The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (23 page)

“We saw the ball strike the ice, far out on the lake. It bounded and bounded, then we lost sight of it. My feeling was that the Dunlop, given an aerodynamical assist by nature, didn’t lose motion until it struck the opposite shore, perhaps a mile and one-half away.”

In the coming years, Hunt would travel with his man to cathouses and communion breakfasts, to the big games at the World Series and the small games on crabgrass fields in Indiana with local standouts brought together for a day of glory in the shadow of an exalted presence. He would check out the Babe’s women—“Always striving for accuracy, I must report that some of the Babe’s paramours for a day would really appeal only to a man who was just stepping out of a prison after serving a 15-year sentence,” he said—and ride fast with him through the night. He would put two live flounder from the local market in his bathtub in a hotel in Boston and invite writers and ballplayers to his room for a fishing tournament. He would put pinpricks in the bottom of all the cups in a dispenser on the train and watch as people tried to control the leaking water while they tried to drink.

Hunt would drag the Babe to the Boston Symphony. (The Babe fell asleep.) He would try to drag him to the ballet. (The Babe canceled at the last moment.) In the roaring time that evolved, Hunt was part of the roar. He went to the plays, the parties, ate everything with a discerning palate. He sat at the table and sent back dispatches to his readers.

“Action?” he would ask much later. “Did you ever see 500 persons, clad in garments permitting great freedom of movement, do the Charleston, the music provided by a 65-piece orchestra, every member giving his all?”

On February 14, 1923, he took the Babe to the almost-completed Yankee Stadium for the first time. Four inches of snow covered the field. The moment was arranged just for the readers of the
Daily News.

“The writer had invited the home run champion to inspect the new home of the Yanks,” Hunt wrote.

I had a curious desire to find out if the Babe could keep his eye on the ball after a quiet winter on his Massachusetts farm.

We sloshed out to a spot where Groundskeeper Phil Schenen will shortly pattern a nice new pitching mound. The Babe shed his fur-lined flogger and his imported skimmer and stepped nimbly to where the plate is to be. He was wearing a skillfully-tailored suit of blue serge.

Deponent never was a pitcher of any considerable parts. But the Babe stood there grinning broadly. After lengthy preparation, we launched a curve. It went wild. Poor control. But there was balm in two other sneaking curves and the Babe fanned wildly. Hence we say that we had something on the New England agricultural.

The fourth ball pitched hit the Babe’s bat in some uncanny manner and the sphere went bounding over the snow. And so did every ball thrown from then on.

“Sorry you ain’t pitching for the Browns,” laughed the Babe.

The stadium opened on April 18, 1923. The circulation of the
New York Daily News
had shot past the 600,000 mark in slightly more than three years, passing the circulation of the
New York Journal.
The
News
was now the best-selling paper not only in New York but in the entire country.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE NEW STADIUM
was an amazement. It was a giant, three-decked wedding cake in the Bronx, a skyscraper in repose, covering the ten acres of land purchased from the Astor estate. The plan to enclose the field entirely had been altered to allow the structure to be built in 11 months and be ready for opening day. The bleachers now were on one level and open to the elements in center field, but that did not change the public reaction. The stadium was an instant hit.

“Once inside the grounds, the sweep of the big stand strikes the eye most forcibly,” the
New York Times
decided at first glance. “It throws its arms out to each side, the grandstand ending away over where the bleachers begin. In the center of the vast pile of steel and concrete is the green spread of grass and diamond, and fewer ball fields are greener.”

The nation was in the midst of a stadium-building boom. Harvard University had built the first prestressed concrete stadium in 1903, and Yale, in the ever-running battle of one-upsmanship with its rival, doubled the size of Harvard’s effort with the 80,000-seat Yale Bowl in 1908, but the end of the war had started the true building explosion. Games had gained a new importance. Physical training in the cantonments had brought many ordinary men to sport, to athletics, forced them to take part and enjoy physical competition for the first time in their workaday lives. The interest continued.

Every university in the country seemed to be trying to raise funds to build a new stadium. Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Cal-Berkeley, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Ohio State…they all had new stadiums or stadiums under construction. In Los Angeles, the L.A. Coliseum was being built in an effort to attract the Olympics. In Chicago, a massive stadium, Soldier Field, was planned on the lake. The fact was pointed out in the
Times
that the Romans, the all-time lovers of sport, had constructed perhaps 10 to 15 larger stadiums and 100 smaller ones during their time of influence. The United States now not only had matched the Romans in stadiums, but had surpassed them in number and size. The Roman Colosseum, historians decided, held only 45,000 spectators. Bigger stadiums than that were being built every day.

Excluding the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Yankee Stadium initially was expected to be the biggest. Some plans suggested that as many as 100,000 people ultimately might be accommodated. (This never happened.) The Stadium also was different from all of the other contenders because it was a baseball park, the first major league park built in eight years. Football games and prizefights were expected to help pay the bills, and a running track around the field opened the possibility of large track meets, but the Yankees were the owners, and the Stadium was their home, and baseball was the game.

The Osborn Engineering Company of Cleveland, which had designed Fenway Park and Braves Field in Boston, was listed as the architect. No individual architect ever was named. The politically connected White Construction Company was the builder after the obligatory dance with Tammany Hall delayed the start of the project for almost a year. When the politicians finally agreed, Cromwell Avenue and a section of East 158th Street were swallowed up by the plan.

Five hundred men fashioned 2,000 tons of structural steel, 1,000 tons of reinforcing steel, and 30,000 yards of concrete (made from 45,000 barrels of cement, 30,000 yards of gravel, and 15,000 yards of sand) into the final structure. Trucks brought 116,000 square feet of sod from Long Island to cover the field. Two million board feet of lumber were used for the bleachers.

The dimensions of the park favored power hitters down the lines, especially left-handed hitters, with a low and cozy right-field wall, but the park also featured a deep center-field expanse that helped pitchers with good control. The official capacity, which wouldn’t be determined until an audit later in the season, was 62,000, but on opening day, April 18, 1923, Col. Ruppert released the attendance number of 74,200, which was quickly accepted. A later estimate was that 70,000 people, including standees, were inside on the cold, blustery day. Another estimated 25,000 were outside, shut out when all tickets were sold and the final gates in the bleachers were closed and padlocked a half-hour before game time.

Two entrepreneurs, 38-year-old Abraham Cohen of Brooklyn and 35-year-old Sebastian Calabrese of East 27th Street, were the first arrested Yankee Stadium ticket scalpers. Cohen was charged with trying to sell his $1.10 grandstand ticket for $1.25, Calabrese for asking $1.50. They faced fines of $500 and a possible year in jail.

The business of baseball had hit a new frontier. And there was no doubt about who had brought it there.

The Stadium was a grand monument to the drawing powers of the resident right fielder. (Did the Romans ever build a stadium simply to show off the talents of one gladiator? And if they did, did they—as the Yankees did—situate the playing surface so the late-afternoon sun always would be behind their star attraction, not shining in his eyes?) An argument could be made that Cols. Ruppert and Huston probably would have built a stadium at some point—they certainly had the capital to do so—but would it have been built as soon and as large? Ruth was the one who drew the large crowds to the Polo Grounds, invoking the jealousy of Giants owner Charles Stoneham, who asked the Yankees to leave. Ruth was the one who promised to bring the big crowds with him to whatever new park was built, no matter the size. Ruth was the one who at last had given the second-class Yankees first-class style and pizzazz.

Over 150 typists gathered at the grand opening, and it was Fred Lieb of the
World
who tapped out the words that stuck, immediately calling the Stadium “the House That Ruth Built.” From the moment the big man walked onto the field and posed for pictures with Little Ray Kelly, now five, the place belonged to him. Any doubt about that fact ended when he was singled out during the pregame festivities. Gov. Al Smith threw out the first ball to catcher Wally Schang, and John Philip Sousa himself led the 7th Regiment Band in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Babe was presented with a carrying case that contained a large bat, presumably to give him an idea of what he was supposed to do in the new ballpark.

His much-ballyhooed return to the farm in Sudbury during the off-season had put him in the best physical condition he’d enjoyed since he was a pitcher with the Red Sox. He’d been spotted only three times in New York since the close of the 1922 season, all short visits, two of them for medical treatment on the finger he’d injured during the Series. An influenza attack at the end of his three weeks at the healing tubs of Hot Springs had ensured that his weight was as low as it ever had been in the big leagues, 202 pounds, when he reported late to training camp in New Orleans. He seemed primed for a return to the glories of 1920 and ’21 except for one discomforting fact: he didn’t hit well during much of the spring.

Huggins had cornered him on a train and warned that maybe 1922 hadn’t been an aberration, that maybe he was done, finished. Ruth said nothing in reply. Questions were asked in the newspapers about whether his eyesight was beginning to fail at age 29 (actually 28). Westbrook Pegler, four days before the Stadium opened, had another thought. Maybe the good life wasn’t so good for George Herman.

“They are beginning to wonder if too much probity isn’t a dangerous thing,” Pegler wrote for the
Tribune
syndicate.

The Babe has been a model young fellow for all winter and spring, but daily his hitting gets more awful. They recollect wistfully that one time he landed in Detroit in the throes of passing personal reform and didn’t get a hit in three days. They recollect that on the night of the third day, the Babe suspended the pious regime, went to a party, appeared at the ball park the next day with an undersized skull containing an oversized headache, and lashed out two of his best home runs.

Of course no one is exhorting Babe Ruth to get down after the whip or any such thing as that. But still, if a man can hit better for having a mild little something the night before, why—why not?

On the day the story appeared, though, the subject of sudden worry went 5-for-6 against the Dodgers in a 15–2 exhibition win in Brooklyn. Never mind. The final calibrations had been made to give the first-day crowd what it wanted. The Babe knew what was expected.

“I’d give a year of my life to hit a home run today,” he said before the game.

The moment came in the third inning. The opponent was the Red Sox, and their pitcher was veteran Howard Ehmke. The Babe had flied out to center in the first and came to the plate this time with the Yankees ahead, 1–0, and runners on first and second. There was no way to work around him.

Ehmke was one of those deliberate, slow-motion craftsmen who can be maddening to watch. He would hem, haw, adjust, and study before performing the one act he seemed to wish to do least in the entire world: release the baseball. His repertoire of pitches matched his demeanor, mostly running from slow to slower to slowest. He would have been perfect as one of John McGraw’s Giants in the ’22 Series, lulling the Yanks and the Babe to sleep.

A succession of slow breaking balls—strike, ball, foul tip, ball—left the count at 2–2 when Ehmke hemmed and hawed his fifth serving of grapefruit toward the plate and the Babe uncoiled. He hit a rocket that drew the assembled spectators out of their new seats to watch it travel well into the right-field bleachers, putting a first dent on some of that two million linear feet of lumber when a fan ducked out of its path. Hosanna. The largest crowd in baseball history delivered the largest ovation in baseball history.

Ruth happily tripped around the bases and tipped his cap twice before he went into the dugout. Christy Walsh had brought his friend and only nonsports client, historian and writer Hendrik Willem van Loon, to describe just this kind of moment for the Walsh syndicate.

“The fans were on their feet yelling and waving and throwing scorecards and half-consumed frankfurters,” van Loon wrote, “bellowing unto high heaven that the Babe was the greatest man on earth, that the Babe was some kid, and that Babe could have their last and bottom dollar, together with the mortgage on their house, their wives and furniture.”

The Yankees won the game, 4–1, Ruth’s homer the difference. For the rest of his life, when asked about the home runs he had hit, he always would say this was his favorite. Theater never merged better with sport. He gave ’em exactly what they wanted when they wanted it.

In the second game ever played at the Stadium, he had a triple that traveled 480 feet in the air, then bounced 20 more feet toward the faraway center-field wall. In the third game, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, he stroked another long shot over center fielder Shano Collins that was called a game-winning double when the first two runners scored for a 4–3 Yankees win but probably would have been the first inside-the-park homer if Ruth had been allowed to keep running. Four days later, with chain-smoking President Warren G. Harding in attendance, the Bambino unloaded a fifth-inning shot into the stands in right, deeper and higher than his opening-day blast.

He circled the bases, tipped his cap, bowed toward the presidential box, went into the dugout, then came back out and pinned a poppy on Harding’s overcoat. Everybody smiled. Harding, alas, would be dead within four months of a heart attack in San Francisco. Ruth would be fighting for the batting title and the home run title and leading the Yanks to another pennant. He was back.

His personal life had not changed as much as the papers or he said it had. The addition of Dorothy to the mix in Sudbury had not stabilized his marriage with Helen. The pictures in the rotogravure sections looked great, but he simply now was an absent father as well as an absent husband. When he was on the road, he still was definitely single.

Temptation was not something he had to seek. Temptation would find him.

“If you weren’t around in those times, I don’t think you could appreciate what a figure the Babe was,” Richards Vidmer said. “He was bigger than the president. One time, coming north, we stopped at a little town in Illinois, whistle stop. It was about ten o’clock at night, raining like hell. The train stopped to get water or something. It couldn’t have been a town of more than 5,000 people, and by God, there were 4,000 of them down there standing in the rain, just wanting to see the Babe.

“Babe and I and two other guys were playing bridge. Babe was sitting next to the window. A woman with a little baby in her arms came up and started peering at the Babe. She was rather good-looking. Babe looked at her and went on playing bridge. Then he looked at her again and finally he leaned out and said, ‘Better get away from here, lady. I’ll put one on the other arm.’”

He and Helen had been married now for nine infidelity-filled years. Helen, it was suggested by friends, also had begun to look other places for companionship. Like her husband, she also had found the joy of drink. The waitress was having more and more trouble in keeping pace with the baseball player, the potentate, the national fascination. The Babe felt at ease at the perpetual banquet table. The waitress shied away from it. The fog was all around her.