Pinstripe Empire (25 page)

Huggins always liked Shocker and made him the team’s opening-day pitcher.

Combs, recovered from his broken leg, enjoyed a delayed rookie season by hitting .342 with 203 hits, while Gehrig, in his first full season, hit .295 with 20 homers. Ben Paschal, a rookie outfielder from Alabama, hit .360 in 275 at-bats, which stands as a rookie record for the Yanks. But there wouldn’t be many other bright spots, and fans and reporters began to criticize the team. Babe Ruth was not used to being questioned, and Huggins was not prepared to be second-guessed by his unmanageable right fielder. One could almost feel something big was going to happen. On August 29, it did.

With Ruth hitting .266 and the Yankees in seventh place, the team lost a 1–0 game at St. Louis. After the game, Ruth stayed out all night, enjoying the pleasures St. Louis offered, spending some of his $52,000 salary.

When he arrived late the next day, Huggins told him not to bother getting into uniform.

“What are you talking about?” said the Babe.

“I’ll tell you, Babe, I’ve talked it over, and I’ve come to the decision you’re fined $5,000 for missing curfew last night and being late today. You’re fined and suspended. The suspension runs the rest of the season.”

Furious, Ruth bolted from the clubhouse and took the next train back to New York to see Ruppert. The Colonel supported his manager. Huggins prevailed on all counts, his authority intact. He did relent and let Babe back on the team after nine days, and Ruth hit .345 with 10 homers in his final 29 games to salvage something of the season. He’d been taught a lesson. For now.

The Yankees finished 69–85, in seventh place. The fans knew a lousy product when they saw one; only 697,267 went to the Bronx that year, a drop of three hundred thousand. It was their only second-division finish between 1918 and 1964. Without that, they would have had forty-six consecutive years in the first division.

RUPPERT WAS CONCERNED over the 1925 finish but had confidence that Barrow could remold the team. Barrow in turn had great confidence in his four-man scouting department—Krichell, Joe Kelly, Ed Holly, and Bob
Gilks—and in his manager. Knowing he needed to remake an aging ballclub, Huggins rolled the dice in 1926, playing rookies Tony Lazzeri, twenty-two, at second, and Mark Koenig, twenty-one, at short. To take such a chance in the middle of the infield was extreme. Wanninger was traded to St. Paul for catcher Pat Collins, twenty-nine, who would become the regular catcher in ’26. Schang’s time had passed: He was shipped off to the Browns. At this point in Yankee history, Schang was the best catcher the team had ever had, although Huggins would ponder it and sometimes say he quit too soon on Muddy Ruel.

Dugan, twenty-nine, would be the senior member of the infield, holding down third, while Gehrig, just twenty-three, was at first. Combs, twenty-seven, was in center, with the old men Meusel (twenty-nine) in left and Ruth (thirty-one) in right. And so the team that would become the legendary 1927 Yankees was fully assembled in ’26 and ready to return to contention.

The kids in the infield were doing the job. On one day’s coverage, the
Times
reported that Koenig “ran over near second and excavated the grounder at top speed, but if you think that was handsome, examine what Signor Lazzeri did in the second. Tony dashed almost behind second base, stopped Luke Sewell’s hopper with his bare hand, took a header and leaped up in time to nail his man at first.”

The next day: “Dugan is also no wooden Indian around third. He ran over to his left, and broke down [Bucky] Harris’s hot grounder, then whizzed a throw to Gehrig that nailed the Senator as he slid madly into the bag.”

Tony Lazzeri was the first great Yankee of Italian heritage. He was a physically tough kid with little schooling, often getting into scrapes, and considered a boxing career. He was quiet but comfortable needling Ruth, to his teammates’ delight. He had forearms that revealed his work as a union-member boilermaker. He was, almost overnight, the second-most popular player on the team, and wherever the Yankees traveled, Italian-American clubs would hold banquets in the rookie’s honor. In an age before political correctness, he was called Poosh ’em Up, owing something to fans encouraging long drives to clear the fences.

He’d been a much-heralded rookie, having blasted 60 home runs the year before for Salt Lake City, where he played shortstop in 197 games on the endless Pacific Coast League schedule, scoring 201 runs and driving in 222.

There was one problem: Lazzeri suffered from epilepsy. Other teams passed on him. “Without that disease,” wrote Barrow, “I doubt that he ever
would have come to the Yankee Stadium.” The Yankees got glowing reports from their scout Ed Holly. To confirm, Barrow asked Bob Connery to leave St. Paul and check him out in Salt Lake. Again the reports were glowing. “I don’t care what he’s got,” said Connery. “Buy him. He’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” The Yankees paid $50,000 for him, along with future players. As for the epilepsy, according to Koenig, “it was never a problem when he was on the field.”

Koenig was rooming with Lazzeri one day when “he was in the bathroom, naked, combing his hair. The comb went whipping out of his hand and he went down and started having convulsions. I was stripped naked and I ran out into the hallway looking for Hoyt. He was an undertaker in the off-season. Hoyt took care of him.”

Barrow said he had one seizure on a train coming north from spring training in ’26, and another one in the clubhouse before a game in St. Louis. “I heard of a couple of others, secondhand,” he added. The Yanks were able to get a good-sized insurance policy on him; the trainer, Doc Woods, learned how to deal with an attack; and the fans by and large never knew of the affliction. Writers never mentioned it in their Yankee coverage.

SHOCKER WAS 19–11 for the ’26 Yanks, while Pennock, with 23, was the biggest winner. This club would not only bounce back in the standings but would bring fans back to the Bronx. To assemble a roster so formidable this quickly was a tribute to Barrow’s work as business manager and to Huggins for bringing along young players in a hurry.

The Yankees won the 1926 pennant by three games over Cleveland, rebounding with a 91–63 record. They didn’t clinch until the final weekend, but a sixteen-game winning streak in May, the longest in the league in thirteen years, pretty much silenced all who doubted that the team could return to former heights.

Ruth hit 47 homers and batted .372, and despite his bad publicity of ’25 was again cheered by fans in all ballparks. Gehrig hit .313 with 16 homers, but it was Lazzeri who really dazzled, as the rookie came through with 18 homers (third in the league) and 114 RBI (second in the league) at a position from which such offense was not expected.

Having won their fourth pennant, the Yankees were poised to meet the Cardinals, who’d just won their first. This would be a World Series with more than its share of memorable moments.

The days of crowding City Hall Park and other haunts to watch the pitch-by-pitch outside newspaper offices were pretty much over. Now fans were buying radio sets like mad along Radio Row—Greenwich, Fulton, Liberty, and Nassau streets. (The stores would make way for the World Trade Center forty years later.) The way to follow the World Series action now was by listening to the radio, available coast-to-coast, with play-by-play delivered by Graham McNamee. Game one was said to have had fifteen million listeners, and when a Yankee got a hit, you could hear shouts of joy from open windows all around town.

The Series opened at Yankee Stadium, its seats freshly repainted grass green after just four years. Phil Schenck led Commissioner Landis on a tour before game one. More than sixty-one thousand turned out to see Pennock hurl a three-hitter and win 2–1. In game two, old Grover Cleveland (Pete) Alexander turned the tables, stopping the Yanks on four hits and winning 6–2. The scene shifted to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.

Game three was a Cardinal win and game four was epic, as Babe Ruth slammed three home runs, scored four times, and led the Yanks to a 10–5 win. Two of Ruth’s homers were said to travel 515 and 530 feet, respectively, the second of them breaking a window in a Chevrolet dealership across Grand Avenue. Babe was the first player to ever hit three in a Series game.

One of the radio listeners was Johnny Sylvester, eleven, hospitalized with osteomyelitis in Essex Falls, New Jersey. During game two, Johnny’s father, a vice president of National City Bank, contacted both teams to request autographed baseballs for his son. Both teams sent team-signed balls and on the Yankee one, Babe wrote, “I’ll knock a homer for you in Wednesday’s game.” The balls were air-mailed to Johnny at the hospital. Miraculously, he returned to health while listening to the Babe’s big game on a radio. Alerted to the story, the press covered it widely, and it became part of Babe’s biography forever after in books and film. Babe went to visit Johnny in his hospital room right after the Series ended, where he was “at a loss for words.”

Sylvester not only recovered but went on to graduate from Princeton, serve in World War II, and work for a machinery company. In 1947 he visited a dying Ruth in Babe’s Riverside Drive apartment to wish
him
well. He brought the signed ball from 1926 with him. Johnny Sylvester lived until 1994, when he died at age seventy-eight, forever part of Yankee lore.

The fifth game was a ten-inning thriller with both Pennock and Bill Sherdel pitching the distance. In the top of the tenth, Koenig singled and Ruth walked. Huggins then had his cleanup hitter, Meusel, sacrifice them
into scoring position. Lazzeri hit a sacrifice fly and the Yanks led 2–1. Pennock set the Cards down in order in the last of the tenth, and the Yankees took a 3–2 lead in the Series, heading home.

The Cardinals won game six in a blowout, 10–2, with Pete Alexander going the distance for another big win at age thirty-nine. Like Lazzeri, Alexander suffered from epilepsy, but his more immediate problem was the pleasure of good whiskey. And after such a big win in the World Series, he felt entitled to celebrate on Broadway long into the night and then sleep it off in the bullpen the next day.

On October 10, Hoyt took the mound against Jesse Haines for game seven. Heading into the last of the seventh, the Cards were leading 3–2, with Ruth having hit his record fourth Series homer in the third inning.

The Cardinal runs were unearned. With one out in the fourth, Koenig couldn’t handle a grounder, and his fourth error of the Series put a man on first. Two batters later, Meusel messed up an easy fly ball, scoring one and loading the bases. Then Tommy Thevenow singled to right, scoring two. Despite the two errors, Hoyt had otherwise been brilliant.

Combs led off the seventh with a single and Koenig sacrificed him to second. Ruth was intentionally walked. Meusel forced him at second, with Combs, the tying run, going to third. Gehrig walked, and the bases were loaded for Lazzeri.

At this point Rogers Hornsby, the player-manager, came in from second base and decided to relieve Haines with Alexander. (Adding to the drama, Hornsby’s mother had died on the eve of the Series, but he chose to play on.) Pete had to be briefed on the situation as he arrived on the mound, as the game couldn’t be seen from the bullpen. Reports said he staggered in. He was not expected to be called on, but Hornsby went with his hunch against the Yankee rookie.

Ruth would later say, “Just to see Ol’ Pete out there on the mound, with that cocky little undersize cap pulled down over one ear, chewing away at his tobacco and pitching baseballs as easy as pitching hay is enough to take the heart out of a fellow.”

With 327 career victories, Alexander took his warm-ups and got ready to pitch. On a 1-and-2 offering, Lazzeri swung and missed for strike three. Ol’ Pete had fanned Tony and held on to the 3–2 lead.

The moment did not end the game; there were six more outs to go. In the last of the eighth, Alexander got Dugan, Collins, and Pennock, who had entered in the seventh.

The Cards failed to score in the ninth, Alexander taking his turn at bat, and then in the last of the ninth, the Series on the line, down by a run, Combs and Koenig both grounded to third. And up came the Babe, who drew his 11th walk of the Series.

Now the potential winning run was up in Meusel. On the first pitch—a swing and a miss—the best baseball player in the land made an unthinkable play. Babe Ruth tried to steal second! Bob O’Farrell, the catcher, threw to Hornsby, who tagged Big Bam out, and the Cardinals had won themselves a world championship.

Said Hornsby, “He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look around or up at me. He just picked himself up and walked away.”

O’Farrell said that the next time he ran into Ruth, he said, “Why the hell did you try to steal second base?” And that Ruth said to him, “I thought Alex was sleeping out there and I thought I could get a good jump on him.”

It was baffling.

For all the plays in the Series, Alexander striking out Lazzeri was the most remembered. In his later years, in failing health, trying to scrape out a living, you could pay a dime and enter a Times Square sideshow and hear Ol’ Pete tell the story in his own words. As for Lazzeri, this was a moment at the end of his great rookie season that he’d always be forced to talk about as well. And the two men, epileptics both, were forever bonded by this game for the ages.

IN SEPTEMBER 1926, fifteen-year-old Michael Sheehy was lurking outside Yankee Stadium waiting for the bleacher gates to open. Fred Logan, “Pop” to the players, asked him if he could help load some equipment into the clubhouse in exchange for a free ticket. He did, and Logan asked him on several other occasions and then made him his full-time clubhouse assistant. 1927 would be his first full season. Logan handled both Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds home clubhouses; Sheehy would just be at Yankee Stadium.

He came to be called Silent Pete because he never spilled clubhouse gossip. Eventually the name Pete replaced Michael, and he became Big Pete when he hired “Little Pete” Previte to assist him after he was made clubhouse chief following the death of Logan in 1945.

Sheehy was beloved by players for his loyalty to them and for the efficiency with which he ran the clubhouse. He would be in charge of doling
out numbers for the new players, ordering equipment, getting team baseballs signed (he could forge some of the big names himself, before autographs took on a cash value), and mostly keeping confidences. Gehrig was his favorite player.