The Selling of the Babe (38 page)

There, his life could be quantified and measured. Now that Ruth was on his way, the daily watch became all about numbers. He was halfway to a new home run record, and every subsequent home run Ruth hit in 1920 came with a number attached to it. Even though the Yankees were challenging for their first pennant, their place in the standings usually took second billing to Ruth's home runs. That's just the way it was.

As the Yankees danced around first place, even taking possession of it all by themselves for a few hours on June 6, Ruth finally hit home run number 16 against the Tigers on June 11. But a few days later the team suffered a blow when Duffy Lewis went down with a knee injury. Yankee pennant hopes took a hit as they lost three of four to Cleveland, Ruth keying the lone win in a 14–0 victory with home run 17. The press wondered if it was the old hoodoo coming back again.

Now it was already showing in Boston and affecting the Red Sox. The Red Sox, after being the class of the league for two months, were collapsing. The reason, primarily, was injuries. Outfielder Tim Hendryx had been leading the league in hitting for much of the first two months, but went down with a leg injury and the Sox didn't have the depth to adjust. Waite Hoyt tore a groin muscle so badly he needed surgery, Allen Russell suffered an aneurysm, and Harry Hooper was hospitalized with an abscess in his leg. The Ruthless Red Sox were suddenly less a whole lot more often, and it showed. They would not challenge for the pennant in 1920, and over the next several seasons would follow a similar pattern, a quick start leading to optimism in the local press, then injuries, accidents, and collapse.

A few days later, it almost looked as if the Yankees might suffer the same fate and become “Ruthless” themselves. The Babe was on first base in Chicago when Bob Meusel ripped one to Buck Weaver, playing shortstop. Weaver raced to second to force Ruth and threw to first in one motion.

The Babe didn't get down, and first the ball and then Weaver's fist hit him above the left eye. Ruth went down, falling over the bag, losing consciousness for a moment before he came to, clearly dazed, the swelling already starting to show. He tried to continue but left the game an inning later. He was back in the lineup the next afternoon, but Ruth had been lucky. Another half inch lower and the ball would have struck him flush in the eye. He wouldn't have been the first promising hitter to lose his career to being struck by a ball.

For all the power he displayed at the plate, Ruth was rarely targeted by opposing pitchers. For one, he had good instincts and was adept at avoiding being struck, but he also pulled off the plate as he swung. He was also respected. Every player in baseball knew that Ruth made them money, and no one went head-hunting with Ruth at the plate. Over the course of his career, he would only be struck by a pitch 43 times. In 1927, when he set the home run record with 60, he was not hit by a single pitch.

The club returned to New York at the end of the 15-game road trip, which the papers called the most successful of all time, by any team, ever, in terms of attendance. More than 200,000 fans had turned out to see Ruth, and a couple of thousand more to actually see their own home team. That's just the way it was. On the way back to New York, the Yankees even got off the train and played an exhibition in Columbus, Ohio, that drew 7,000 more. For such contests, Ruppert and the Yankees demanded—and received—85 percent of the gate, of which the players received not a single dime. All Ruth did was hit six out during batting practice, one more in the game, steal two bases, double, and walk twice.

Back in the Polo Grounds, Boston came to town, and Ruth seemed to save some of his best for his old team, diminished as they were. As the Yankees took three of four, Ruth added a triple and two more home runs, bringing his total for the season up to an astounding 23. He was already approaching his 1919 standard, and the season was only half over.

Earlier, Grantland Rice had speculated that Ruth might hit 40 for the season. Now speculation increased to 50, an overwhelming amount as shocking then to think about as 100 home runs is today. Bookmakers loved it. The only time they had been able to take bets on individual achievements before were when pitchers like Walter Johnson, Joe Wood, or Rube Marquard had long winning streaks, but this was different. How many home runs Ruth would hit was a question it would take the rest of the year to answer. The bookies set 50 as a target for Ruth, one they believed was just a bit higher than he was likely to reach and started laying odds. Every fan in the game put a couple dollars down, and some put down five figures.

Ruth was surprising everyone. Never in his wildest dreams had Ruppert imagined this. He would have been happy if Ruth had hit 25 home runs and hit .300—that still would have been spectacular. Now, it was almost as if he had bought two players instead of one.

With only his own record for Ruth to chase, the writers scurried back to the record books and now came up with another mark for Ruth to take aim at, the professional baseball record of 45 home runs set by Perry Worden of Minneapolis in the Western League in 1895, assisted by another little bandbox of a park. It wasn't much of a record, but it served its purpose, and they soon uncovered several other minor leaguers who had struck more than 30 home runs as well. However, this year Ruth did not need anyone else to set a goal. He was taking care of that all by himself.

Ruth's home run bat took a rest when the team went back on the road, but he kept hitting, the fence being his only impediment. The Yankees kept winning, running a winning streak to nine games and taking over first place as Ruth's batting average climbed above .380 behind only Joe Jackson and tied for second with the Browns' George Sisler.

Increasingly, Ruth went his own way. The Yankees, figuring if it wasn't broken, it didn't need to be fixed, put few restrictions on his behavior. On the East Coast, Ruth usually didn't even bother traveling with his teammates anymore. Instead, he drove his Packard, taking great delight in racing from town to town faster than the team, usually smoking a cigar and talking a mile a minute with whomever he decided to bring along.

Early one morning in July, just after midnight, Ruth, the Mrs.—or at least someone the press said was the Mrs.—outfielder Frank Gleich, and Yankee coach Charlie O'Leary were in rural Pennsylvania, just outside Wawa, on their way back to New York. Ruth later claimed that another car cut in front of them, causing him to run off the road, his car flipping over in a ditch. Everyone was banged up—Mrs. Ruth in particular, apparently—and O'Leary temporarily knocked out. Ruth was fine, but at least one newspaper reported that he had been killed. The Colonels drew a deep breath and requested that Ruth travel by train the rest of the year. By this time, the $150,000 insurance policy was woefully inadequate, Ruth was already worth a great deal more. With every home run, his value kept going up.

Back in New York, Ruth found his home run swing again. Whatever had once caused it to evaporate for weeks or months at a time was no longer an issue. Now, his droughts rarely lasted a week, and he homered in three straight games against the Tigers in mid-month to lift his season total to 27. The
Times
noted he showed no favorites and had struck nearly the same number off lefties as he had righties. The last against Detroit, in a 5–4 loss, was notable because it was Ruth's first home run of the year in the Polo Grounds to land in the lower deck. Every other home run had either been into the second deck or onto and over the roof, or into the more distant bleachers. W. O. McGeehan couldn't resist, and wryly noted, “There was some speculation as to whether or not the Infant Swatigy is starting to lose his sock. It might be that they have taken some of the kangaroo wool out of the league baseball, or that there is a falling off in the quality of the thoroughbred horsehide … or it might be that The Babe stuck one in the lower stands by way of variety.”

With Ruth only three home runs away from a new major league record, crowds over the next few days were immense. Everyone knew that three home runs in a game for Ruth was not impossible. The way things were going, it almost seemed inevitable.

On July 13, a Tuesday, the Yankees scheduled a doubleheader with the Browns to account for an earlier rainout. The crowd started arriving at noon “lured by the prospect of seeing The Babe equal his home run record,” according to the
Tribune.
They kept coming until an official record of 38,823 had paid admission. Those were holiday numbers. This was a weekday, at a time when workmen still worked ten- or twelve-hour days and even bankers rarely got off before 3:00 p.m. Suffice to say there was not much work accomplished in Manhattan that day, except in the counting room at the Polo Grounds. Ruth didn't hit any home runs, but he did provide all the entertainment in the sweep, striking out five times and giving all 38,823 fans another record to talk about—no one had ever struck out five times in one day before. He couldn't even fail like anyone else.

He made up for it the following day, hitting a home run before “only” 15,000 fans on a Wednesday, as those who'd played hooky the day before returned to work. He tied the record the next day, hitting a game winner off the facade in the 11th to send another 10,000 fans home happy on a damp and rainy day that led many to think the game would be rained out.

Now that a new record was on deck, the big crowds turned even larger, and the Colonels didn't much care how quickly Ruth broke the mark. He had another 60 games to try, about half in New York. Ruth accommodated them as best as he could by waiting four days, long enough to draw another 100,000 fans into the Polo Grounds, but by now he hit home runs like others found pennies on the sidewalk, by accident. He could hardly help himself.

Ruth went homerless in the first game of the doubleheader against the White Sox on July 20, but ended the drama in the fourth inning of game two off Dickey Kerr. With the count 2–2, Kerr tried a curve and Ruth tried his usual strategy. He swung hard, and knocked the ball just into the stands in deep right field, not his longest of the year by any measure, but longer than anyone else's knock. “Idols are made of Clay,” wrote Arthur Robinson in the
New York American
, “and heroes of dust, but the huge bulk of Babe Ruth was covered with the mud of a rain-soaked field … [when] he put his massive shoulder behind a terrific swing.”

As fans fought for the ball in the bleachers, the crowd did what it could to rise to the occasion and out-cheer every other cheer Ruth had received in 1920, what Marshall Hunt in the
Daily News
termed “an ovation befitting a King.” Ruth responded by trying to out-doff himself. After doffing his cap as he wound his way round the bases, and doffing his cap after crossing the plate, Ruth, running out of responses, bowed down to the crowd, sending them into even more hysterics. And just in case anyone had blinked on the first one, in the ninth he dropped number 31 into the stands. After the game, a black youngster allegedly appeared in the clubhouse with the ball, asking only for the privilege of shaking Ruth's hand in return. Ruth not only accommodated but according to Robinson in the
American
, “The Babe smiled, shook the little fellow's hand, patted him on the back and gave him a season pass for the rest of the Yankee games.”

The record was his, and henceforth so was history, because that, as much as anything else, is what Ruth and the home runs gave to baseball in 1920: its history. As the professional game evolved over the better part of four decades through the last half of the nineteenth century, the game, the rules, and the conditions under which it was played changed so much and so often that statistical records, beyond who finished first, had little meaning. But as the twentieth century dawned, and the major leagues came to be represented by two stable leagues, the basic rules remaining intact, that had changed. Ruth, by his remarkable performance, caused everyone to look back and realize, perhaps for the first time, that baseball had a history, that it was possible to compare earlier apples with today's oranges. The numbers of the game became a way for games past to live again, and for players not to disappear into history, but emerge from it, to remain significant and valued long after they last appeared on the field. To a degree, this had never happened before. Ruth just wasn't the game's present and its future, but he was also the bearer of its past.

There was talk afterward that the home run had earned Ruth a movie deal worth $100,000. It may not have been tied to the record, and it wasn't worth $100,000, but in the wake of the new mark Ruth did agree to appear in a silent feature. He would soon start filming his dramatic debut,
Headin' Home
.

Directed by Lawrence Windom, the “screenplay” was penned by the
Daily News
's Bugs Baer, and, ironically, the movie may have been partially financed by the notorious gambler Abe Atell, who would soon be implicated in the Black Sox scandal. The film was a vaguely biographical treatment of Ruth's own life, depicting the slugger as a country boy with a home run bat who can't get a spot on his local team until he hits a towering home run and then finds fame, fortune, and a girl playing in New York. If ever anyone needed evidence of the emerging Ruth myth,
Headin' Home
is it, Ruth's personal biography scrubbed and polished. Filming was scheduled to get under way in August.

Now it was all easy pickings for Ruth, gravy ladled on more gravy, every subsequent home run a record. And now, for the first time, really, they started to lose a little of their shine, what had once seemed so spectacular now a little commonplace, at least in the way the newspapermen reacted. Ruth added four more home runs over the remainder of the home stand the next week to lift his total to 35, as fans kept turning out in record numbers, nearly 65,000 for a split doubleheader on another Tuesday, then 25,000 for games on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday before culminating in two more full houses over the weekend. It didn't hurt that the Yankees were playing mostly winning ball, and that every win or loss seemed to dance them in or out of first place. The Giants were playing well, too, and although they weren't drawing as well as the Yankees, with emerging stars like George “High Pockets” Kelly and Frankie Frisch, they were having a pretty good season, battling Brooklyn for first place. New York was the center of the baseball universe.