The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (32 page)

McGovern reported a favorite Hollywood moment. The producers of the film wanted to fill tiny Wrigley Field with fans for one day of shooting, so they placed an ad in the paper saying that the Babe would give a home run exhibition for an hour before the filming. The ad worked, and the stands were filled when the Babe came to the plate. The boxer-ballplayers were sent to the field to shag. A pitcher was stationed at the mound and instructed to throw only fat and straight strikes. The show began.

“For one hour the Babe stood at the plate banging balls over the fence,” McGovern said. “The pitcher started with 12 dozen balls and when they called a halt there were only 19 left, which means that the balance were scattered around the surrounding real estate.”

Yes, the Babe was ready. He had done what he was told to do.

“The poor Babe,” Marshall Hunt said, remembering the California trip. “He saw all this stuff around—the most beautiful women in the world—and he couldn’t have any of it. Artie put him to bed at nine o’clock in the midst of all of this unless he had to work over at the studio. Broke the poor Babe’s heart. He never was in the midst of so much and got so little, you see.

“The phone rang all the time, and finally Artie got permission from Ed Barrow to tell the operator to lie like hell, so Babe was under wraps for six or seven weeks.”

Hunt was not in training and could take advantage of the situation. He rolled around the town in the chauffeur-driven limousine the studio had at his disposal 24 hours per day. He went to other motion picture lots and watched other movies being made. He ate at the best restaurants, played golf, met interesting people, roared through the Raymond Chandler streets and boulevards of Los Angeles that soon would become world-famous as the city and the movie industry grew. Even more than in New York, there was the feeling here of growth, expansion, possibility.

Hunt wound up one night at the home of Christy Walsh’s father in the Hollywood hills. The view from the living room was the great spill of lights of the city. It was like looking down from a cloud. The cloud had plush leather couches and good food and drink. What could be more beautiful? The days went past, he said, “a mile a minute.”

One night he stayed in his room at the hotel to read. A knock came at the door. The Babe and Artie had someplace to go. Alas, the Babe had promised to sign 250 baseballs for some charity, but now didn’t have time. Could Marshall sign them? He went to the Babe’s room and signed the Babe’s name 250 times, leaving the balls on the bed. The Babe was grateful, especially because Hunt had become quite proficient at copying his name, but in the morning he had some second thoughts. What kind of havoc could someone wreak if he were a good forger?

“Don’t get too good with that signature, kid,” the Babe advised Hunt over breakfast.

The few bits of solid news from the motion picture capital involved finances. Walsh convinced the Babe at last to invest in some annuities, and an announcement was made on February 7, the Babe’s supposed 33rd birthday, that he had “fined himself” $1,000 per each year of his life and invested the money. It was another visible sign of his reluctant maturity (the Babe would later try to take out some of the money and be distressed that he couldn’t get at it), and another sign of great financial times. Even the Babe was investing!

A more substantial story concerned the Babe’s contract. How much did he want? How much would be get? He had played for $52,000 a year for the past five years, and when the Yankees sent a contract for the same figure for 1927 to the Plaza, he quickly sent it back unsigned. Ty Cobb recently had signed for a reported $75,000 with the Philadelphia A’s (a figure later determined to be $60,000), and conjecture soon whirred in New York about how much the Babe would want and how hard it would be for Col. Ruppert to sign him.

The Babe said nothing as he finished work on the movie. The last week featured 3:00
A
.
M
. bedtimes and 7:00
A
.
M
. Artie McGovern wake-up calls, everything in a rush because the star had to be finished by noon on February 26 to make his train back to the East Coast. Everyone associated with the production agreed that the Babe had worked hard. Ethel Shannon, an actress in the film, called the Babe “a second Roscoe Arbuckle.” She said Anna Q. had been upset because the Babe was too funny. Director Wilde said Ruth had added “at least six belly laughs” to the finished product. It was movie talk, typical overpraise as part of the promotion, but the Babe loved it. He talked about a possible movie career.

On February 25, the day before he left, he finally sent a letter to the Colonel with his demands. He gave a copy to Hunt, who printed it in the
News.
Ruth wanted $100,000 per season for two years, plus an extra $7,750 to pay his back fines. He called the Yankees’ offer of $52,000 “an insult” and said the team more than made his salary back in just the exhibition games it forced him to play during the year. He lamented that he was caught, alas, in the contractual bind that was part of baseball.

“If I were in any other business I would probably receive a new contract at higher salary without request,” the Babe wrote in part. “Or rival employers would bid for my services. Baseball law forces me to work for the New York club or remain idle, but it does not prevent a man from being paid for his value as ‘a business getter’ as well as for his mechanical services.”

“My demands are not ex…, ex…what’s the word?” Babe said to Hunt.

“Exorbitant?” Hunt suggested.

“Yeah, that’s the word,” Babe said.

The train ride back to New York on the Union Pacific had all the grandeur of any trip taken by a head of any important state. The studio put together a suitable bon voyage celebration at the station, and the Sultan posed for the appropriate pictures and repaired to the drawing room for the long trip back to his kingdom of Swat. Marshall Hunt recorded the glory of it all.

“Tonight the gargantuan Bambino is on his way to New York, not the Bambino of several years ago who was on the direct route to the poorhouse,” he wrote. “A new Bambino, who saluted the milling crowd, a businessman, a gentleman of opulence off to confer with Col. Jacob Ruppert about the greatest contract ever associated with baseball!”

Since the end of the ’26 season—actually, since the end of the ’25 season, when he went hunting with Shawkey and then showed up at Artie McGovern’s door—the Babe had been in perpetual motion. His life was a public exhibition. Virtually no day passed when his whereabouts were not reported in some newspaper somewhere.

He went from that final out in the ’26 Series, that ill-fated attempted stolen base, directly into a two-week barnstorming tour with Gehrig in the Northeast. He went from the barnstorming tour directly into his 12-week vaudeville tour on the Pantages circuit for $100,000, the largest sum to date ever paid for a headliner.

He’d been to cities across the country and up and down the West Coast, following the usual routines, endorsing different autos and Victrolas from Seattle to San Diego, visiting the local newspapers to put on an eyeshade to “edit” the next edition, standing on the stage and doing his routine. He’d “practiced” with the East-West football squads in San Francisco. He’d been arrested on a bogus child-labor charge for giving baseballs to kids onstage in Long Beach. He’d hunted and fished and played golf everywhere. Golf was a constant.

When he was asked about all the golf he played, he replied, “You see, divot-digging and slicing the white-washed walnuts keeps the avoirdupois down.” At least that was what the reporter said he said.

At his arrival in L.A. on January 2 for his week of vaudeville shows, three shows daily, four on Sunday, he was greeted by Mayor George Cryer, football coaches Pop Warner of Stanford and Howard Jones of Southern Cal, president Harry Williams of Pacific Coast Light, and the local heads of the Shriners, Elks, and Knights of Columbus. A fan in the crowd yelled, “See you in Tijuana, Babe,” and he replied, “Like hell you will.” At least that was what the reporter said he said. He was right. All through the weeks of vaudeville, then through the weeks of filming, the big man never did travel below the border.

One of the other travelers on the train back to New York was Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson himself, the publisher of the
Daily News.
Patterson had been in L.A. on business, and Hunt bumped into him walking toward the dining car. The Captain wanted to know what Hunt had been doing in L.A. Suppressing an urge to tell his boss to read the paper (the stories had been there every day for three weeks), he said that he had been covering the Babe and now was traveling home with him.

“Babe Ruth is on the train?” Patterson said. “I’ve always wanted to meet him.”

“It could be arranged,” Hunt said.

“When would that be?”

“Right now if you like.”

The Captain told Hunt to bring the Babe to his drawing room. He said he was a bit tired, so the visit couldn’t last long. He would give Hunt a sign that the time was finished, and Hunt would guide the visitor out of the room. This was fine except the Babe came to the room and the conversation began and then would not end. Hunt kept waiting for a sign that never came. After various subjects had been visited, including the Captain’s baseball career and the problems of running a newspaper, Hunt finally said
he
was tired and had to go to bed.

“They just hit it off together,” he said. “The Babe had reached a point where he could talk with anybody.”

Hunt reported the Babe’s progress across the country. In Salt Lake City, the great man sparred for six rounds at the train station with Artie, to the delight of fans. In North Platte, Nebraska, he predicted the Yankees would be an even better team with the development of Koenig and Lazzeri. He said the A’s would be the team to beat. In Chicago, where a crowd gathered at the station, someone asked if he really thought he would get $100,000 a year for two years, plus the $7,750.

“I hope to tell you,” the Babe replied.

His arrival at Grand Central Station on the morning of March 2 was another event. Marshall Hunt described the scene.

“The Twentieth Century coming to an aristocratic stop,” he wrote. “A flurrying, hastening group in the station platform gloom. Photographers, reporters, porters, that flurry; the photographer to photograph the epochal home coming, the reporters to ask questions answered by the Babe a hundred times before.

“The Babe grew impatient. His departure was sudden. A great limousine—and Babe was off to visit Mrs. Ruth in St. Vincent’s Hospital. A brief visit. (Helen had gone into the hospital again for nervous exhaustion.) Mrs. Ruth was recovering rapidly. An order for a great bunch of flowers.

“O, there is tenderness in the heart of the Bambino, the gargantuan figure who is rude to umpires now and then. A streak up 3rd Ave. and the Babe had been hustled to the Ruppert brewery at 91st Street.”

The negotiations with the Colonel and Ed Barrow at the brewery, despite all the speculation, took less than an hour and a half, and most of that time was spent simply chatting. The parties agreed to a three-year deal at $70,000 per year. The Colonel told reporters that he was satisfied. The Babe said he also was satisfied. Done. He also told reporters he had invested $15,000 with Artie McGovern to open a string of gymnasiums on both the East and West Coasts. He used himself as a prime example of what the gyms could do. “If you’re a heavyweight and want to be a welter, come see us,” the Babe said.

The newspapers had great fun with the large new numbers in the contract. It was estimated the Babe would make $4.33 a minute if he played all 154 games and each game lasted one hour and 45 minutes. If he kept at the 48-home-run pace of ’26, he would earn $1,458.33 per home run. Every day he would earn $454.54, enough for a trip to Europe…every week, $3,304.53, enough for a new auto…every month, $11,666.66, enough for a new home…every year, $70,000, enough to support 20 large families.

The Babe Comes Home
would open during the 1927 season. It was far from a hit, though it received some favorable reviews. The Babe liked it and later said that he saw it ten times in various cities. Another movie, made on the Warner Bros. lot at roughly the same time, opened in October 1927 with larger implications. It featured that other famous onetime St. Mary’s Industrial School resident, Al Jolson, and was called
The Jazz Singer
. A sound-synchronization system called Vitaphone allowed the actors to talk for the first time. Jolson delivered the famous first line of movie history: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothing yet.” Within two years, the silent movie era was finished, and with it the careers of many of the actors who worked with the Babe, including Anna Q. Nilsson.

The Babe’s career was another story. Three nights after he returned from Hollywood he was on a train from Penn Station to St. Petersburg and the start of spring training. He was off to the greatest season that any baseball team ever would have.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

G
RAHAM
M
C
N
AMEE
was on the air again. The same excited voice that described the strikeout of Tony Lazzeri by Alexander the Great and the failed stolen base attempt by the Babe to end the 1926 World Series was heard around the country on June 13, 1927. The location of the microphone was different this time.

The first-place Yankees were playing the Cleveland Indians at the Stadium, but McNamee was at Pier A on the New York docks. The noise was even louder than it had been at the Series. Boat whistles and the sound of airplanes were added to the cheers, the roar of the people. Pandemonium, it seemed, made a fine radio background.

“This is an exquisite parade of boats,” McNamee shouted. “There must be 150 or 200 of them coming up here to show Col. Charles Lindbergh what a New York welcome consists of…. The fireboats are sending up mountains of water high into the air…. I cannot hear my own voice….

“This is the greatest thing in the history of the world to be given any one man…. The sky is full of airplanes…. Lindbergh is on deck…. He is without uniform…. He is standing on the deck of the approaching
Malcolm
…. There she docks…. The din is something terrific. Every steamer is blowing…. In every window in lower New York people are shouting.”

The Babe had competition for the fickle hearts of America. They had been given, at least for the moment, to the boyish, 25-year-old son of a former congressman from Minnesota who sat down in the wicker seat of his tiny airplane on May 20 at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, took off into the morning mist, and didn’t leave that seat for 33 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds, when he landed at the field at Le Bourget, outside Paris, France.

No one-man endeavor by any human being, dead or alive, ever had been celebrated with more enthusiasm than the solo flight of Charles A. Lindbergh across the Atlantic Ocean. He had defied death and common sense to win a $25,000 prize established by hotel impresario Raymond Orteig. Unknown when he took off, the aviator was bigger than kings and presidents, actors and great thinkers, bigger than Babe Ruth, when he landed.

“Colonel Lindbergh, New York City is yours,” the Babe’s old adviser on conduct, Jimmy Walker, now the mayor, said at City Hall. “I don’t give it to you; you won it.”

The snowstorm of ticker tape was so dense in the parade through the city streets that Lindbergh’s open car had to be bailed out as it moved. He wondered if New York would have to print new phone books to replace the ones that had been torn apart. An estimated four million people cheered as he passed, beginning a succession of dinners, awards, medals, proclamations, and scrutiny that never would be matched. Eighteen hundred tons of confetti were cleaned from the New York streets. The Armistice in 1918 had been only 155 tons.

Lindbergh was the Babe times two or three or four or maybe ten. The apparatus of fame developed in the rise of G. Herman Ruth and Jack Dempsey and Red Grange and swimmer Gertrude Ederle and other sports stars of the decade had been tuned and tested, waiting for the quiet and brave airman. It whirred into action. The offers that had come to the Babe—for books and movies and vaudeville tours, for endorsements and charity appearances—now came to Lindbergh with bigger numbers, more zeroes on the end.

This was the apogee in the age of new heroes. They were delivered to the front door now, these heroes, consumed like breakfast cereal. They weren’t long-ago characters of mythology or simple words on paper; their voices could be heard on the radio, their pictures could be seen in the paper, in the news shorts at the theater. They were personal, exciting friends of every family. In 1927
A
.
D
., America chewed up heroes, swallowed them whole. This was a time for large and outrageous deeds. In a time of soaring possibility, everything seemed connected and wonderful. What would man do next? Look at Lindbergh.

Money was being made, fortunes doubled and tripled at the clicking of a telegraph key from Wall Street. The Model T was being replaced by the Model A, and Henry Ford had 50,000 orders. A seven-mile tunnel had been opened through the Rockies. A seaway on the St. Lawrence River was planned. Laurel had met Hardy, and Mae West had a show on Broadway simply called
Sex.
No boundaries were impenetrable.

What next?

“Here is another band and then we have the Colonel, this darn nice boy, Lindbergh,” Graham McNamee reported, now moved to the Welt-Mignon Studios in Manhattan. “The police escort is passing…. Lindbergh is in the back of the automobile, bareheaded…. The crowd is going wild [cheers and whistles are heard]…Lindbergh has passed and approaches Central Park.”

Three days later, the final stages of the New York celebration were held. After attending a dinner staged by William Randolph Hearst the previous night, where Charlie Chaplin was another guest, Lindbergh had flown to Washington to pick up his plane, the
Spirit of St. Louis
. He flew back to New York and on little sleep was taken in the morning on a 22-mile parade route through almost a million people in Brooklyn. He then went to Roosevelt Field for a ceremony at the site where all of the excitement had begun. He was supposed to go next to Yankee Stadium, where the Bronx Bombers were playing the Browns.

The plan was that he would arrive at 3:30 for the start of the game. One of the sweet moments surrounding his flight had happened at the Stadium when a crowd of 23,000, gathered for the light heavyweight title fight on May 20 between Jack Sharkey and Jim Malone, had observed a moment of silent prayer for the young man alone in the night over the Atlantic. A crowd of 15,000 now awaited his arrival.

He was late.

In a move that had no precedent, the umpires delayed the start of the game for 25 minutes. The Babe, waiting along with everyone else, predicted that he had a gift for Lindbergh.

“I feel a homer coming,” he said. “My left ear itches. That’s a sure sign.”

At 3:55, no Lindbergh, the umpires could wait no longer and started the game. In the bottom of the first inning, the Babe also could wait no longer. Down two strikes to Browns pitcher Tom Zachary, a 31-year-old veteran left-hander, he started to check his swing, then unloaded late to send the ball halfway up the bleachers in left-center field. It was his 22nd home run of the year.

“I held back as long as I could, but it had to come,” the Babe said. “When you get one of those things in your system, it’s bound to come out.”

Lou Gehrig, next at the plate, also must have had an itch in his ear. He too unloaded, a bit late, the ball traveling almost to the same place. It was his 15th of the year. Col. Lindbergh, alas, missed both blasts. His motorcade didn’t reach the Stadium until 5:30, and then he decided they should skip the visit and get back to the Hotel Brevoort, where he picked up his $25,000 prize. That was followed by a dinner at the Hotel Roosevelt, where Charles A. Schwab was the featured speaker. The meeting between America’s heroes never took place.

“I had been saving that homer for Lindbergh,” the Babe told reporters, “and then he doesn’t show up. I guess he thinks this is a twilight league.”

Two days later, back in St. Louis, the aviator went to Sportsman’s Park. With 40,000 people in the stands, he walked in procession with Kenesaw Mountain Landis and National League president John Heydler to the flagpole in center field, where he raised the St. Louis Cardinals’ 1926 World Championship banner.

So what could the Babe do? How could he recapture at least a piece of his audience? A two-paragraph filler in the
Washington Post
the morning after Lindbergh departed New York contained a possibility. The headline was “Babe Ruth Is Ahead of 1921 Homer Pace.” Deadlines had caused the writer of the article to miss Ruth’s latest home run, but the numbers were suitably prescient.

“Ruth’s 21 circuit drives for 53 games give him an average of .389 per game,” the article said. “Thus by playing at this average in the remaining 101 games, his total home runs will be 60, or one better than the 59 four-baggers credited to him in 1921.”

Take on the impossible. Yes. Of course. The idea of hitting 60 home runs had changed for both the Babe and the public in the five seasons since he hit the 59 in ’21. In the first couple of springs after he set that record, the Caliph had predicted that 60 clouts would arrive almost momentarily, a simple matter of time. In the last couple of springs, he had been much more reserved. He hadn’t hit 50 again, much less come close to 60. He wondered openly if he had made a mistake in putting a mark so high on the wall so early in his career.

The quest for 60 or more home runs, somewhat like flying across the Atlantic or climbing some impossible mountain like Everest or crossing any frontier of physical performance, needed a combination of good health, proper circumstance, and luck. A situation had to arise, with conditions just right and the pieces all in their proper places.

A situation like the one where the Babe now found himself.

In the third month of the season, with more than three months to go, the Yankees already had won the American League pennant. The young and uncertain lineup that had surprised everyone a year earlier now was tested and true and had acquired a tobacco-chewing swagger. No lineup in baseball history ever had been as fearsome, top to bottom, presenting a stress that wore opposing pitchers down with each passing inning. “Five o’clock lightning” was the term the writers had found for the late-inning destruction that awaited the poor souls working on the mound. The Yankees had sprinted to an eleven-and-a-half-game lead by the Fourth of July, and no one was going to stop them. The Yankees knew this. Everyone else knew this.

At the third spot in the batting order, Ruth couldn’t have resided in a better place to hit home runs. Combs had become the ideal leadoff man, always on base, taking away the pitchers’ big windups, putting each hurler into the stretch position. Koenig was a perfect second man, almost as pesky and proficient as Combs. When Ruth came to the plate, more often than not, trouble already had begun. And just as important, trouble waited behind him.

In spring training, Huggins had adjusted his lineup. A year earlier, Gehrig had batted number three, Ruth number four, and Bob Meusel number five. During the season, the manager had changed the order to Ruth third, Meusel fourth, and Gehrig fifth. Now, for 1927, it became Ruth third, Gehrig fourth, and Meusel fifth. Gehrig had moved into position to protect Ruth, a backup force to be feared. Walk Ruth? A pitcher knew then he would have to face Gehrig with a man on first.

The nice boy from Columbia had matured as a player. He still lived with his mother and father in an apartment on Eighth Avenue, still went home most nights after games in New York, still was nervous in the presence of women, but he had become almost as fearsome at the plate as the Babe. In the closing weeks of June, he went on a home run spree. He edged closer and closer to Ruth—he took a big jump on June 23 when he became the first man ever to hit three homers in a game at Fenway Park—and tied the big man on June 29 at 24.

The Babe now had a rabbit.

“[Gehrig] is traveling fast enough to give point to the words of Ruth the other night, when he said that Columbia Lou is the only man that would beat the Babe’s record of 59,” James Harrison of the
Times
wrote after the three-homer game. “That’s the Babe’s prediction and he’s going to stick to it, and the way Gehrig smacked them today it looked as if G. Herman is the seventh son of a seventh son.”

Never before had Ruth had competition in the home run race. When he was healthy or not suspended, the field always belonged only to him. Now, not only did he have a challenge, but it came from the man directly behind him in the lineup, from the quiet figure under the next showerhead after the game. This was a deluxe and unexpected plot development for the public: a two-man marathon of strength and endurance that would play for the rest of the summer without the distractions of a pennant race.

The day after the student caught the master, the student pounded out number 25 in the second inning to claim the lead. In the fourth, the master struck back with his own 25th, a shot to the right-field bleachers at Fenway. On July 2, now in Washington, the student whacked number 26 to forge ahead again. On July 3, the master came back, hitting the longest home run ever seen at Griffith Stadium. Tied again.

And so it went. One edged ahead, the other climbed back. They were never separated by more than two home runs, a number that could be made up on one doubleheader day. They were characters on a big Parcheesi board, moving back and forth—captivating stuff. A fan had better than a 50 percent chance to go to a Yankees game and see one or the other of the two strong men hit a home run. Maybe both.

Christy Walsh quickly moved onto the scene and signed Gehrig to his burgeoning group of ghosted clients. The promoter tried to frame a public picture of buddies and friends, Gehrig and Ruth, a couple of the Three Musketeers off on a home run lark. Although it might have worked when sent across the country, it fell flat with people who knew the situation. These really weren’t buddies or great friends. Off the field, they lived far different lives, as different as different could be. An attempt to give Gehrig a sports-page nickname, “Buster,” to match against “Babe” went nowhere. Gehrig wasn’t a Buster. And Babe unquestionably was a Babe.