The Selling of the Babe (12 page)

It might have been the deteriorating quality of wool and horsehide, but there is also some evidence that pitchers were starting to figure Ruth out, pitching around him when they could, and it was becoming clear that even though he claimed otherwise, left-handers still gave Ruth trouble. At any rate, as the season went on, Ruth's production dwindled. In August, he would hit .282, with only six extra base hits, all doubles, for a slugging percentage of .359, even worse against lefties. By comparison, in May he'd slugged .837. He went from being Babe Ruth to Heinie Wagner. In the final month of the season, Ruth hit no better than his fellow pitchers. All of a sudden, Ruth, with a bat in his hand, was just another guy.

The headline writers noticed. Ruth's name became less frequently used, and even the game stories, which earlier in the year had breathlessly recounted even his towering fly ball outs, now ignored him unless he really did something. Barrow noticed, too. By the end of the year, when Ruth wasn't pitching, George Whiteman often played left; that left Ruth's bat in the lineup, anyway—the two men shared the same stick. In the course of one short, strange season, Ruth had gone from a pitcher to a position player and then back to being a pitcher. It was as if some great unexplained spell, one that had made Ruth superhuman, a hitter the likes of which baseball had never before seen, had been broken. His 1918 performance is one of the most schizophrenic in the history of baseball, muddied at the start by the war, and made even muddier by the impact the war had on the season. By season's end, it was an open question as to whether Ruth's batting star would remain in the firmament orbit or whether he was some singular comet, never to return.

Fortunately, he still remembered how to throw. Down the stretch, he was once again one of the best pitchers in baseball and over his last 11 starts he went 9–2 with an ERA under 2.00. With Ruth in the rotation again, everyone else finally got a little rest and the Red Sox held on to their lead atop the American League as the Yankees collapsed and neither the Indians nor the Senators could overcome the slow decimation of their roster over the course of the season. Boston finished 75–51, in first place, two and a half games ahead of the Indians. Frazee's bold confidence coupled with Barrow's grasp of available talent—with a little help by their creative use of Ruth in the field—proved the difference.

After some further maneuvering, baseball finally received permission from the government to hold a World Series, but that didn't stop the drama. First, the owners figured out a way to screw the players out of the last month of their contracts, agreeing to release all but those playing in the Series, entering into a gentleman's agreement not to sign anyone released by another team. The players were powerless to complain, and baseball argued that a new way to divvy up the postseason money, imposed by the National Commission in the off-season that cut the second, third, and fourth place teams into the bounty, would make up for the loss. That argument was a lie, but the players were mostly kept in the dark and in the confusion of the season's final month, hardly had time to notice.

The Chicago Cubs won the National League and the right to play the Red Sox. Johnson threw down the first salvo of his war with Frazee by announcing that in order to save fuel during wartime, instead of having the teams travel twice between the two cities, as had been traditional, they would do so only once, and the Series would open in Chicago.

Frazee howled. While Boston would host four contests if the Series went to seven games, three home games to start gave the Cubs an advantage. It also set up the possibility that if they jumped ahead of the Red Sox either two games to one or three to nothing, that by the time the World Series came to Boston no one would give a damn. Then Boston wouldn't make any money. The
Globe
rightly called it “a Johnsonian slap at Frazee,” and Frazee himself termed it “an insult to Boston fans,” but one he was powerless to do anything about. Johnson, for his part, wrapped himself in the flag and took a shot at Frazee's patriotism, saying, “Someday Frazee will learn that the United States is engaged in a desperate war, the winning of which is the only thing that matters.” He was speaking of the Great War, but he might as well have been talking about the escalating battle between himself and Frazee.

Had the Series taken place a month or so before, when Ruth's name was on the lips of every remaining baseball fan both in America or overseas, there might have been some excitement for what was to come. As it was, despite the fact that Ruth had finished with 11 home runs over the course of his 72 appearances on the field, by the time the Series began on September 5, interest was muted. All the posturing baseball had done over the course of the season, coupled with the perception that the players were money-grubbing, unpatriotic slackers eager to shirk their duty, dimmed interest. Compared to previous years, press coverage was relatively scant and not a single game was close to being a sellout. The Cubs' decision to play at Comiskey Park, with a larger seating capacity, instead of their own field, Cubs Park (better known as Wrigley Field today), was wasted. All they gained were more empty seats.

But the Cubs did worry about Ruth, and the larger dimensions of Comiskey Park, whose fences were 50 to 75 feet more distant than those at Cubs Park, might also have been at play in the decision. Yet despite the presence of Ruth, the Cubs were actually favored in the Series. Two of their top three pitchers, Lefty Tyler and James Hippo Vaughn, were left-handed. Together with right-hander Claude Hendrix, all three had won 19 games or more in the shortened season and the staff ERA was a stingy 2.18. Pre-Series speculation focused on whether the Cubs pitching could keep Ruth's bat quiet, as the press desperately tried to drum up interest in the games and sell a few papers. They hoped that when asked if the Cubs could quiet the battering Babe, everyone would forget that he had been
sotto voce
for more than a month.

Although the Cubs led the National League in runs scored, they were still a quintessential Dead Ball Era team, cracking only 21 home runs despite their home park's cozy dimensions; every man in the lineup was adept at playing the small ball style of play that still ruled baseball.

Unlike today, most managers kept their choice for starting pitcher a secret until game time, often gauging light, weather conditions, and even the size of the crowd before revealing their selection. Fastballers were favored when the weather was poor and the day was dark, presumably because the darkened ball was harder to pick up, or when it was warm and spectators might remove their coats, revealing a backdrop of white shirts.

Still, Ruth caused a stir and may have given Cubs manager Fred Mitchell some pause before the start of the Series. In batting practice, he strode to the plate, causing a ripple to run through the crowd, half either cheering him or razzing him, the rest falling silent and watching intently. Few Cub fans had bothered coming out to Comiskey earlier in the season to see Ruth play against the White Sox. Here was their chance finally to see the great Colossus.

Ruth thrived in such moments. He loved it when all eyes were upon him. As a boy, he had played for one reason—to get an admiring nod or a “nice job, George,” from Brother Matthias or one of the others. Maybe that's why the moment never seemed too large for him. In every at bat of his life, he had always felt as if he had something to prove. He had always wanted to impress, to gain approval. In that regard, none was different from any other, whether it was batting practice or the World Series itself.

A strong cross breeze blew across the field from third toward first, billowing out the bunting hanging from the front of the stands and sending the odd bit of paper racing across the field. An over-the-fence home run was unlikely in Comiskey Park anyway, even if the wind was blowing straight out. It was 420 feet to center, 362 down the line in one of the few symmetrical parks in the big leagues.

One of Boston's position players or backup pitchers was on the mound. They knew the kind of pitches Ruth liked and he wasn't shy about telling them either. He rarely used batting practice for anything else other than an excuse to swing as hard and as often as he could. No bunts or smacking the ball the opposite way for him.

Massive bat in hand, Ruth took his stance, bat back and peeking over his right shoulder. Over the course of the 1918 and 1919 seasons, he would ever so slowly learn his swing and discover what worked and what didn't. Instead of standing square, his feet equidistant from the plate and spread wide apart, over time Ruth evolved a closed stance, his weight back, his bat rocking back. As the pitcher started his motion, and his weight shifted almost entirely on his back foot, like a rubber band being twisted, building up energy before being let go and simply uncoiling, stepping forward with his right foot and pushing off with his left, first his hips and then his torso and shoulders flying open, the bat lagging behind like the business end of a trebuchet, almost still at first, all his power and strength flowing through his shoulders to his forearms and wrists and hands, and then concentrating down the bat toward the end, the sweet spot sweeping through the strike zone at the point of contact faster and more powerfully than any other player in the game, a seamless dance, almost balletic in its precision.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, the resounding crack announcing success or failure even before the mind registered what had just happened, and that the ball was growing small. On this day, Ruth hit the first pitch he saw through the heart of the crosswind and into the stands in right field.

It was both breathtaking and frightening, but Ruth didn't much seem to care. He'd just watch for a second, maybe grin or yell something out to the pitcher and then beckon him to throw again, as if doing what no one else could do was nothing at all.

The Cubs were watching, too, thankful perhaps that they had made the decision to switch venues. If Ruth could do that in Comiskey, what might he do in Cubs Park, where the fences were 75 feet or so closer to the plate? They didn't want to think about that. But if Chicago manager Fred Mitchell was watching, the blast may have provided confirmation for a decision he had been mulling for days. As often as possible, he planned to pitch Vaughn or Tyler. At least a left-hander had a chance against Ruth. If he got hot, he could wreck a club all by himself, particularly against right-handed pitching.

Most observers expected Ruth to play every game in left field and perhaps not pitch at all. In the
Boston American
, H. W. Lanigan offered that Barrow “was to keep the Battering Babe Ruth on duty in the left pasture in all the games.” Ruth expected to play, too, telling the
Herald
, “I hope I don't have to sit on the bench a single inning of the Series.” He'd done that in 1915, appearing in only one game, as a pinch hitter, and hated it.

He had reason to hope he would remain occupied. Almost overlooked was the fact that during the last week of the season, Ruth experienced a personal tragedy: his father died.

The elder Ruth had run a tavern in Baltimore for years while his incorrigible son checked in and out of St. Mary's, but in recent years his fortunes had improved somewhat. After making it in the big leagues, Babe helped out the old man and bought a somewhat better joint on Eutaw Street. The son even stood in behind the bar on occasion to help pull in customers. But the Ruth family's precarious social position was unchanged—they lived in a world where boozing and brawling came with breakfast, just as they had when Babe was growing up.

On the morning of August 25, one day after Babe last pitched and won, he received word that his father had passed away. The situation was both tawdry and sad. Ruth's mother was already dead and his father remarried and was living with his new wife, Martha, and her sister above the tavern. His wife's brother-in-law, who'd recently been charged with statutory rape, showed up uninvited at the bar. So did her brother, a fireman, and the two men soon got into it with one another. George Sr., relaxing upstairs in the family apartment, heard the row, came down to break it up, and eventually stepped outside to brawl with the fireman. He went down hard, and although few reports of the incident line up precisely, he hit his head, probably on the curb, fracturing his skull. He was taken to a hospital but soon died, leaving Ruth an orphan.

Ruth had missed a few days while attending to the funeral but returned to the team and never spoke of the tragedy publicly. Whether he was distraught, saddened, indifferent, or oblivious is not known. At any rate, it did not seem to affect his performance on the field. Baseball had long been his sanctuary and so it was again. If there was one wound Ruth carried forward in his life from his upbringing, it was his inability to place much trust in family relationships, particularly as a young man.

Before Game 1, with a crowd of just over 19,000 fans in attendance and thousands of seats unsold, Mitchell had both his left-handers, Tyler and Vaughn, go out and warm up, the kind of sleight-of-hand trickery still in vogue. Barrow countered with a man from each side, Ruth, and, oddly enough, Joe Bush, who had won only one of his last seven decisions. Either Mays or Sam Jones would have been more credible, but in those days, teams were loath to have a pitcher take time off before the World Series to set their rotation. Jones had pitched only two days before and on August 30, despite the fact the Red Sox had clinched the pennant, Mays, incredibly, had needlessly pitched both games of a doubleheader. Even then, a pitcher needed some rest.

When the lineups were announced by way of megaphone, there was little surprise that Ruth was on the mound and George Whiteman was in left field. What was surprising was that Ruth was hitting ninth, because even as he had slumped, Barrow usually hit him third. In fact, in two of his last three pitching appearances, Ruth had hit cleanup and Whiteman, playing left, had batted ninth. But this time, in the first game of the World Series, George Whiteman, he of the .266 batting average with one home run for the season, hit fourth.