The Selling of the Babe (34 page)

So far, the Babe was hardly worth the ballyhoo, but largely the poison pens in the press held their tongues. It rained the next two days, giving Ruth a reprieve, and he may have been heartened to return to Boston, where the Red Sox, according to tradition, celebrated Patriots' Day, a local holiday commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord, with a doubleheader and the Boston Marathon. Frazee made it a split admission affair, one in the morning before the marathoners ran through nearby Governor's Square, and another in the afternoon. Frazee wasn't about to miss the opportunity to take advantage of two potentially big crowds.

So far, the Red Sox were feeling pretty good about themselves, having opened the season with two wins over Washington, even hanging a loss on Walter Johnson. And Frazee was feeling pretty good, too. Ruth's rough spring had changed some minds in the local press, Johnson appeared defeated, and so far all the financial arrangements he hoped to make were moving along nicely.
My Lady Friends
was nearing the end of its run but had grossed several hundred thousand dollars and earned Frazee a profit of at least $25,000—the exact figure is only known because the playwright later sued Frazee, charging he hadn't received his fair share. Frazee was moving forward on the purchase of the Harris Theatre, and on March 8, he and Lannin had settled their suits against each other. Before that, Lannin had slapped a lien on Frazee's holdings, which for a time even prevented him from making trades, but they'd now come to an agreement, allowing Frazee to move forward with his plans to take title to Fenway and then take out the mortgage from Ruppert. In turn, Frazee had dropped his counterclaim over the indebtedness stemming from the Federal League suit. Everything was rosy. If Ruth came close to fulfilling his expectations for Ruppert, everyone would be happy.

A huge crowd was expected for Ruth's return. It was a holiday, and after all the hand-wringing over how much Ruth would be missed, there was every reason to expect the park to fill up twice. The Marathon, of course, was an attraction, but it would still be possible to watch the morning game, dash out to watch the leaders plod and wheeze their way to the finish, and go back to Fenway and see Ruth a second time.

That's why it was a surprise when the morning crowd was so sparse. By game time, only 6,000 or so fans filled the stands. Some might have been put off by the early hours or the prospect of double admission, but the limits of the Boston market were also made clear: there just were not enough fans in Boston, and that was something even Ruth's popularity could not completely counteract.

Then the game started and the Red Sox, as best described by Macbeth, “took the Yankees—Babe Ruth and all—by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the trousers and tossed them right overboard like so many English tea chests.” In the
Globe
, Mel Webb took another view, noting that the Yankees, including ex-Sox Mays, Ruth, Lewis, and Shore, “neither conquered nor celebrated.” Ruth received a nice hand from the crowd, but Waite Hoyt shut down the Yankees almost entirely.

Ruth knocked out two inconsequential hits, both of which would have been outs for any other player. In the past, outfielders had stubbornly played Ruth too shallow. Now they did the opposite. Harry Hooper, in right field for Boston, stood almost with his back to the fence and caught each ball on the first bounce. Had another player been at bat, Hooper would have been closer in and caught each for a fly ball out.

That's part of the reason Ruth's batting average soared. Given the gloves outfielders used at the time, running catches almost always required the use of two hands. It was almost impossible to make a one-handed catch over your head. So when Ruth came to bat, outfielders were beginning to play him deep, far enough back if he hit one over their heads it would leave the park. That left plenty of room in front for short flies and liners to find the ground for base hits. No other player in baseball at the time had so much open space to work with, and Ruth took advantage of every square inch.

The crowd was bigger in the afternoon, as a near sellout variously described as between 22,000 and 28,000, fresh off watching Peter Trivoulides cross the finish line in Copley Square seconds under two and half hours, spun through the turnstiles. Still, total turnout for the day was 20,000 or so below expectations. The Yankees played as if anxious to leave and dropped game two as well, highlighted by the reception the Fenway crowd gave Carl Mays. He was hissed and booed as a turncoat and quitter in what was described as the roughest reception an opposing player had ever received. When he left the mound, he derisively tipped his cap.

They treated Ruth much better. Each time he came to bat, fans allowed to stand up against the fence in center field scrambled back into the stands in fear of being struck by a batted ball. They need not have bothered, as all he collected was another pointless hit.

It got no better for the Yankees the next day. They dropped their third in a row to their Boston cousins, as this time Pennock kept them down. Once again the crowd was small, only 5,800. So much for Ruth as a drawing card in his old hometown. He went hitless and failed to make solid contact, breaking his back, wrote Webb, “chasing Pennock's slow rounders.” As if to rub it in, Ruth's replacement in left field for Boston, Mike Menosky, acquired in the Harper deal, collected three hits and knocked in the game-winner in the ninth. The final game of the set was rained out, and the Yankees left for their home opener at the Polo Grounds in seventh place, 1–4, while the Red Sox led the American League. Frazee might have been disappointed in the crowds—only about 40,000 for the three games—but the on-field results, at least, delivered a measure of joy.

Back in New York, everyone acted as if the Yankees had simply been playing an extended exhibition schedule and now the real season was about to begin. The papers expressed some concern over the Yankees, who just weren't playing well. While noting that Ruth had yet to homer, there was no real concern over the slugger—yet.

It was a fine, sunny, warm day in New York on the morning of April 22, the sky a cloudless blue for Ruth's official debut in New York as a Yankee. Expecting a big crowd, the gates at the Polo Grounds were unlocked at 12:30 for the 3:30 start, all the better to give the fans as much time as possible to gawk at Ruth and munch on overpriced peanuts.

There was perhaps no ballpark more beautiful on Opening Day than the Polo Grounds, at the time the largest, most spacious, and most ornate ballpark on the country. The immense, double-decked concrete and steel grandstand, rebuilt after a fire burned down the original in 1911, stood before the rocky outcrop of Coogan's Bluff, the double-decked grandstand beginning halfway between the left field fence and the infield, wrapping around the playing area all the way to the right field corner. In the outfield, expansive stands of bleachers enclosed the field entirely. At intervals atop the grandstand were flags, and the second deck hung almost directly over the lower deck, giving the entire place something of a Globe Theatre feel and allowing fans to look nearly straight down upon the field. It was 279 feet to the fence down the left field line and only 258 feet in right, but unless one hit the ball directly down the line, there were few cheap home runs at the Polo Grounds, for the fence angled sharply back and it was some 455 feet to the asymmetrical barrier in the deepest part of center field.

The facade of the upper deck was decorated in an ornate, bas relief, decorative frieze, and topped by carved eagles, while the lower deck facade featured eight shields, each one different from the other, representing the eight teams in the National League. The field boxes were even modeled after the royal boxes at the Roman Colosseum. With seating capacity of nearly 40,000, it was potentially the most lucrative ballpark in the world.

It also made a place like Fenway Park look like a dump. On this day, it was even more magnificent, as bunting draped the stands, the sky overhead was a rich blue, and the entire field was bathed in sunshine, the grass an electric spring green. For the opposition, it could be an intimidating place to play, but it had never bothered Ruth. Now it was his home and all he needed to do to be installed as emperor was to hit some home runs. He shone in the sun as he stood in the outfield warming up before the game, impossible to miss, every eye riveted on him.

His long hits while barnstorming through the Carolinas had quelled any rampant anxiety over his bat, but everybody would clearly feel better if he started knocking a few out, even in batting practice. Because if anyone had been paying close attention, since the start of spring training Ruth had seen thousands of pitches in batting practice and hundreds in game situations. He had hit a few home runs, and hit a few balls long, but with nothing like the frequency he had shown the last half of the 1919 season.

So what was it? Well, with Ruth one can never be too certain, since whatever took place off the field usually stayed buried beneath bromides and other obfuscations, but it may have been as simple as he might have been feeling some pressure. After all, he did have to move and had to take care of all the myriad changes in his life that required, while at the same time adjusting to new teammates and a level of scrutiny he had never before experienced. Don't forget, until this point, his offensive performance had been an unexpected bonus. Now, for the first time, he was expected to produce, expected to hit home runs, a very different situation. There's a tendency to treat Ruth, as a person, as either a complete simpleton or someone utterly blind to his situation, and there are certainly elements of each in his character. But he was also human.

And let's not forget one thing more. Ruth was playing a new position, center field, one that required more of him than either left field or first base ever had. He was not a natural outfielder. At St. Mary's he usually caught while not pitching—and as a professional, to this point, he had played only about a hundred games in the outfield. Center field, given the ballparks of the era, presented a real challenge. Play too deep, and balls dropped in; play too shallow, and if they went over your head they rolled forever. It was easy to look bad and Ruth had struggled. He wouldn't have been the first ballplayer to let his fielding concerns trouble him at the plate, or vice versa. It may not have been any one thing that caused him to struggle, but a combination.

Ruth was a major investment—and a risk—and the Yankees were not stupid. They hedged their bets and as soon as he was acquired had taken out a $150,000 insurance policy, payable if he was injured off the field and unable to play. The only things that could mess that up was if Ruth broke a leg running the bases, got beaned, or ran into a fence.

The crowd started arriving early, and for a time it appeared as if the park would fill, but it was a weekday, after all, and despite Ruth, the Yankees were playing the A's, nearly the worst team in the game. At full capacity, nearly 40,000 fans could squeeze inside, but on this day the crowd was closer to 25,000, still a good turnout, but not every seat was filled.

Most wanted to see one thing, and one thing only, and that was a home run off the bat of Ruth, something of which he was surely aware, and probably feeling some pressure to produce, particularly after the debacle in Boston. The press wouldn't play patty-cake with him forever. Although Ruth's success was in everyone's self-interest, that could turn rather quickly. If one writer got out the needle the others were certain to take a few stabs themselves.

Ruth stepped in for batting practice against pitcher Rip Collins and tried his best to please the crowd. They cheered wildly as he waved his bat at the pitcher, screaming for Ruth to kill the ball, to murder one, making as loud a racket as they ever had in a game.

Collins threw and Ruth took a big swing, missing, grunting out loud and twisting completely around. Then he dropped the bat and grabbed at his right side. He gingerly walked behind the batting screen, and the pain brought him to one knee. His teammates rushed to his side and lifted him up, holding the big man and helping him walk to the bench. Doc Woods, the Yankee trainer, dashed over and worked on Ruth's side for a few minutes, trying to massage away whatever ailment bothered him. After a time, Ruth stood, grabbed his bat, and slowly walked back to the batting cage.

He took one swing, missed, then turned around and slowly walked back to the bench.

As the
Times
noted, “the old hoodoo that has pursued the Yankees for ever so many years was again on deck and picked out the shining mark, Babe Ruth, for a target.” Something had pulled loose in his rib cage, affecting his follow-through, and as it did Ruth had also wrenched his troublesome left knee.

He insisted he could play, and as game time approached, Woods wrapped him in tape as best he could. The Yankees didn't try to stop him from taking the field, even as he limped and grimaced around the dugout. In fact, they may well have asked him to play in spite of the pain. After all, if it was a serious injury, they couldn't file an insurance claim on anything that happened on the field. Better to have him play through and then take a convenient tumble down a set of stairs.

He made it out to center field and through an uneventful top half of the first, but in the bottom half of the inning, shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh walked, and Wally Pipp, taking advantage of the better pitches he saw hitting in front of Ruth, doubled him home. Up stepped Ruth with one out.

Most of the crowd was still oblivious to what taken place, or if they were not, had been heartened by his appearance in the field. An enormous roar surged through the stands.

It wasn't quite fair. The A's Rollie Naylor could have rolled the ball to the plate and Ruth would have been just as helpless. He swung hard at the first pitch, apparently figuring that if he had only one swing he night as well get as much out if it as possible, but he went down to one knee after taking the cut, and then had to hobble out of the batter's box, bent at the waist for a moment, before stepping in again.