Babe & Me (11 page)

EVERYTHING YOU READ IN THIS BOOK WAS TRUE, EXCEPT—
of course—for the stuff I made up. It's only fair to tell you which was which.

Joe Stoshack and his dad are fictional characters, and there's no evidence that time travel is possible. (Too bad, huh?) But most of the events described in 1932 were real.

Franklin Roosevelt
did
throw out the first pitch at the “called-shot game” on October 1, 1932. Five weeks later he was elected President of the United States. Coincidentally, just nineteen days after Roosevelt took the oath of office, Adolf Hitler became the dictator of Germany.

Each of these very different men led his nation for twelve years. To pile coincidence on top of coincidence, they died within three weeks of each other
in 1945—Roosevelt of a cerebral hemorrhage and Hitler by suicide.

While President Roosevelt and the Allies were aware that the Nazis were committing atrocities, nobody knew the full extent of the Holocaust until German concentration camps were liberated at the end of World War II.

I tried to paint an accurate picture of the Depression in this book. To give you an idea of how tough times were in America, consider the following statistics for 1932: One out of every four men was unemployed. The people who did have jobs earned an average of $17 a week. Thirty-four million Americans had no income at all. Twenty thousand businesses went bankrupt that year, and 1,616 banks failed. Twenty-one thousand people committed suicide.

Even the great Babe Ruth suffered in the Depression, seeing his salary drop all the way from a then-enormous $80,000 a year to $35,000 when he left baseball in 1935.

To describe the Babe's personality, I read many biographies of the man. Most helpful were
Babe Ruth's America
by Robert Smith,
Babe Ruth and the American Dream
by Ken Sobol,
Babe: The Legend Comes to Life
by Robert Creamer,
Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend
by Kal Wagenheim, and
The Life That Ruth Built
by Marshall Smelser.

I tried to show that Babe was a complicated man—fun-loving yet sad, impulsive but generous, immature and incredibly talented all at the same time. Babe's appetite and poor driving skills are
exaggerated in this story, but only slightly. He will, in all likelihood, always be the most famous baseball player in history.

Babe began getting painful headaches in November of 1946 and he was diagnosed with rare nasopharyngeal cancer. He was just fifty-three years old when he died on August 16, 1948. He is buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Did He Point?

The question of whether or not Babe Ruth truly called his shot in Game Three of the 1932 World Series can only be answered if we do someday figure out a way to travel through time. Even eyewitnesses to the event disagreed. But, for the record, here is what they had to say about it.

 

“What do you think of the nerve of that big monkey, calling his shot and getting away with it?”

“Ruth pointed with his bat in his right hand, to rightfield, not centerfield. But he definitely called his shot.”

“He was pointing at Root, not at the centerfield stands.”

“Yes, he pointed to the fence. Ruth, after two strikes, got out of the batter's box, dried his hands off, got back in the box with his bat in his left hand, and two fingers of his right hand pointed in the direction of centerfield, looking at the Cubs bench all the time.”

“Ruth pointed toward the centerfield fence, but he was pointing at the pitcher.”

“Before taking his stance he swept his left arm full length and pointed to the centerfield fence.”

“I'm not going to say he didn't do it. Maybe I didn't see it. Maybe I was looking the other way.”

“Babe Ruth did not call his home run.”

“Ruth did point, sure. He definitely raised his right arm. He indicated where he'd already hit a home run. But as far as pointing to center, no he didn't. You know darn well a guy with two strikes isn't going to say he's going to hit a home run on the next pitch.”

“He didn't point, don't kid yourself. If he pointed, do you think Root would have thrown him a strike to hit?”

“I hesitate to spoil a good story, but the Babe actually was pointing to the mound.”

“Ruth did not point at the fence before he swung. If he had made a gesture like that, well, anybody who knows me knows that Ruth would have ended up on his ____.”

“Of course I didn't see him point. Nobody else saw him point, because he didn't. Charlie would have thrown it right at his head.”

“If he had pointed out at the bleachers, I'd be the first one to say so.”

“Don't let anybody tell you different. Babe definitely pointed.”

“Sure he called the shot. No doubt about it.”

“He pointed in the direction of dead centerfield.”

“Where he pointed is a subject of debate.”

“A single lemon rolled to the plate as Ruth came up in the fifth and in no mistaken motions, the Babe notified the crowd that the nature of his retaliation would be a wallop right out of the confines of the park.”

“RUTH CALLS SHOT AS HE PUTS HOMER NO. 2 IN SIDE POCKET.”

“He pointed like a duellist to the spot where he expected to send his rapier home.”

“He called his shot theatrically, with derisive gestures towards the Cubs dugout.”

“Why don't you read the papers? It's all right there in the papers.”

The author would like to acknowledge the following for use of photographs and artwork:

 

“The Called Shot” by Matt Kandle, copyright © 1990 by Kirk Kandle, all rights reserved: 2; Nina Wallace: 25, 27, 39, 87, 109; Library of Congress: 31, 51; National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.: 36, 56, 75, 81, 96, 106; Babe Ruth Birthplace and Baseball Center: 38, 102, 126; National Archives: 113; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library: 117; Brace Photos: 122; Associated Press/Wide World Photos: 136.

Thanks to SABR—the Society for American Baseball Research—and, in particular, Morris Eckhouse, John Zajc, Bob Bluthardt, Bill Carle, Rich Topp, and Neal Poloncarz. Also, I appreciate the help I received from Kirk Kandle, Mary Brace, Barbara Perry, Pete Williams, Paul Dickson, Nina Wallace; from David Kelly at the Library of Congress; from Elise Howard at Avon Books; from Greg Schwalenberg at The Babe Ruth Birthplace and Baseball Center; from Bill Burdick at the National Baseball Hall of Fame; from Mark Renvitch at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library; from Joan Carroll at Associated Press/Wide World Photos; and from Tony Conte of Conte's Card Castle in Haddonfield, New Jersey.