The Selling of the Babe (5 page)

But without Johnson's assistance, Lannin and Frazee hadn't made the smartest deal, either. Although at the time the sale was announced it was presumed to include Fenway Park, that wasn't the case—the Taylor family, who under General Charles H. Taylor and his son John owned the
Boston Globe
and had built Fenway and before selling the team to Lannin, retained stock in the ballpark and even some voting shares in the club. An already complicated deal was, in reality, even more complicated, and the convoluted ownership structure of the team would wreak havoc on the franchise for most of a decade. Determining exactly who owned what without the assistance of an army of lawyers would eventually prove almost impossible.

That didn't bother Johnson. Aptly described by Charles Somers as someone who “never forgets an enemy,” when Frazee purchased the Red Sox he became enemy number one to Ban Johnson. After Johnson initially tried to convince Lannin to back out of the deal, saying, “Lannin will be given every opportunity to reconsider,” Johnson now sat back biding his time, trying to work Frazee into a corner and taking advantage of his money when he could.

Frazee had showed up at baseball's Winter Meetings in late 1917 eager to spend and anxious to let everyone else know it. Where the other owners saw fear and anxiety, Frazee saw opportunity. He alone was optimistic about the upcoming season.

To survive in the theater, you had to have that attitude. You had to believe every show was destined to be a hit and tell people that, even when you knew better. Besides, the public was fickle. He knew that more than one surefire smash had closed after only a few shows, and a fair share of dogs somehow found an audience and ran for months. Today's hot actor was yesterday's old news, and an ingenue could be thrust into a starring role and become a sensation.

No one in the theater lacked nerve. But baseball was different. In that world Frazee's aggressively optimistic temperament made every other team appear as if it were in retreat.

After winning the pennant and the World Series in 1913, a pennant in 1914, and then fighting off the Federal League, the A's Connie Mack was left with one of the highest payrolls in baseball. Nevertheless, his club finished last in the following three seasons and in 1917 he lost more than $60,000. At the winter meetings, Mack was looking to sell and Frazee, smarting over finishing second in his first year as owner and bullish on baseball's ability to thrive despite the war, was in the mood to spend.

Johnson, more or less directing league affairs like a puppet master, steered Frazee to Mack. Johnson was already plotting Frazee's removal and getting Mack some of the Boston owner's money first was part of the plan.

Frazee couldn't resist and the two eventually made two deals. The Red Sox added outfielders Amos Strunk, catcher Wally Schang, pitcher Joe Bush, and infielder Stuffy McInnis, players who could have made the starting lineup for any team in baseball, while Mack received $60,000. After the Yankees howled that the deal was lopsided, Boston sent over a couple more players, most notably longtime third baseman Larry Gardner. Cumulatively, the deal was richer, by far, than the Speaker sale a year before, easily the biggest in the history of the game, something Frazee underscored in a telegram to the Boston papers that called the deal “the heaviest financial deal ever consummated at one time in the history of baseball.” Advanced baseball statistics underscore Frazee's haul. In terms of WAR (wins above replacement), Frazee added nearly 10 wins to his ball club in 1918—and had he been able to keep Gardner, the haul would have been even better. On those terms, purely as a transfer of talent, the deal was roughly on par in terms of total value with the Ruth sale still to come. It gave Mack the cash to survive the season and made the Red Sox the most powerful team in baseball.

On paper anyway. That was the challenge they faced in Hot Springs, to turn the paper tiger into a potent force, a team that pulled together. And that wasn't going to be easy.

Frazee had already lost his manager in 1917, Jack Barry, to the Navy, and in the off-season one more thing became certain—it was unclear precisely who would be available to play in 1918, or for how long. The war was dragging on, and as it did it drew more and more players into the fray—Boston lost outfielder Duffy Lewis and pitcher Ernie Shore, among others. In order to compete, teams had to fill their rosters with unproven talent, the infirm, or players otherwise past their prime. By mid-December, no fewer than eleven Red Sox players had been lost to the war—the most of any team in baseball.

That's where Ed Barrow came in. The International League president and onetime manager of the Tigers had been in baseball for more than two decades and knew virtually everyone—Frazee had been an acquaintance for years. Barrow was one of several baseball figures Frazee regularly consulted to keep his finger on baseball's pulse while he jockeyed to buy a team. Well, now he had one, but he didn't have a manager, and he still needed more players. After efforts to get Barry released from military duty failed—Frazee wasn't shy about asking for special treatment, either, as long as he benefited personally—Barrow, fully aware that the job was open, dropped in on Frazee at his office.

“Well, Ed,” said Frazee, “I guess it's about time I begin looking around for a manager.” Barrow feigned indifference, as did Frazee, before finally blurting out, “I've just selected you as a manager of the 1918 Red Sox. Want the job?” Barrow was delighted to accept. He needed the job, knew Frazee was in a mood to spend, and no one in the game had a better idea about who might be available to play in 1918 than he did, and in his new position he acted as both manager on the field and general manager, responsible for trades and signing players. However, this being baseball circa 1918, there was also more at play. A year before, Barrow had tried to duplicate Johnson's ploy and reorganize the International League into a third major league, the Union League, a move that, according to some reports, initially had Johnson's support. He even promised Barrow the presidency of the Red Sox if he could force Frazee to sell. Barrow tried to put together a deal with some International League backers—but then he'd been left hanging. Joseph Lannin, after selling the Sox, had since made amends with Johnson. He owned the International League's Buffalo franchise and took offense at the league president working the back room. He led a move to cut Barrow's salary by two thirds, which caused Barrow to resign.

Barrow wasn't finished—he was tough, a disciplinarian who wasn't above playing the revenge game, either—Frazee called him “Simon Legree,” after the greedy slave owner in
Uncle Tom's Cabin
. By joining forces with Frazee, Barrow was looking forward to the chance to prove Lannin and Johnson wrong. One of his first acts was to skim the International League of some veteran talent, signing outfielder George Whiteman, a longtime minor league star who hit .340, mostly for Toronto in 1917.

The end result, however, was that as the train chugged from Boston to Little Rock, picking up the stray player along the way, by the time they all arrived in Arkansas, Barrow still wasn't quite sure what kind of team he had. If everyone showed up and could play out the season, they looked to be the class of the league. But even with the addition of Mack's best remaining players, the war was still certain to leave some holes, and besides, with so many new recruits, half the players had never met one another before. Barrow wouldn't really know what kind of team he had until they dumped the equipment bags out on the ground at Whittington Park.

Spring training began on March 12 with a gingerly played practice. The only regulars among the starting eight in attendance were outfielder Harry Hooper and Everett Scott. Ruth was the only frontline pitcher and he was not yet in shape to pitch. As a result, after the players limbered up, the Red Sox, a major league team in name only as the rest included a dozen or more raw recruits and handful of aging has-beens, barely had enough players to hold a full scrimmage.

It was probably the best thing that ever happened.

 

2

This Means War

“I'd be the laughingstock of baseball if I turned the best lefthander in the game into an outfielder.”

—Ed Barrow

Of the vast impact Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, would have on the history of the world, the bearing on the game of baseball would be no less profound. Although in later years Harry Hooper, Ed Barrow, and a handful of others would scramble to take credit for the decision to move Ruth off the pitcher's mound and into the batter's box, credit should rightly go to Princip. For had it not been for the war, Ruth would be remembered today for his prowess as a pitcher, and nothing else.

Spring training was a rather loose affair in 1918—the three-mile-or-so walk to and from the hotel was considered part of the players' training, and apart from some extra throwing, pitchers were treated little different from the other members of the roster. Everyone more or less went through the same drills, “playing” their way into shape through batting practice, shagging flies, taking infield, and intra-squad games. Barrow, who hadn't managed a big league team team since Detroit in 1904, kept the boys on the field a long time, but was hardly an organizational genius. Frazee brought in veteran infielder Johnny Evers—known as “the Crab” for both the way he scooted abound the diamond and for his sour disposition—into camp to help Barrow out. His managerial skills, never particularly profound, were rusty.

There was nothing strange about a pitcher taking a turn at another position, especially during the first days of spring training before the games got under way. During spring training in 1916, while Tris Speaker was a holdout, Ruth had played a little outfield, but his fly catching had reminded no one of the Gray Eagle. But in 1918, due to a shortage of talent, there was a little more opportunity than usual.

Ruth, who today would likely be diagnosed as ADHD and drugged into somnambulism, was just as hard to contain on the field as he was off it. He loved to play, and he never forgot that play was supposed to be fun. It was a holdover from his time as a boy at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. Although Ruth credited the school and the Xaverian Brothers with changing his life, make no mistake—it was no finishing school. His time there was heavily regulated and the only relief from the drudgery of the regimented lifestyle of church, study, and work was playing sports. For Ruth, this meant baseball. Only on the ballfield was he both valued and free to be himself. He took full advantage of the opportunity.

No one ever said Ruth didn't work hard on the diamond, and in the spring of 1918 he was particularly irrepressible, dashing back and forth between activities with the enthusiasm of a young boy let loose in the backyard. He could only throw so much, and if there was room for an extra man to shag some flies, take some ground balls in the infield, or, in particular, take a few extra cracks at the plate, Ruth was ready and jumped right in.

Usually, by the time the squad was in good enough shape to play exhibition games, the regulars took over and once the games began pitchers such as Ruth waited their turn. But there was nothing usual about the spring of 1918.

For one, in the early days of March it was hot in Hot Springs, and humid. The temperature touched 90 degrees, leaving some out-of-shape players panting in pools of sweat and leading Barrow to warn some slackers, who would douse their heads and then claim fatigue, that he was on to their “water bucket camouflage.” Nevertheless, the heat gave Ruth more opportunity to play. In the early days of the spring, Barrow was already scrambling to fill every position. As Barrow struggled to make up for the loss of Gardner, catcher Sam Agnew was pressed into duty at third, as was first baseman Stuffy McInnis.

So during those first few practices, by necessity as much as anything else, Ruth played a little first base, which also gave him some incentive to turn in before dawn. Barrow already had him rooming with coach Dan Howley for just that reason—later, he'd be paired with Johnny Evers. But as the exhibition season began on March 17 when the Sox played the first of a series of exhibitions with the National League Brooklyn Robins at Whittington Park Ruth took the field for that initial contest, not on the mound, but at first base.

That was newsworthy in itself—in the
Globe
, Ed Martin called him “‘Hal Chase' Ruth” after the slick-fielding first sacker considered the best in the game. But what Ruth did at the plate attracted even more attention.

He hit two home runs, one to left center and the other to right, where it cleared a fence that served as a barricade between the park and an alligator farm, and where, Martin noted, “It kicked up no end of commotion among the alligators.” The headline in the newspaper the next day referred to Boston's “Great Bombardment,” and the
Boston Post
reported that even the Brooklyn players had stood and cheered the hit into the gator pen.

It was a great achievement—but also not quite as impressive as it first appeared. The two pitchers Ruth faced that day, Harry Heightman and Norman Plitt, were barely major leaguers and hadn't been throwing a week. It was also the start of spring training and balls were nearly new and still relatively tight, as lively as the dead ball would ever be. Ruth's performance was impressive but hardly unheard of.

Significantly, every report of the game also left out one very important fact. Although it was about 360 feet to the fence in left field and more than 400 to center, down the right field line it was only 260 to the alligator farm. Although the field had once been spacious, due to floods it had been reconfigured several years earlier and the dimensions made much more cozy. Had the game been played anywhere else, such as Majestic Park, the other spring training park in Hot Springs and Boston's home there in both 1917 and 1919, Ruth may not have even hit a home run at all, and had he not, well, what would have happened if Princip had been a bad shot?