clear things up.
Why
would he?
“Babe
Ruth Gets Mad and Hits Home Run” was a good story. “Babe Ruth Tells Chicago
Where He’s Going to Hit the Ball and Then Does It” was a much better one.
For
all the drinking and screwing around, Babe had another side. He loved kids and
spent a lot of time visiting hospitals and orphanages. He signed baseballs, sat
with sick children, and sometimes promised a kid he’d hit a home run for him.
Some
of that made good newspaper copy. Babe knew it. But the affection seems to have
been real. Maybe he saw something of himself in those kids. He’d been seven
when his parents sent him away.
By
the early 1930s, the big guy was getting old. He was slower and heavier, and
the home runs weren’t coming as often. Babe wanted to manage when his playing
days were over, but nobody seemed interested.
The
Yankees let him go after the 1934 season. The Boston Braves signed him for 1935
and talked about an executive job. Maybe a chance to manage. Mostly, they
wanted Babe Ruth in a Braves uniform because it would sell tickets. Lots of
them..
Babe
eventually figured that out. He was forty and pretty much finished. But he had
one afternoon left.
On
May 25, 1935, the Braves played Pittsburgh at Forbes Field. Babe hit one home
run.
Then
another.
And
another.
The
third one went completely out of Forbes Field. It was number 714.
Five
days later, he played his last game.
Babe
finished with a .342 lifetime average and 714 home runs. And before becoming
the greatest home run hitter anybody had ever seen, he’d won 94 games as a
pitcher with a 2.28 ERA.
He
went into the Baseball Hall of Fame with its first class in 1936. After that,
Babe played golf, made appearances, and waited for the managing job he thought
would come.
It
never did.
In
1946, doctors found cancer around his throat and neck. The big man got thin.
The booming voice got weaker.
In
June 1948, Babe went back to Yankee Stadium for a ceremony marking the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the place.
He
put on his old uniform.
There’s
a famous photograph from that day. Babe is standing near home plate with the
number 3 on his back. His shoulders were narrow now, and he was leaning on a
baseball bat like a cane.
In
front of him was Yankee Stadium. The House That Ruth Built.
And
was full.
Babe
died two months later at 53. Tens of thousands of people came through Yankee
Stadium to see him one last time.
By
then, baseball had changed.
Maybe
half the Babe Ruth stories are bullshit. Maybe he didn’t eat as many hot dogs
as people said. Maybe he didn’t call his shot. And maybe reporters fixed up his
best lines before they hit the morning paper.
It
doesn’t matter. The good parts were true.
He
was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Then he became the greatest home run
hitter anybody had ever seen. He broke records, broke rules, and drove managers
crazy.
For
twenty years, people packed ballparks to see what Babe might do next.
Sometimes
he struck out. Sometimes he got thrown out. Sometimes he showed up with a
hangover bad enough to kill an ordinary man.
Then
somebody threw him a fastball. And everybody in the place shut up.
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