The Selling of the Babe (44 page)

“I had in mind that if you did not take”: Letter dated January 12, 1920, from Thomas J. Barry, Frazee's attorney, to Frazee in the Harry H. Frazee Collection.

“BABE RUTH IN MARKET FOR TRADE”:
Boston Post,
December 20, 1919.

The five-page contract transferring Ruth to the Yankees: The original sale document detailing the transfer of Ruth from Boston to New York has been widely reproduced. The bulk of the contract is a standard agreement governing such transactions.

The agreement to secure a first mortgage on Fenway Park: The author acquired a copy of the original mortgage document from the Frazee family and is dated May 25, 1920. The Purchase and Sale document for Frazee's acquisition of Fenway Park is in the Harry H. Frazee Collection and is dated May 3, 1920.

While it is true that
Nanette
was based on an earlier show,
My Lady Friends
: First print mention of Frazee's intention to turn
My Lady Friends
into a musical appears in the
New York Clipper
on October 25, 1922.

The subsequent meeting: Standard retelling of Ruth's first meeting with Huggins appears in Creamer,
Babe
, pp. 211–13.

“I am not surprised”:
New York Tribune
, January 5, 1920.

9. Welcome to New York

“I told you Boston was some town”:
The Annotated Stories of Ring Lardner
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), p. 81.

reaction to the sale: For more detailed reaction to the trade of Ruth, see Johnson and Stout,
Red Sox Century
; and Johnson and Stout,
Yankees Century.

“For Sale” cartoon:
Boston Herald
, January 7, 1920.

“The Bull in Frazee's China Shop”: Cartoon,
Boston Post
, January 7, 1920.

“We can't manage him”: Cartoon, “Officer Call a Cop,”
Boston Herald
, January 8, 1920.

“I figure the Red Sox is now practically ruined”:
Boston American,
January 5, 1920.

“this is not the first time”:
Boston Post
, January 6, 1920.

“it is believed”: Ibid.

“Ruth had become simply impossible”: Ibid.

Although Frazee would later release: Harry Frazee, “The Reasons That Led Me to Sell the ‘Babe,'”
Baseball Magazine
, April 1920, p. 626.

In fact, they even had a name for it, the old “hoodoo”: The Yankees' long history of jinxes over their first fifteen years known as the “hoodoo” is discussed in Johnson and Stout,
Yankees Century
.

“But how that gorilla glanded baby”:
New York American
, January 6, 1920.

One in the
New York Evening Journal
showed him as a Colossus: Cartoon, “The Catch of the Season,”
New York Evening Journal,
January 5, 1920.

“We'll sure make life miserable”:
New York Tribune
, January 7, 1920.

“Just what homerless germ”:
New York Tribune,
January 13, 1920.

“Babe is willing”:
New York Tribune
, January 13, 1920.

“Frazee is not good enough”:
New York Times
, January 16, 1920.

“bosh”:
New York Times
, January 23, 1920.

10. The “Infant Swatigy”

“Everybody interested or connected”: “An Awful Thing if Ruth Should Fail,”
The Sporting News
, January 12, 1920.

“After we got away for the spring training”: Babe Ruth and William R. Cobb,
Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball,
edited by Paul Dickson, p. 60.

Jacksonville itself: For background on life in Jacksonville circa 1920, see Ennis Davis and Robert Mann, “
Reclaiming Jacksonville: Stories Behind the River City's Historic Landmarks
(Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2012).

“has a long drive”:
New York Herald
, March 2, 1920.

“the first official motion”:
New York American,
March 2, 1920.

“all our life we have been so poor”:
New York American,
March 3, 1920.

“When I had a chance to take a gander”: McNeil,
The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball
, p. 60.

“a bagful of Babe's own”:
New York Times
, March 13, 1920.

“his swings cutting the air”:
New York Times
, March 17, 1920.

“Ruth figures it's the second hardest”:
New York Times
, March 20, 1920.

“What a swat it was”:
New York American,
March 20, 1920.

“a big piece of cheese”:
New York Times
, March 21, 1920.

“he leaned against it”:
New York Tribune
, April 2, 1920.

“The approximate point of exodus”:
New York American
, April 2, 1920.

“all doubt as to whether”:
New York Daily News
, April 2, 1920.

they had assigned a single reporter, Marshall Hunt, to cover Ruth: Wagenheim,
Babe Ruth
, includes interviews with Marshall Hunt that shed light on the reporting on Ruth in the era. For more on sportswriting during this period, see Jerome Holtzman, ed.,
No Cheering in the Press Box
(New York: Henry Holt, 1973).

“so far over the heads”:
New York Tribune,
April 9, 1920.

“BABE RUTH ROBBED OF TRIO OF HOMERS”:
New York Times
, April 9, 1920.

“war between the Yankees and Ban Johnson”:
New York Tribune
, April 12, 1920.

“Baseball Park, a Stronghold of Free Speech”:
New York Times
, April 11, 1920.

“joyous moment”:
New York Tribune
, April 12, 1920.

11. A New Day

“You've probably heard the good news”:
New York American,
April 14, 1920.

Still, 12,000 fans turned out for Opening Day: Game events of the 1920 season are composites re-created primarily through game reports in the
New York Times
and the
New York Tribune
. In general, they are also the most authoritative—reporters James Harrison of the
Times
and W. O. “Bill” McGeehan of the
Tribune
were two of the most respected beat writers of their era. Reports in other New York papers of this period, while certainly colorful, are sometimes lacking in detail.

“The situation”:
New York Daily News
, April 15, 1920.

“The crowd went wild”:
New York Tribune
, April 16, 1920.

“neither conquered nor celebrated”:
Boston Globe
, April 20, 1920.

“chasing Pennock's slow rounders”:
Boston Globe,
April 21, 1920.

“the old hoodoo”:
New York Times,
April 23, 1920.

“In this regard”:
New York Tribune
, April 24, 1920.

“I swung as hard as I ever swung”:
New York Tribune,
April 29, 1920.

12. Making the Sale

“The Babe Ruth roar”:
New York Times
, May 1, 1920.

“Ruth strolled to the plate”:
New York World
, May 2, 1920.

“At what was known in the old days”:
New York Times
, May 3, 1920.

“Babe needs only twenty-eight more”:
New York Times
, May 4, 1920.

“Naturally the question arises”:
New York Times
, May 13, 1920.

“Babe Ruth Makes Sick Ball Game Well”:
New York Tribune
, May 24, 1920.

“violent health”:
New York Times,
May 24, 1920.

“Cobb is a prick”: The earliest reference I could find for this quote cites a “New York sportswriter,” in William Curran,
Big Sticks: The Phenomenal Decade of Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, and Hornsby
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1991). This underscores the problem with the veracity of Ruth's quotes, for the language would never have been used in a New York newspaper.

13. The Babe

“A Modern Goliath of the bludgeon”:
New York Times
, June 3, 1920.

“a ball so high”:
New York Times
, June 2, 1920.

“He is hitting them harder”:
New York Times,
June 3, 1920.

“the amazing growth of home runs”:
New York Tribune
, June 4, 1920.

“the masterminds that control baseball”: Richard Bak,
Peach: Ty Cobb in His Time and Ours
(Sports Media Group, 2005), p. 121.

“There was some speculation”:
New York Tribune
, July 12, 1920.

“lured by the prospect”:
New York Tribune,
July 13, 1920.

“Idols are made of Clay”:
New York American,
July 21, 1920.

“an ovation befitting a King”:
New York Daily News
, July 21, 1920.

There was talk afterward that the home run had earned Ruth a movie deal: Background information on Ruth's film career and litigation in 1920 is from
Reel Baseball: Essays and Interviews on the National Pastime and Hollywood
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003).

“It looks very much”:
New York Tribune
, July 26, 1920.

But the game would go down in baseball history: Mike Sowell's
The Pitch That Killed
(New York: Macmillan, 1989) remains the definitive work on the death of Ray Chapman.

Headin' Home
: Several versions of Ruth's film are on YouTube, and the film is also commercially available for purchase. The shots filmed inside the Polo Grounds justify watching the film.

“Jersey Jiggers”:
New York Tribune
, August 28, 1920.

“the greatest pickler”:
New York Times
, September 25, 1920.

The Yankees earned a pretax profit: Figures regarding the Yankees' profitability are from Michael Haupert and Kenneth Winter, “Pay Ball, Estimating the Profitability of the New York Yankees, 1915–1937,” in
Essays in Economic and Business History,
2003.

“money-making scheme”: Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg,
1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), p. 71.

Epilogue: Closing the Sale

Late in 1920, Walsh met Ruth: For details of Christy Walsh's meeting with Ruth, see Creamer,
Babe
; Montville,
The Big Bam
; and Christy Walsh,
Adios to Ghosts
(Self-published, 1937).

It promised that Walsh: The quotations from the contract appear from a document described as “1921 First Partnership Between Babe Ruth & Christy Walsh Signed Document,” that was made available for auction in 2010.

 

Bibliography

Notes on Sources

Although Babe Ruth may be the best known figure in the history of baseball, that does not mean that the details of his biography have been fully explored, or even that what we do know does not still contain questions, gaps, and uncertainties. In fact, Ruth's own outsized personality and accomplishments have, in some areas, served to obscure his biography. Certain aspects of his life—his upbringing, his performance in 1927, his “called shot,” and other notable events—have been fully explored, yet others have been almost ignored or overlooked.

The years covered in this book, 1918 through 1920, have nearly been skipped over in many treatments of Ruth as biographers have rushed into the Yankee years at the expense of his final seasons in Boston. For that reason—as well as the author's preference and desire to produce original work—this book is built far more from period newspaper accounts that it is from previous biographies, which were generally only consulted in regard to basic information and time frames.

In most significant instances I have noted important newspaper sources in the text itself, although for variety and ease of reading I have occasionally simply referred to “a newspaper account” or “a reporter,” but all such direct quotes from previously published sources, including newspapers, are referenced by date and source in these notes. Please note that events of individual games are in many cases composites, re-created with bits of information from a number of sources. Researchers should keep in mind that game reports are generally dated one day after the game in question took place. Due to the vagaries of reporting and the fallibility of game reports at the time, some accounts are often contradictory in specific detail, e.g., one report may refer to a hit as a “fly ball,” and another may refer to it as a “line drive.” In these instances, I have tried to discern the most trustworthy report and have used my judgment.

I have previously written about many of the events in baseball during the 1918, 1919, and 1920 seasons in several other books, namely
Red Sox Century
,
Yankees Century
,
The Dodgers,
and
The Cubs
, and numerous articles. I have also written extensively about the cultural life of Boston in
Fenway 1912
and New York in
Young Woman and the Sea
(see below for complete citations of these books and others during the research of this volume). I refer the reader to these earlier works when a particular point is more fully explicated there. In instances where the facts and conclusions of this book differ from those of my earlier published work, the reader should depend upon my most recent conclusions. History is cumulative, and this retelling takes advantage of not only my earlier research, but material not available in these earlier works.