The Selling of the Babe (39 page)

Still, the crowds that came out for Ruth were stupefying. For the Saturday game against Cleveland, it wasn't just the 40,000 fans who made it inside the Polo Grounds, there were reported to be another 40,000 who poured out of the subways and failed to get in. And that didn't include the thousands more who wanted to be there who probably figured they'd have no chance of getting a ticket and stayed home. You either had to be there, hear about in the tavern later that night, or read about it in papers. There was, as yet, no radio.

In his column in the
Tribune
, Bill McGeehan took note, writing, “It looks very much like a baseball park with a capacity of 100,000 will have to be built in the near future, for New York, at any rate.” He also noted that Ruppert and Huston “displayed considerable acumen,” buying the Yankees when they were “a joke,” then taking the “biggest gamble” of all on Ruth. It had all paid off.

Ruth went on the team's next western road trip like a conquering hero, greeted with glee everywhere, drawing enormous crowds and sending them home happy in St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit, hitting home runs in all three cities, failing only in Cleveland. He returned to New York with 41 home runs.

The only notable change had come in Detroit. After batting fourth for the entire year in Detroit, Huggins moved Ruth up a spot in the batting order. Part of the reason was because Bob Meusel, the rookie who was developing into a fearsome hitter in his own right, was in the midst of a slump. Lewis had been batting fifth behind Ruth, but now that he was hurt, the opposition had taken to walking Ruth rather than pitch to him. In one game against Boston, Sam Jones walked him four times. Ruth hated the intentional walk, and there was more than one call for the practice to be banned, although just how that could be enforced was never quite clear. Batting Ruth third allowed Del Pratt, a dangerous hitter, to bat behind the Babe.

Huggins indicated it was just a temporary move, but it became permanent. Ruth would primarily hit third for the remainder of his Yankee career—even when paired with Lou Gehrig, Ruth hit third and Gehrig batted cleanup. Not only did it place Ruth in the most productive spot in the lineup, it also meant the one player in the majors most likely to hit a home run batted in the first inning of every game, giving the Yankees a fair chance at an early lead. It also kept the other team from pitching around him quite as much. When they did, they were more likely to pay a price.

The Yankees retuned to New York and opened a home stand against Cleveland on August 16. Trailing the Indians by only half a game, the three-game series was perhaps the most important the Yankees had played since facing Boston at the tail end of the 1904 season with the pennant on the line. A sweep could give the Yankees both first place and some margin for error in the race. If they were swept, however, their pennant hopes would likely pass.

New York lost the first game 4–3, Ruth contributing only a single hit. But the game would go down in baseball history as the most tragic ever played. Leading off the fifth inning against Carl Mays, Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman crouched over the plate. Mays threw, the pitch sailed up and in, he heard a crack, saw the ball bouncing back, and thinking it had struck Chapman's bat, fielded the ball and threw to first. Only then did he and everyone else realize that the sound had not come from the ball hitting the bat, but from striking Chapman's skull. The pitch had hit him on the left side of the head and the batter now lay half conscious in the batter's box.

Although Chapman managed to stand, he had to be helped from the field and then collapsed again and was rushed to the hospital. The pitch had caused a three-and-a-half-inch depressed fracture of his skull. Chapman underwent emergency surgery, but died the next day, the only death caused by an on-field injury in the history of major league baseball.

Mays, roundly hated by the baseball community, would take the brunt of the blame, as players charged that he both beaned Chapman on purpose, threw an illegal pitch, or both. Despite some calls to have him banned for the game—Ban Johnson blurted that he couldn't see how Mays could possibly pitch again—others came to the pitcher's defense. His catcher, Muddy Ruel, said he thought Chapman lost the pitch and that he never moved to get out of the way.

The Yankees backed their pitcher—this was a pennant race, after all. And Mays, while not unaffected, pitched a week later. Ruth, however, was apparently not indifferent. He never made a public comment about the tragedy or about whether he thought the pitch was intentional. Every batter knew they were taking a chance stepping in the box. That's just the way the game was played. But the incident would still have a major impact on Ruth's career.

It is somewhat surprising that Chapman's death did not spark a debate about the baseball. After all, no one had ever been killed by the old, dead ball. But at this point, the lively ball—or whatever it was—was too well established, and the home run game too lucrative, to change. And it was impossible to gauge how much impact the ball had on the injury.

In the wake of Chapman's death, baseball became even more generous with the use of new baseballs. Over time, any ball that was discolored or scuffed in any way would be removed and a new clean baseball, presumably easier to see and less prone to taking an erratic break on the way to the plate, put into play. Ruth would be the greatest beneficiary of anyone taking a swing at a ball that was easier to see.

The Yankees, perhaps distracted by Chapman's death, scuffled for the next week. In the meantime, however, the show went on. Ruth spent his mornings traveling to a movie studio in Haverstraw, New Jersey, shooting scenes for
Headin' Home
, often arriving at the ballpark sporting pancake makeup and eyeliner. He'd been paid $15,000 up front and promised another $35,000 and the filmmaker was trying to rush the seventy-one-minute film to completion before the end of the season. Ruth played okay during filming, but he managed only two home runs for the home stand. On the morning of August 22, the crew took over the ballpark, filming the penultimate passage, Ruth at bat cracking the game-winning home run, and then being swarmed by the fans, the staged scene the only one in the whole movie with a shred of truth to it.

After homering on August 26 for number 44, however, Ruth was out of the lineup. The official story was that he'd been stung by something during filming, and that his wrist had become infected. But the
Tribune
implied something a bit less innocent, calling the malady the “Jersey Jiggers,” which they termed a form of “dry hydrophobia,” which may have been a veiled reference to something alcohol-related. Ruth was hospitalized, and supposedly had tissue removed. That sent local gamblers into a panic. A lot of money had been put down betting that Ruth would break the home run barrier of 50.

While Ruth sat out, his legal battles over the earlier film headed to the courts, a series of injunctions and countersuits and counter-injunctions. Ruth eventually lost on all counts, the attorneys for both parties the only individuals making any real money out of it.

It was a bad time for Ruth to be out of the lineup. By the time he returned, although the Yankees had slipped back into first place, they hadn't really been playing well. With Ruth, they might have opened up a lead over Cleveland, but they didn't. The Indians then began playing inspired baseball and the White Sox weren't giving up, either. There was some grousing among Ruth's teammates who thought he should have been in the lineup, but where the Yankees finished was now third on the club's list of priorities, behind Ruth's home run count and the attendance. Still, the World Series held out the promise of even more money for everyone.

Or did it? In the National League, the Robins were the surprise of the league and had opened up ground on the Giants. As lucrative as a World Series between the Yankees and Robins might have been, Ebbets Field lacked the capacity of the Polo Grounds, and the Yankees' real rival was the Giants, and always had been. If Brooklyn took the pennant, and the Yankees finished behind either Cleveland or Chicago, that would leave both the Yanks and the Giants available for a city series, a once common postseason exhibition between two teams from the same city. They often charged World Series prices, and on the local level were often bigger than the World Series, particularly among gamblers. Ruth was already a bigger attraction than the Robins, World Series or not, and a city series between the Giants and Yankees, with every game played in the Polo Grounds before 40,000 fans, could draw nearly 300,000, far more lucrative for either club than the World Series, where the take had to be split among the National Commission and the second, third, and fourth place teams. It was almost as if the Yankees didn't need to win—there would be a big payday anyway.

Ruth returned to duty two days before Labor Day in Boston, guaranteeing Frazee a big crowd for the Saturday doubleheader. He homered twice, calming the gamblers worried about losing their rolls, and the Yankees took two of three. Although Ruth was pitched around for much of the next ten days, walking 20 times, the Yankees won 10 of 12 to not only stay in the race, but pull ahead, as they took two of three from the Indians in Cleveland and swept Detroit, Ruth chipping in three more home runs to bring his season total to 49, then hitting two more in an exhibition in Toledo on September 15. The Yankees might well have done better to rest, however, because they went into Chicago on September 16 with the pennant on the line.

The first game came down to Ruth, or at least that is how everyone saw it afterward. The White Sox jumped out to a 4–0 lead, but in the sixth the Yankees pushed across two, bringing Ruth to the plate with two out, two on, and Dickey Kerr on the mound. He worked the count to 2-2. A home run would put the Yankees up by a run.

They weren't so easy to hit when they really mattered. Ruth took a called third strike. The White Sox rolled to an 8–3 win and dropped the Yankees out of first place as Cleveland won to take first.

The Yankees never made it back to the top. Ruth went hitless the next day in a 6–4 loss and then New York made it three in a row, being blown out 15–9 after falling behind 8–0 in the first two innings. The White Sox passed the Yankees, now in third place, trailing by three games with only 10 left to play, and Ruth homerless since striking number 49.

Nevertheless, he was still attracting a crowd in New York.
Headin' Home
was finished, and promoter Tex Rickard, owner of Madison Square Garden, paid $35,000 for exclusive rights to debut the film. The Garden wasn't meant to be a movie theater, but Rickard figured Ruth was worth it. He had to overhaul and redecorate to accommodate the picture, draping thousands of yards of fabric over the windows, and due to the size of the room, had to have a special movie screen made, 35 feet by 27 feet, then the biggest in the world, to show the film. With a seating capacity of almost 10,000, and the appetite for Ruth ravenous, he thought he would print money.

Unfortunately,
Headin' Home
was no
Intolerance
. It was a predictable, wooden set piece. Ruth was serviceable but hardly a Valentino, who in another year would make the ladies swoon. As one critic put it, “The story is ridiculous.… He [Ruth] and he alone makes it worth five minutes of anybody's time.” Ouch. Today, the main interest in the film is the brief footage it shows of Ruth batting in the Polo Grounds, swinging his bat. It's thrilling to see.

The Yankees weren't going to win the pennant and Ruth was never going to become a film star. That was obvious. Now it was all about the numbers.

Without the pressure of the pennant race, Ruth seemed able to relax again. The Yankees returned home on September 24 for a doubleheader versus Washington and Ruth still proved a draw, pulling nearly 30,000 fans to see the real thing. He didn't disappoint, cracking home run number 50 in game one and 51 in game two. The
Times
called him “the greatest pickler the world has ever known.”

The gamblers called him something else. As the
New York Sun
reported, “more money than Babe Ruth's salary, a good deal more … changed hands yesterday. The bet for Ruth to hit 50 was one of the liveliest betting propositions of the year.” The paper reported that although “a majority of baseball fans” had not thought Ruth would make the mark, many gamblers did, and some cleared as much as $50,000. And for those keeping track, it was also Ruth's 100th career home run.

The season wasn't quite over yet, but everybody was already in the counting house. The Colonels announced they were ready to throw off the yoke of the Polo Grounds and would soon build their own ballpark. They claimed to be looking at three different sites. Ruth had made it possible. Although construction on Yankee Stadium would not start until 1922, and not be complete until 1923, it would not just be the House that Ruth Built but also the House Built for Ruth, not only bigger than the Polo Grounds but with dimensions that suited the Yankee slugger, not quite as close down the line in right, but much closer and more forgiving in the power alley. It would be his private stage, and a place he would rule even long after he played his last game there.

Fans poured into the Polo Grounds the last week of the season as if paying tribute, but Ruth played his final game at the Polo Grounds in 1920 on September 26, still stuck at 51 home runs. This time, however, he would not jump his team at the finish. The Yankees went to Philadelphia to end the season, and Ruth played all three games, not that the A's provided much competition or played very hard. He hit home runs 52 and 53 on September 27 in a game that took all of 66 minutes to play, and then finished his slugging in the final inning of the first game of a doubleheader two days later, homering in the ninth to settle on number 54 for the season, 25 more than he or any other human being had hit in 1919.

The Yankees finished third, behind pennant-winning Cleveland and Chicago. In addition to his 54 home runs, Ruth scored a record 158 runs, knocked in 135, and walked 150 times while striking out 80. He hit .376, with a .532 on base percentage, .847 slugging percentage, and modern day OPS of a gaudy 1.379, the last three figures the best single season marks of his career. The Yankees drew a stunning 1,289,422 fans to the Polo Grounds, 300,000 more than the Giants and nearly twice the number of fans any team had ever drawn in a previous season. The Red Sox drew just over 400,000. Five million fans spun through the turnstiles in the American League, almost a million and half more than ever before, about half of the total at games featuring Ruth, as he was clearly the biggest road draw in history.