BABE RUTH
by
Caswell Adams
for Al Morehead
The legend of Babe Ruth and his mighty baseball bat far exceeds anything the sports world has ever known, including the invincibility of great John L. Sullivan. The name of Babe Ruth stands alone, at the absolute top.
Proof positive of this exalted status came last winter when Babe Ruth was operated on for a serious ailment at Manhattan’s French Hospital. Now, consider that the mighty Babe hadn’t had a baseball bat in his paw-like hands since early in 1935. Then consider that the bulk of the thousands of messages of cheer to his bed came youngsters not born when Ruth was battering down fences and only toddlers when Ruth finally retired.
That showed how the legend of Ruth had come unswervingly down the years. Fathers had told sons of the incredible privilege of having seen Ruth swing and hit or of having seen Ruth swing and miss, which was equally thrilling. And the boys had believed and they had read the record bocks and the nostalgic columns written by sportswriters who had travelled with the Babe in his glory.
John L. Sullivan was the only other man to captivate an entire sports world in any way comparable to Ruth. Men cried openly at the unbelievable news in 1892 that lithe Jim Corbett, despised challenger, had actually whipped the boisterous symbol of human power. Jack Dempsey holds a great grip on sports followers, but his tremendous appeal has
icome only since his two defeats at the mittens of Gene Tunney and the public’s knowledge that Jack was a magnificent loser.Ruth was idolized from the moment he was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees in January, 1920 for $125,000, although he had been a great pitcher in Boston and had developed the knack of pasting a baseball over further fences more often than other men. His twenty-nine homers in 1919 was considered phenomenal, but in his first summer at the Polo Grounds, then shared as home of both the Yankees and the Giants, he walloped fifty-four home-runs and the Yanks were wafted into second position behind Tris Speaker's Cleveland Indians.
Late that summer, as he bludgeoned his spectacular way through the American League ball parks and his home run total soared, sports columnists hooked on with the club and made the Western trips with the Yankees. He was front page news every time he hit one. Such headlines as "Babe Gets One", "Bam wallops two—50", were common throughout the land. Ruth was top man, and that’s twenty-six years ago.
It was Grantland Rice who took to his concordance and, one day after Ruth had gone hitless the previous afternoon and then followed with a pair of homers, wrote: "Ruth, crushed to earth, will rise again" and imitators wrote "Ruth Will Out" and other quotations about truth.
It is the absolute truth that the sound of Ruth’s bat saved baseball. The Black Sox scandal, embroiling such Chicago stars as Eddie Cicotte, Claude Williams, Chick Gandil, Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Risberg, Oscar Felsch and Fred McMullin, had broken on a startled sports world. If such as these had sinned, was any part of baseball on the level? Magnates were scared to death that the paying guests would stay away in hordes.
And they would have, if it hadn’t been for Ruth. With baseball at its lowest popular ebb, the Babe swung. And any man who ever saw Ruth swing will never forget it. A big powerful, 215 pound man, six feet two, with legs and ankles bearing a striking resemblance to the proverbial matchsticks. Just how they held that big body and propelled it as rapidly as they did will ever remain a mystery.
It is doubtful if the new generation knows all the facets of Ruth's greatness as a ball player. He had been a tremendous pitcher, good enough to hurl twenty-nine consecutive World Series innings without being scored upon as a member of the Red Sox. He was adept as a first baseman. He was wonderful defensively in the outfield and his arm gave cards and spades to anyone except Bob Meusel in those glorious days.
One night in 1935 when sportswriters were cutting up touches at Asbury Park, where Max Baer trained for his defeat at the hands of ancient Jim Braddock, the inevitable argument of comparison between Ruth and Ty Cobb arrived at the glass-laden table. It flourished for some minutes until Eddie Neil, Associated Press wizard, who was killed in the Loyalist war in Spain, rose:
"Listen, you fellows", he said. "There*s no comparison. For every base your guy, Cobb, stole, my guy, Ruth, hit a home run."
That wasn't exactly the truth, but it compelled a lot of thought and the argument shifted to the fourteen-count in Philadelphia. In the interests of authenticity, let it be recorded that while Cobb stole 896 bases in his career, Ruth hit merely 729 home runs. It is also right to note that Ruth stole 127 bases against Cobb's life-time package of 118 homers.
But Cobb, fleet and daring as he was, never thrilled the mob with his base stealing as Ruth did with his fence-clearing wallops. And the sight of Ruth, menacingly facing a pitcher, with his bat almost stationary high up on his left shoulder, was a thrill in itself. And when he swung and missed, twisting his thin legs into a corkscrew, even a newcomer at the ball park knew that here was a genius. Consummate grace. And when he strode to the plate or trotted to his position in right field, he did it with the mincing steps of a ballet dancer, something to remember. And when he talked, in those days, his voice had the blustering raspness of great waves shredding a wooden ship. Something to remember,too.
Ruth and the Yankees were whipped by McGraw’s canny Giants in the 1921 Series, but Ruth was just beginning. Despite the fact that he and his bat had taken the dark brown taste of the Black Sox out of the public mouth, he wasn’t content. Immediately he figured he was bigger than the game. Hadn’t the papers said so? Hadn’t he hit fifty-nine home-runs?
So when Judge Landis, newly installed as lord high commissioner of baseball, ruled against barnstorming tours after the Series, Ruth and Bob Meusel defied him. For which they were fined their World Series checks and suspended for the first thirty playing days of the 1922 season. This was a monumental crack in the teeth to Miller Huggins, gifted manager of the Yankees, but Ruth adjusted matters. All he did was bang thirty-five home runs in merely 110 games. Those were enough to pit the Yanks against the Giants again. And a horrible four-straight whipping in the Series, when the Babe got only two hits in seventeen trips for a sparse .118.
Ruth was mammoth as a celebrity. When he ate, he ate big.....nine hot dogs at a clip. When he drove an automobile he drove red ones fast. He dressed flamboyantly, topped by the ever present tan cap. When he talked he, to coin a phrase, used salty language. They tell the famed story that shows his two sides:
A small boy was dying in a New Jersey hospital and feverishly moaned for Babe Ruth. An uncle unconsciously let the story of the pitiful boy out and one summer morning, armed with a bat and a ball, the Babe appeared at the hospital, unbidden by anything but his love of kids. When he appeared, with cigar, in the hospital room, the boy brightened. Ruth told a few tales, promised to hit a homer for the boy that afternoon, and left. And he hit the home run, and the boy lived, and the story appeared in every newspaper.
A few years later, a man strolled into the Yankee dugout, went up to Ruth and said: "I'm Jackie Scott’s uncle. We all appreciate greatly what you did for the boy. He’s in perfect health now, and the doctors say you’re the only man responsible. Thank you." And the man left.
Ruth tugged on his cap, picked up a bat and said, loudly enough to be heard thirty miles away: ”1 wonder who that old s- o -b is. He sounds daffy to me."
Then came 1927 and. Ruth spearheading what is generally called the greatest team ever put together—the 1927 Yankees. Ruth, who hit sixty home runs, Gehrig, who drove in 175 runs, Mark Koenig and Tony Lazzeri around second, Joe Dugan on third, Earle Combs in center and Bob Meusel in left, with such as Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt and Pipgras and Wiley Moore and Bob Shawkey and Urban Shocker as pitchers. They won 110 games, finishing nineteen games ahead of the Athletics, and slaughtered the Pittsburgh Pirates, four straight, in the Series.
Tops was in the 1932 World Series against the hapless Chicago Cubs, and a major element of the Ruth legend. The Yankees won the first two games in New York, and then on a Sunday, played before a huge hostile, heckling Cub audience. They hooted with glee as Ruth went out easily in the first inning and again in the third. And when he minced to the dish in the fifth, the crowd was on him. The Babe stepped back from the plate and turning to the stands pointed deliberately to the furthest center field bleachers. Then he stepped in to face Charley Root’s pitching.
Root threw a strike and the crowd howled. Root threw again and Ruth twirled as he swung in vain. Then he stepped out of the batter’s box again and once again pointed to the center field customers. Root threw and Ruth whacked the ball exactly where he had pointed. And the most inimical Chicagoan applauded as he trotted calmly around the bases.
That night, in a Loop hotel lobby, Joe Williams, columnist for the New York World Telegram, said to the gay Babe: ”What would have happened if you’d missed, Babe?” The great man hesitated a second and then shouted: "Well, I never thought of that!”
No matter how great a current ball player may look, it’s safe to trot out Shakespeare in ”As You Like It” and holler to the heavens: "Nay, certainly, there is no Ruth in him."
When Babe Ruth was in the French Hospital last January, he received 37,000 letters of encouragement from admirers. That, besides innumerable telegrams and telephone calls asking how he was getting along. And hundreds came personally to the hospital, seeking to see the Babe. Only James A. Farley, Ray Kilthau and Frank Stevens (of the catering family) were admitted to the room, aside from his immediate family.
Ruth never had any memory for names. As a matter of fact, through the great years he never knew Gehrig’s name, or couldn’t remember it. "The Dutch guy on first" was the way he spoke of Gehrig.
The day of Ruth’s birthday at Baltimore is definitely established — February 6 — but the year differs on his birth certificate and on a baptismal certificate. The former says 1895 and the latter 1894. At any rate, since his retirement in 1935 from baseball, his birthday has been the only time when Babe popped back into public life. On that day each year, a week or so before going South for Spring training, the baseball writers invade Babe’s Riverside Drive apartment (adorned by photos and cartoons depicting his greatness) and there is always a gigantic cake and candles and whiskey. And cigars. And photographers. The date is a MUST on the date books of sports editors.
He hopped back momentarily into the sports scene in 1942 when he played a series of Red Cross golf matches with Ty Cobb in Boston and at since defunct (because of plots for cutting it up into housing lots) famous Fresh Meadow Country Club at Flushing, L.I. Cobb won by needling Ruth constantly, more by constant staring at him than any words. Cobb had been obtained for the matches by Fred Corcoran, Professional Golfers Association of America tournament manager, only by theruse of informing Cobb that Ruth had said: ”1 can lick that S-O-B any time on any golf course." Corcoran plugged the match and it made good dough for the Red Cross.
Again in August of 1943 Ruth appeared at a War Bond Show, staged by the New York Journal American, at the Yankee Stadium and he helped sell $6,000,000 worth of bonds as he batted against the late Walter Johnson. Johnson knew the 50,000 had come to see Ruth hit one, and after two strikes to the Babe, he came in with a soft one and Ruth blasted it high in the right field stands and the show was a mammoth success.
Ruth was a tremendous spender in his early days. His pay was high but his manner of living higher. Bearcat Stutzes....champagne. When his name on advertising endorsements, magazine and newspaper articles became in great demand, Christy Walsh, a smart press agent in New York, for a fee, convinced the Babe of the wisdom of letting him be his manager. Walsh was highly successful with Ruth, and managed him and his money admirably. Walsh set up a trust fund and annuities for Ruth, which now pay off with affluent regularity. It can be said that, without Walsh, now working out of Los Angeles, where he handles motion picture and pro football ventures, Ruth conceivably would have lived his retirement years in comparative penury.