The Selling of the Babe (19 page)

What is also certain, however, is the impact the performance had in New York, where in less than a week the Red Sox would open the season. Baseball was worried how fans would react to players they had considered slackers only a few short months before, and anything that could distract them from that had value. The timing of Ruth's performance could not have been more fortuitous.

Still, despite what he would later say, Barrow considered Ruth primarily a pitcher. After another exhibition in Jersey City, where Ruth hit like a mere mortal, the press noted that he'd worked out on the mound before the game and was even in the running to get the ball on Opening Day if Barrow chose to start a left-hander and weather conditions favored his selection. When Ruth wasn't pitching, Barrow expected to keep him in the lineup somewhere, but he also indicated that might not be a permanent decision. He'd seen Ruth enough to know that his batting prowess ran hot and cold. Right now he was not only hot, but the number one topic of conversation throughout baseball. Although fans were over the moon about Ruth, many longtime observers were still skeptical. John McGraw, who had a chance to watch him up close, thought that if Ruth played regularly he would “hit into a hundred double plays.”

 

6

Rebellion and Revolution

“As a batter, Ruth is an accident. He never plays inside baseball at the plate. He goes up trying to take a swing on every strike, a style that would cause any other player to be benched. He either knocks home runs or strikes out.”

—
Jack Doyle, baseball scout, Chicago Cubs

Thirty thousand fans packed the Polo Grounds on Opening Day, nearly four times the number that had turned out for the Yankees' opener a year before, and three times the number that greeted the Yankees and Red Sox on the first day of the 1917 season, when Ruth had pitched. This time he was in left field, and seeded fourth in the batting order.

Many in the baseball world favored the Red Sox to take another pennant. After all, despite the off-season deals, they still had a wealth of talent. Most figured their stiffest competition to come from Cleveland, or perhaps Washington, where Walter Johnson made even a bad club dangerous.

But the Yankees were making a move. The addition of Shore and Lewis from Boston was significant. Ruppert, not Huston, was taking over, the dominant party in the partnership, and he applied the same principles to running his ball club that had served his beer business so well. Ruppert's beer, led by the signature brew Knickerbocker, was more or less synonymous with New York, a branding strategy ahead of its time and one that, when combined with his political connections at Tammany Hall, of which the ex-congressman was a member in good standing, gave him an obvious edge over the competition.

He knew the value of an established name, and to that point, in baseball terms the Giants owned New York, with the Yankees and the Brooklyn team running a distant second. And if there was anything approaching “America's Team” at the time, a ball club nearly as popular on the road as they were at home, it was the Giants. They benefited from the contrasting personalities and public image of their two biggest stars—the recently retired Mathewson and their combative manager McGraw, who between them gave every fan someone to root for. But Mathewson was no longer active and McGraw was getting old. Although the Giants had won a pennant in 1917, they were in transition and not quite the juggernaut of years past. Ruppert sensed that he and the Yankees had a brief window to wrest New York out of their control—or at least make it a two-team town.

But they had to prove it on the field first, and as yet the Yankees didn't have what it took. The offense was fine—sportswriters later coined the term “Murderer's Row” to describe the 1919 lineup, which included Frank “Home Run” Baker, but the pitching was thin.

Harry Hooper opened the game for Boston with a single off veteran starter George Mogridge, but Jack Barry botched a bunt and Hooper was forced out at second. Barry then moved over on a wild pitch and was still standing on second when Ruth came up with two out.

The crowd buzzed; this was who they wanted to see, in just this situation—who cared if the Yankees fell behind? Ruth had always hit well in the Polo Grounds. He'd later note that it wasn't just the dimensions of the park that he favored but the hitting background. It didn't hurt that the prevailing winds, swirling down from Coogan's Bluff, often seemed to give the ball a push and keep it in the air.

Ruth took a cut at a pitch by Mogridge and lashed the ball to center field, where his old teammate Duffy Lewis was making his debut for New York. It went for a home run, a matter future biographers would make good use of when citing the hit, along with Ruth's blasts in Baltimore, as definitive proof for Barrow and everyone else that Ruth's future was holding a bat, and not a ball.

What many failed to note, however, is that Ruth's hit didn't even make it over Lewis's head. At contact, the outfielder started charging in after the hard hit, a sinking line drive. Then, as one paper reported, the ball “struck a hard spot on the turf [and] took a wicked hop over Duffy's shoulder.” In other words, it hit the ground in front of him, little more than 200 feet from home plate, and then bounced over his head. Lewis's momentum carried him a few more steps in toward the infield as the ball bounded toward no-man's-land deep in center field. Jack Barry saw the miscue and trotted home easily, but Ruth, still carrying more weight than at any time in his career to this point, had a more difficult time. He was forced to run, and run hard. Sammy Vick, the right fielder, finally chased the ball down and threw it in, but by that time Ruth had crossed the plate standing up.

The official scorer could have given Lewis an error for overrunning the ball, but he hadn't touched it. Besides, now everyone got to put Ruth's name and home run together in a sentence or two, and in a headline. It worked for everybody and allowed the boyos in the press box an excuse to mention that a few days before Ruth had said that he planned to take aim on the home run record in 1919. Whether he had actually said so mattered very little, and in regard to Ruth, it's virtually impossible to verify anything he said, particularly early in his career. He cursed like a wharf rat and his language alone made every sportswriter a fabulist.

Regardless, the hit set the tone. The Red Sox romped to a 10–0 win and Ruth, who chipped in a single later in the game, was cheered madly every time he swung the bat. The Yankees looked forward to big crowds for the next two games of the opening series, as did Boston. As visitors, the Red Sox took about 20 percent of the gate. But by the following day the weather turned, causing the next two contests to be canceled, first due to the rain and then the cold that sent snow flurries skidding through the streets.

After Ruth spent several days trying to swallow Manhattan whole, the Sox headed south to Washington, and Ruth, who'd had the Mrs. in tow in New York, sent her home and set himself free. He hadn't had quite as much fun in Manhattan as he hoped, but in Washington he had plenty of cronies to run with from his days in Baltimore and at St. Mary's.

It was Sunday when they next played, and another big crowd turned out. Harry Frazee must have looked on mournfully. With no Sunday baseball in Boston, in terms of attendance he was already starting out behind.

The game unfolded much like the opener in New York—the Red Sox jumped out to a first inning lead—this time Ruth getting on by way of an infield error—and then rolled to an 8–0 win behind Sam Jones. Ruth found the headlines yet again, this time with a sixth inning triple after the Red Sox already had already built a big lead. And once again, he had some help. This time Washington center fielder Clyde Milan gave Ruth the assist, along with the official scorer, as he misplayed Ruth's routine fly ball. The Babe chipped in with two more extra base hits the next day off Walter Johnson as the Sox won their third straight 6–5, but Ruth's hits were of the garden variety, hard grounders and liners that skipped past outfielders. Walter Johnson, not Ruth, hit the longest drive of the game, a fly out to center field.

No one yet knew it, but Ruth was out of power, at least for a while. After the first three games of the season, with a home run, two triples, and a double to his credit, he appeared to be the greatest hitter in the game—and with an OPS (on base plus slugging percentage) of 1.467 and a slugging percentage of 1.000, by any measure he was (if one overlooked the bad bounce and the misplay). And the Red Sox looked like the class of the league.

But only for three games. Following that third game, with Helen shuttered up back in the big house in Sudbury, Ruth went out, just as he had the night before. And when Ruth went out—he went out and stayed out.

He was gone almost twelve hours, likely all the way back to Baltimore, although no one really knows. Barrow, who thought Ruth had the ragged look of a night owl earlier that day, supposedly sat in the lobby waiting to see when he would return. Getting madder by the minute, Barrow waited until 4:00 a.m. before storming off to bed.

When he saw Ruth at the park the next day, Barrow didn't say anything. As it would soon become clear, after fourteen years between stints as major league manager, both the game and the players had changed and Barrow was ill equipped to deal with either. His skill was in putting together a roster and knowing whom to call when he needed to fill a gap. Essentially, Harry Hooper managed the ball club on the field. Barrow had been adequate during the 1918 season—with so many marginal players on the roster, no one—except for Ruth and Leonard, really—had crossed him. But in his second season, the players started to tune him out. Hooper was the guy they listened to, went to for advice, and looked to provide strategy. Barrow was like the school principal who came in at the end of the day, glanced at the grade book, and then took credit for the student's performance. He didn't really know how to handle the players, particularly Ruth, who already had done as he pleased for a full year under Barrow, even received a raise for it, and saw no reason to change now. The fact that Barrow had him room with coach Dan Howley had no impact on him whatsoever. But such open insubordination made Barrow look bad, and now was costing him what little respect he had with veteran players.

Ruth looked ragged and went hitless the next day, a 4–2 Boston loss, their first of the season. Then he skipped out of the locker room and was off to look for more trouble.

Barrow figured he'd be late again—after all, the manager hadn't said anything the night before—but Barrow didn't want to wait—or face the consequences of a confrontation with Ruth, who was certain to come in drunk as he was to take a big swing at the plate. And when Ruth drank, while he was usually garrulous, in the wee hours he could get a little wild and a lot belligerent. You didn't want to be around Ruth when he was drunk and his temper was set off.

It's a measure of Ruth's enduring power that so few of his biographers have ever uttered the word alcoholic in the same sentence as the name Babe Ruth, because that's almost certainly what he was. Few of his hijinks weren't accompanied by either some highballs or pitchers of beer, and his pattern of bad behavior followed by quickly forgotten apologies, late-night car accidents, and rash decision making all point in that direction—in neon. But the character of the Babe that would soon be built would all but inoculate him from the charge and certainly inoculate him from the responsibility of his actions. Other guys who got drunk every night were lushes; Ruth got drunk every night and it was just a bad boy stealing a sip from a jar in the cupboard.

This time, Barrow paid the night porter to keep an eye out and told him to come tell him when Ruth came in. The knock on his door came at 6:00 a.m. and Barrow quickly dressed and went to Ruth's room. He found his star dressed and in bed, the covers pulled over his head, supposedly holding a lit pipe in his hand. Confronted about smoking in bed, fully clothed, according to Barrow's ghostwritten biography, Ruth allegedly sputtered some excuse about how smoking was “relaxing.” Disgusted, the manager only shook his head and told Ruth he'd see him at the ballpark, leaving the impression of punishment hanging in the air.

The more Ruth thought about that, the madder he got, and by the time he got to the ballpark, he was ready to explode. He sat in the locker room venting to his teammates, who likely egged him on—watching Ruth get mad, as long as you weren't the one he was getting mad at, was great sport. It was easy to get him worked up. The more he talked the louder and more profane he got, and by the time Barrow walked into the locker room, Ruth had worked himself into a lather.

Now he had to act. If he didn't, he'd lose face with the boys. So Ruth rebelled. He called Barrow a “son of a bitch” and told him if he ever came checking on him again, he'd punch him on the nose—or a series of much more colorful words to that effect.

Barrow cleared the room and invited Ruth to stay and fight. A former boxer, Barrow could handle himself—or thought he could. Called out, for once Ruth backed down. At his size he could have broken his manager in half, and he left the clubhouse and joined his teammates on the field. When Ruth came in to the bench, Barrow told Ruth he was suspended. It was the first time the Red Sox were facing a left-hander that season, so Barrow was probably planning to sit Ruth anyway.

The Sox won, and after the game came one of the most famous moments of Ruth's career, the most famous in Barrow's biography, and a set piece for the great Ruth mythology, the one that converted every indiscretion into the innocent act of an impetuous child. As the train chugged out of Washington, a chagrined Ruth went to his manager as if he was going to confession at St. Mary's and apologized.

Barrow did everything but tousle his hair and get him a warm glass of milk before sending the little scamp to bed. The two soon reached an agreement. Barrow would end the suspension but thereafter Ruth agreed to leave a note for Barrow every night telling him exactly when he came in. It allowed both men to save face—at least Barrow got Ruth to agree to something. But Ruth was more or less given license to carouse—and in only a few weeks there would be press reports referencing Barrow's continued dismay over the frequency of Ruth's “extracurricular” activities. For all Barrow knew, he could have been sleeping in an opium den every night. Most importantly, however, it got Ruth back into the lineup. A player earning $10,000 wasn't worth a dime to anybody sitting on the bench.