The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (27 page)

Or was he? The doctor said that the great man would be better in three or four days and might even be ready for the Yanks’ opener on Tuesday at the Stadium, knowing the great man’s recuperative powers. The three or four days passed, and the opener took place, and, alas, the recuperative powers did not seem to be working. He still ran a fever. His stomach still bothered him.

Here the fog rolled in. He had a medical problem, which never was adequately revealed. He had an operation on April 17, that much was certain, the scar on his abdomen being visible later to his teammates in the locker room. The nature of the operation was what was in doubt.

The hospital, Dr. King at the podium, talked about an abscess, an infected area, in the stomach that had to be treated. The hospital never deviated from this diagnosis, which led to the popular thought that piles of hot dogs and gallons of soda pop, all part of a general gluttony, had sent the Sultan to his knees. This served the public well, a cautionary tale for mothers to tell their indulgent children.

Baseball people always whispered a more titillating story involving gluttony of another kind. The Babe had syphilis. The Babe had gonorrhea. The Babe had any—maybe every—disease ever associated with carnal moments. Ed Barrow whispered this to at least one reporter. Claire Hodgson stopped short of naming diseases but years later talked about secrecy and “different mores” when the operation took place.

Possibly some other situation altogether could have been involved, some hernia or rupture or some need for a colostomy bag for a time, some kind of nether-region difficulties that no one wanted to detail for strangers. The net result, whatever the problem, was that the Babe stayed in St. Vincent’s Hospital for a lot longer than expected. And Helen soon joined him.

On April 24, she was admitted for “a nervous condition from worrying about her husband” and put in a ward two floors above that of her husband. Again, the fog rolled in. Was that nervous condition helped along by the discovery that her husband had a sexually transmitted disease? Fog. Claire Hodgson also was on the fringe of this situation. She couldn’t see her lover, the visitors’ list being restricted to Helen, Dorothy, and Barrow, but were there phone calls? Hodgson had spent that time with the Babe in Hot Springs a few days before Helen and Dorothy had spent time with him in St. Petersburg. Had Helen found out about Claire? A doctor wasn’t needed here to see that something was ready to burst.

The Babe made his first public appearance on May 2, when a group of sportswriters was allowed to visit. Propped up in his bed and wearing white pajamas, he said he felt “weak as a kitten,” like “a featherweight,” and said his problem was no more than his yearly battle with the flu. He said indigestion had no part in his sickness.

“That indigestion stuff is a lot of bunk!” he emphasized. “Every time anything happens to a fellow they say he’s overeating. Why, I don’t eat more than two-thirds of the club. I don’t mean two-thirds put together. I mean man-to-man. I’ve had indigestion for ten years.”

He didn’t venture to Yankee Stadium for the first time until May 19, six weeks after he was stricken in Asheville. He got into a traveling gray Yankees uniform that sagged around his 6-foot-2 frame, down now maybe as low as 180 pounds, and took batting practice served up by his chauffeur, Thomas Harvey, who also wore a Yankees uniform. It was baby steps. He managed to hit only one ball into the stands, was exhausted, and returned to the hospital for the night.

This workout routine continued until his release on May 24. His return to the lineup didn’t come until June 1 at the Stadium. It was an awkward moment. The other players were careful around him. They were convinced that his problem had been venereal disease and didn’t want to use the same towel or touch where he had touched.

“The club had to have a male nurse in the dugout to make sure he didn’t go against the doctor’s instructions,” pitcher Bob Shawkey told Ken Sobol years later. “You know, he wasn’t allowed to shower with the other players or anything like that.”

Walter Johnson was on the mound for the Senators, not exactly an easy way for Ruth to return, and he was 0-for-2 with a walk in six innings of a 5–2 Yankees loss. His test of stamina came after the walk in the fourth inning, when Bob Meusel tripled behind him. Ruth pounded around the bases and clearly gave out on the stretch from third to home, first slowing, then throwing himself at the plate as a big, rolling bundle, easily tagged out by catcher Muddy Ruel.

Westbrook Pegler wrote that Ruth was “out both ways” when he lay on the ground for a minute to catch his breath after the play ended. Pegler also said the Babe looked “weak and wan” and “had wasted away to a couple of carloads since he developed that national ache in his stuffing” and now resembled “a bag of oats on two toothpicks.”

The writers were glad to have him back.

The Babe had played on only one bad club in his career, the 1919 Red Sox under Ed Barrow. He now was on his second. The Yankees had fallen apart in his absence. They were thirteen and a half games out of first place on June 1, the day he returned. Teams sometimes seem to get old overnight. This was one of them. Miller Huggins already was adjusting his lineup, talking about plans for “next year.”

The addition of Ruth to this sinking ship was not a positive. Not for the team. Not for Huggins. Not for Ruth. Helen was still in St. Vincent’s, wouldn’t leave for a month after her husband left, and now the Sudbury farm was up for sale. Something had happened. The marriage unofficially was finished, and the Babe was liberated. A liberated Babe Ruth on a bad team with an undersized manager he didn’t respect was a convergence of meteorological conditions that meant trouble. The storm soon began.

The admonitions of the many doctors and well-wishers were forgotten with a return to a semblance of health. Two weeks, three weeks, one month back, and the Home Run King was back in overdrive off the field. If anything, he was even more earnest in his pursuit of all pleasures. Even his teammates were stunned at the increase in his activity.

“The ballplayers sensed Ruth’s tension, realized that something frightening was happening within that gigantic legend that Ruth had become,” Waite Hoyt would write in a short 1948 book called
Babe Ruth As I Knew Him,
a frank account of life with the Babe. “His fabulous personal escapades were shaded with pathos, for the Babe no longer was sampling life. He was wolfing it down in immense, oversized doses. Although we all recognized his undiminished baseball genius, we knew we were witnessing the gradual disintegration of Ruth, the man.”

He was not pleasant to be around…when he was around. He was just running, running, running. He and Hoyt weren’t even talking. Ruth had been told something that Hoyt allegedly said, probably on the subject of Claire Hodgson, and promised the pitcher he would never talk to him again. He would, however, still shout at him and fight him.

A fly ball was hit to right field at the Stadium and dropped in front of Ruth for a base hit. Hoyt, pitching, thought Ruth had pulled up short on the ball, dogged it. Hoyt put his hands on his hips, looked at Ruth, and shook his head as if to say, “You should have caught the ball, you big baboon.” Ruth noticed. Back on the bench at the end of the inning, he told Hoyt never to show him up again. Back in the clubhouse after the game, the argument started again.

Hoyt, knocked out of the game, already had showered and was naked in front of his locker. Ruth was in uniform. He called Hoyt a bunch of names and said he would punch the pitcher in the nose.

“Well, you’re not tied,” Hoyt said.

Ruth attacked, taking a kick with his spikes still on his feet. Punches were exchanged. Poor Miller Huggins jumped in the middle, took a couple of punches, but broke up the fight. That was life with the Babe.

Huggins had become more and more distressed with his star. The manager’s history of confrontations with Ruth was not good. They argued all the time, back and forth, semi-comical stuff, but Huggins seldom was able to voice his real thoughts. Every time he was ready to say something, to truly read out the Caliph of Clout, the caliph would unload another couple of clouts. An oft-told story centered on the manager’s long dissertation with traveling secretary Mark Roth one day about how this was it, the end, he was going to say something to Ruth the next time he saw him. A game was played, Ruth hit the big homer to win it, then he walked past Huggins and Roth.

RUTH
: Hey, keed.

HUGGINS
: Hey, Babe.

Ruth kept walking. Roth asked Huggins why he didn’t say anything to the slugger. Huggins replied, “I just did.”

This was different now. Huggins hired a private detective to trail Ruth in Chicago and St. Louis on a western road trip in the last half of August. The report from Chicago was not good. As expected, Ruth was out every night. Barrow later told Fred Lieb, the writer, that the detective reported that Ruth had been with six different women in one night in Chicago. Huggins waited.

St. Louis might have been Ruth’s favorite town on the road. Things happened in St. Louis. Marshall Hunt told the tale of a layover in St. Louis, a few hours before catching the next train to Hot Springs. Ruth was met at the station by a bunch of fans and obliged them with autographs as he and Hunt made their way to a taxi stand. He was still signing, still surrounded, as he and Hunt got into the taxi. The driver asked where they were going.

“The House of Good Shepard,” the Babe boomed.

Everyone in the crowd knew what that meant. The House of Good Shepard was the most famous whorehouse in the city. The people started chanting, “House of Good Shepard, House of Good Shepard,” as the taxi took off, the Babe smiling and waving. He was greeted with equal hospitality at the establishment itself, where he was known to one and all. He and Hunt had a terrific dinner, the Babe availed himself of the product once, twice, “and I think he got a free one, one on the house,” Hunt said. They were back at the station for the nine o’clock train. That was St. Louis.

“The House of Good Shepard,” Hunt said, “served the best steaks in the world.”

Huggins waited. By August 29, the Yankees had lost 10 of 14 games on the trip. Ruth was 12-for-49 in those games, four homers, a .245 batting average. He had stayed out all night in St. Louis and didn’t arrive until an hour before game time. Huggins and Waite Hoyt, the starting pitcher for the day, were the only people in the clubhouse.

“Ruth had white flannel pants and a blue, sort of navy, jacket on,” Hoyt said. “And a panama hat. Tan and white shoes, black and white, I forget which, and little Huggins was in there and said, ‘Don’t get dressed, Babe, don’t put on your uniform.’

“What are you talking about?” the Babe said.

“I’ll tell you, Babe, I’ve talked it over, and I’ve come to the decision you’re fined $5,000 for missing curfew last night and being late today,” the manager said. “You’re fined and suspended. The suspension runs the rest of the season.”

Ruth, speechless at first, became very angry. He said he would talk to Kenesaw Mountain Landis about this. He would talk to Col. Ruppert. We’d see about this fine and suspension. Ruppert had handed back a $1,000 fine Huggins tried to impose on Ruth earlier in the season.

“No, I talked to Ruppert first,” Huggins said. “Ruppert agreed that a suspension was the best thing to do.”

Huggins told Ruth that Mark Roth had a ticket for him for a train back to New York that night. Ruth stormed out of the clubhouse. He was walking out of Sportsman’s Park in his white flannel pants and blue, sort of navy, jacket and panama hat as Ray Gillespie, a young sportswriter for the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, was arriving.

“Where are you going?” Gillespie asked.

“I’m going to New York,” the Babe said.

“You’re not going to play?”

“No, I’m going to New York.”

“How come?”

“You better ask Hug.”

Gillespie went to the Yankees dugout and found Urban Shocker, whom he knew from the time Shocker played with the Browns. Shocker introduced him to Huggins as “a good guy.” Huggins gave him the story. The Babe was fined $5,000 and suspended indefinitely for “insubordination.”

Gillespie hurried to a telephone. The
Globe-Democrat
, like most newspapers, put out a great number of editions. This story could hit the streets within the hour. Except his bosses didn’t believe him. The idea of a $5,000 fine was almost inconceivable. The managing editor finally came on the line. He told Gillespie to go back and check with Huggins again. Gillespie checked. He reported back that Huggins said all of the same things all over again. The managing editor grunted.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked.

“What?” Gillespie replied.

“It means if this story is incorrect, you’re fired.”

The
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
had the scoop.

The second Babe Ruth public melodrama of the season had begun. The fine and suspension opened the door to the Babe’s entire life. The protection from sportswriters who felt that a player’s life existed only on the field was gone. Claire Hodgson’s name and picture were in the paper immediately, and reporters and photographers were camped outside her apartment house on West 79th Street. Helen was under siege at the apartment she and the Babe had rented at the Concourse Plaza on the Grand Concourse. Tabloid fun had begun for everyone.

“I know absolutely nothing about that matter,” Helen told reporters when asked about the “New York widow.” “And I don’t care to talk on that subject for publication. However, I intend to discuss these matters with my husband when he returns.”

“Early yesterday afternoon a limousine drove up to the curb before the apartment house,” the
Daily News
reported from West 79th Street. “In the limousine were Eugene and Hubert Merritt, Mrs. Hodgson’s brothers. A slim young woman, heavily veiled, but easily recognized as Mrs. Hodgson, slipped into the waiting car, the curtains were jerked down and the car whizzed away.”

Unnamed sources appeared from everywhere to tell their name-filled stories. The stories were about how the Babe had changed with the advent of money, about how much he drank, about how he had been involved with a well-known shimmy dancer, about how Helen once had slapped the Babe in the face after he’d bet $1,000 on a race, drunk, at the dog track in St. Petersburg. There was more than one story that Helen had been preparing to file for a separation agreement.