"Baseball is a human enterprise. Therefore, by definition, it's imperfect, it's flawed, it doesn't embody perfectly everything that's worthwhile about our country or about our culture. But it comes closer than most things in American life. And maybe this story, which is probably apocryphal, gets to the heart of it: An Englishman and an American having an argument about something that has nothing to do with baseball. It gets to the point where it's irreconcilable, to the point of exasperation, and the American says to the Englishman, Ah, screw the king! And the Englishman is taken aback, thinks for a minute and says, Well, screw Babe Ruth! Now think about that. The American thinks he can insult the Englishman by casting aspersions upon a person who has his position by virtue of nothing except for birth; nothing to do with personal qualities, good, bad or otherwise. But who does the Englishman think embodies America? Some scruffy kid who came from the humblest of beginnings, hung out as a six-year-old behind his father's bar; a big, badly flawed, swashbuckling palooka, who strides with great spirit — not just talent, but with a spirit of possibility and enjoyment of life across the American stage. That's an American to the Englishman. You give me Babe Ruth over any king who's ever sat on the throne and I'll be happy with that trade."
— Bob Costas
Who is this "Baby Ruth"? And what does she do?
— George Bernard Shaw
Babe Ruth:
He was a parade all by himself; a burst of dazzle and jingle; Santa Claus drinking his whiskey straight and groaning with a bellyache. Babe Ruth made the music that his joyous years danced to in a continuous party. What Babe Ruth is comes down one generation, handing it to the next, as a national heirloom.Feb 1914; George Herman Ruth, Jr, resident of St Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a Catholic reformatory and orphanage, is signed to the minor league Baltimore Orioles.
— Jimmy Cannon
It is impossible to watch him at bat without experiencing an emotion. I've seen hundreds of ballplayers at the plate, and none of them managed to convey the message of impending doom to the pitching that Babe Ruth did with the cock of his head, the position of his legs, and the little gentle waving of the bat feathered in his two big paws.
— New York Daily News
I saw it all happen, from beginning to end. But sometimes I still can't believe what I saw. This nineteen-year-old kid, crude, poorly educated, only slightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization, gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and the symbol of baseball the world over; a man loved by more people and with an intensity of feeling that perhaps has never been equaled before or since. I saw a man transform from a human being into something pretty close to a god. If somebody had predicted that back on the Boston Red Sox in 1914, he woulda been thrown into a lunatic asylum.
— Harry Hooper
July 1914; Ruth signs to and debuts with the Boston Red Sox.
Babe Ruth joined us in the middle of 1914, a nineteen-year-old kid. He was a left-handed pitcher and a good one. He had never been anywhere, didn't know anything about manners or how to behave among people. Just a big, overgrown green pea. [...] Lord, he ate too much. He'd stop along the road when we were traveling and order half a dozen hot dogs and as many bottles of soda pop, stuff them in one after another, give a few belches and then roar, "Okay, boys, let's go!"1915; Rogers Hornsby debuts with the St. Louis Cardinals.
— Harry Hooper
"Off the field he was bigger, louder, more excitable than his teammates. He used other people's toothbrushes, ran the elevator up and down, and got married to Helen Woodford, a sixteen-year-old coffee shop waitress he met on his very first day in Boston. Everybody called him Baby, then just the Babe." — KB
1916; Harry Frazee, a theatrical producer, purchases the Red Sox. "He liked baseball, but Broadway was his first love, and whenever he needed cash for a new show he would sell off one of his stars."
Somebody asked me if my club was for sale. What a ridiculous question! Of course it is for sale! So is my hat and my overcoat and my watch. Anyone who wants them can have them, at a price. I will dispose of my holdings in the Red Sox at any time, for my price.1916 & 1918 World Series; Ruth pitches for the victorious Red Sox. "In the Red Sox' greatest years he was their greatest pitcher, setting a record of 29 and 2/3 scoreless World Series innings that stood for 43 years."
— H. Harrison Frazee
"The interesting thing, among the many many many endlessly interesting things about Babe Ruth — certainly the most stunning figure in baseball history — is that he was nearly as great a pitcher as he was a hitter. In his coming-up as a raw boy from Baltimore he mowed down his opponents in the American League; he was the best left-handed pitcher in the 1910s, without question, in the American League, and it was only because of the prodigal strength that resided in his bat that he moved off the mound. [...] When people get into discussions about who's the greatest ballplayer in history and they say, Well there was Ruth, but there was also DiMaggio and Cobb and Mays and Aaron and the other claimants. To me it seems like an utterly wasted discussion. Let us say that Ruth was not as good an offensive player as Willie Mays...but he was also one of the greatest pitchers ever! It is as if imagining that Beethoven and Cézanne were one person producing the same work. It just can't be compared to anything else."1919; Ruth sets a new single-season record for home runs: 29. "Ruth liked to pitch, but he loved to hit, and he played outfield on the days he wasn't pitching so that he could do it more often. He is said to have modeled his swing after the best power hitter in the game: Shoeless Joe Jackson."
— Daniel Okrent
Dec, 1919; The Curse of the Bambino. Ruth is sold to the New York Yankees for "$125,000 plus the promise of a $300,000 personal loan with which Frazee could finance still another show. As security for the loan, Frazee put up Fenway Park itself."
Harry Frazee became the owner of the Red Sox and then before long he sold off all our best players and ruined the team. Sold them all to the Yankees. Ernie Shore, Duffy Lewis, Dutch Leonard, Carl Mays, Babe Ruth. I was disgusted. The Yankee dynasty of the Twenties was three-quarters the Red Sox of a few years before. Frazee was short of cash and he sold the whole team down the river to keep his dirty nose above the water. What a way to end a wonderful ball club.Negro league baseball:
— Harry Hooper
"The Red Sox never recovered. They had won 5 of the first 15 World Series. They would not even play in another World Series for more than a quarter of a century." — KB
It matters not what branch of mankind the player sprang from with the fan, if he can deliver the goods. The Mick, the Sheeney, the Wop, the Dutch and the Chink, the Cuban, the Indian, the Jap or the so-called Anglo-Saxon — his "nationality" is never a matter of moment if he can pitch or hit or field. In organized baseball there has been no distinction raised except tacit understanding that a player of Ethiopian descent is ineligible, the wisdom of which we will not discuss except to say that by such a rule some of the greatest players the game has ever known have been denied their opportunity.Feb, 1920; The Negro National League (NNL) is organized and established by Rube Foster, owner and manager of the Chicago American Giants. It was his object, he said, to provide the North's growing black population with professional baseball of their own, to do something concrete for the loyalty of the race, and to eventually challenge the major leagues.
— The Sporting News, 1923
"In 1919 the bloodiest race riots since the Civil War broke out in more than 25 Northern cities as black communities became the focus of white rage. The worst was in Chicago: Before it was over 38 were dead, 536 injured, whole neighborhoods burned and looted. The violence was a devastating blow to the millions of Southern blacks who had moved north fleeing segregation. But out of the riots grew a new assertiveness among African Americans. The black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey urged his people to look to themselves. No more fear, no more cringing, he said, no more begging and pleading. Now black culture flourished as never before. A Harlem renaissance began, and black businesses thrived in all the big cities. In riot-torn Chicago, Andrew "Rube" Foster created one of the most successful black enterprises..." — KB
"...a very successful operation, actually. Probably the third biggest black business in the world."Live ball era:
— Buck O'Neil
When the big games shall have become history there will stalk across the pages of the record a massive figure, and its name will be Andrew Foster. The master of the show, who moves the figures on his checkerboard at will. The smooth-toned counselor of infinite wisdom and sober thought. Cold in refusals, warm in assents. Known to everybody, knows everybody. That's Rube.
— The Pittsburgh Courier
"The finest black pitcher of his time, Foster was a big, outwardly genial Texan who called friends and strangers alike Darlin'. But he was tough with the white owners of the big city stadiums where his teams played when the big leaguers were safely out of town. And he was tough on his players, too, insisting on the same kind of aggressive, fast-moving baseball preached by John McGraw, fining any member of his team $5 if he were tagged out standing up. You're supposed to slide, he said. No one unable consistently to bunt a ball into a cap could play for Rube Foster, and white managers regularly attended his games to study his tactics." — KB
If you play the best clubs in the land — white clubs, as you say — it will be a case of Greek meeting Greek. I fear nobody.
— Rube Foster
"What more interesting kind of organization could black people create than leagues and baseball? It was a sport that defined America, and so black people adopting this sport and showing we too can have leagues and we too can play this game and play it very well, in some way was black people showing white Americans: Yes, we're American. Yes, we can play this game and this game means something to us, too, and it means something in our history and in our heritage."
— Gerald Early
We'd play a whole game with one ball if it stayed in the park. Lopsided and black and full of tobacco juice and licorice stains. Pitchers used to have it all their way then: spitballs and emory balls and whatnot. Until 1921 they had a dead ball. The only way you could get a home run is if the outfielder tripped and fell down. The ball wasn't wrapped tight and lots of times it'd get mashed on one side, come bouncing out there like a Mexican jumping bean. They wouldn't throw it out of the game, though. Only used three or four balls in a whole game. Now they use sixty or seventy.August 16, 1920; Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman is struck in the temple by a high, inside pitch thrown by the Yankees' Carl May. He dies the next day — big league baseball's first fatality. Thereafter, "as soon as a ball got dirty, the umpire had orders to substitute a spotless white new one, and the ball itself had been made livelier by winding more tightly the yarn within it. Overnight the balance shifted from the pitcher's mound to the batter's box. The era of the home run hitter was about to begin."
— Sam Crawford
"During the first twenty years of the twentieth century great pitchers ruled the game: Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Walter Johnson. They had an advantage not available to their successors. The moment a new ball was thrown onto the field, part of every pitcher's job was to dirty it up. By turns they smeared it with mud, licorice, tobacco juice. It was deliberately scuffed, sandpapered, cut, even spiked. The result was a misshapen earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and as it came over the plate was very hard to see." — KB
1920; In his debut year with the Yankees, Ruth breaks his previous year's home run record by 25, hitting 54. (More than all but one team managed to hit that year.) "His slugging average, a new statistic that measured the power of a hitter, was .847. In all the years since, no one else has ever come close to matching it." The Yankees become the first team to draw a million fans in a season, doing so in John McGraw's own Polo Grounds, to his fury.
"Babe Ruth revolutionized baseball. He changed it. Judge Landis came in and gave baseball its integrity. Ruth began hitting home runs and gave baseball its excitement. They changed everything from the ball itself, the construction of the bats, the philosophy of hitting, the philosophy of pitching...Babe Ruth changed it. We don't realize it today, but the game of baseball has never been the same since Babe Ruth began to hit home runs."1921; The farm system, in which major league clubs own and operate minor league clubs exclusively to breed star players, is invented and first implemented by Branch Rickey, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.
— Red Barber
"Now, at other times in the history, something so disruptive of tradition would've been held in check — the moguls of the game would've changed the rules; they'd done it twenty times before — but in the wake of the Black Sox scandal and the public fascination with Ruth they simply let it happen."
— Stephen Jay Gould
"Before Ruth, pitchers had been taught to pace themselves, only bearing down when someone was on base. Now, there was a danger of a run being scored at any moment. They had to bear down from the first pitch to the last. Between 1910 and 1920, eight pitchers won 30 or more games in a season. In the seventy-odd years since the advent of Babe Ruth, there have been just three." — KB
I got a letter the other day asking why I didn't write about baseball no more, as I used to write about nothing else, you might say. Well, friends, I may as well admit that I have kind of lost interest in the old game. A couple of years ago a ballplayer named Babe Ruth, that was a pitcher by birth, was made into an outfielder on account of how he could bust them, and the masterminds that control baseball says to themselves that, If it is home runs that the public wants to see, why, leave us give them home runs!
— Ring Lardner
"New heroes like Babe Ruth called for a new kind of reporting, and sportswriting reached its gaudy pinnacle in the 1920s, producing its own stars. Fred Lieb started as a player for his Philadelphia church team, the Princes of Peace, moved to New York and covered baseball for more than sixty years. Ford Frick of the New York Journal hammered out complete stories in eight minutes, which gave him the time he needed to act as Babe Ruth's ghostwriter. John Kieran of the New York Times liked to write up a game before it began, then edit his account to fit the sometimes-inconvenient facts. Damon Runyon of the New York American, who changed the carnation in his lapel three times a day, wrote his accounts of games as they happened, and rarely changed a word. And Shirley Povich, who's first name once got him included in Who's Who of American Women, would write eloquently about baseball for more than half a century for the Washington Post." — KB
Starting the Cardinal farm system was no sudden stroke of genius. It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. We lived a precarious existence. Other clubs would outbid us. They had the money and the superior scouting system. We had to take the leavings or nothing at all.June 1921; Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb square off.
— Branch Rickey
"The farm system made Rickey a rich man. He personally got ten cents on the dollar for every player he sold. In negotiating salaries, one player remembered, Mr Rickey came to kill you. If he could get a player to sign for five cents less than the player wanted, he felt he had accomplished something. Nobody, a friend said, knew how to put a dollar sign on the muscle better than Branch Rickey." — KB
Given the proper physical equipment, which consists solely in the strength to knock a ball forty feet farther than the average man can do it, anybody can play big league ball today. In other words, science is out the window.August 5, 1921; The first radio broadcast of a major league baseball game is carried by radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh.
— Ty Cobb
"Ty Cobb, now managing as well as playing for the Tigers, and with his own skills beginning to wane, hated the brash young newcomer and the impact he was having on the game. He demeaned Ruth's talent whenever he got the chance, and from the dugout called him Nigger. But when the two stars, whom sportswriters called the supermen of baseball, met in what was billed as a grudge series in 1921, Ruth homered in every game. Cobb hit only one. The New York Times reported that Ruth has stolen all of Cobb's thunder. Yankee manager Miller Huggins admitted that real students of the game might prefer Ty Cobb's classic brand of baseball, but Babe Ruth appealed to everybody. They all flocked to him, he said, because nowadays the American fan likes the fellow who carries the wallop." — KB
"Baseball on the radio is part of the background music of America. That's basic! In a small town in a barbershop on a Saturday there's a ballgame in the background, it goes without saying. You may be having a discussion of somebody's herd of cattle or some professor talking, where I grew up, about the exam he's going to give, and the barber telling vaguely dirty jokes, but in the background of all that is a ballgame. That's basic. Of course."1921; Ruth breaks the home run record again, hitting 59.
— Charley McDowell
"Babe Ruth erupted into baseball like an Everest in Kansas. There was no one like him before. No one remotely like him. In his third year as a full time player — that is, his third year not as a pitcher — just three years! — he held the career record for home runs. He went on to break his own record 577 times, and when he retired, with 714 home runs, the man in second place in career home runs — then Lou Gehrig — had fewer than half the number Ruth had. There's never been a disparity like that; a talent so disproportionate to what had come before."1921 World Series; The Yankees meet John McGraw's Giants at the Polo Grounds, home to both teams. "The Giants come-from-behind victory was especially sweet for McGraw. His pitchers managed to hold Ruth in check by throwing him mostly slow stuff."
— George Will
"Sportswriters competed to come up with new titles with which to decorate the headlines Ruth made daily. He was the Bambino, the Sultan of Swat, the Wali of Wallop, the Wazir of Wham, the Maharajah of Mash, the Rajah of Rap, the Caliph of Clout, the Behemoth of Bust." — KB
Don't tell me about Ruth. I've seen what he did to people. I've seen them! Fans driving miles in open wagons from the prairies of Oklahoma to see him in exhibition games as we headed north in the spring. I've seen kids, men, women with a dirty piece of paper or hoping for a grunt of recognition when they said Hiya, Babe. He never let them down, not once. He was the greatest crowd pleaser of them all.
— Waite Hoyt
"He lived fast and loose. He didn't live too long, but he lived while he did." — Milt Gaston
"Having married Helen Woodford and adopted a daughter, Dorothy, he tucked them away in an old farmhouse in rural Sudbury, Massachusetts, moved into an 11-room suite in the Ansonia hotel on Broadway, bought himself a 12-cylinder Packard, and set about indulging himself. In an age of conspicuous consumption he was the most conspicuous consumer of them all. Ruth made more money than any other player, and spent every penny of it, Like it was going out of style, a teammate remembered, and he often gave it away to perfect strangers. He drank bourbon and ginger ale before breakfast, changed silk shirts six and seven times a day, and became a favorite customer in whorehouses all across the country. The boy who sorted through his mail had orders to throw away everything except checks and letters from broads. Sportswriters never wrote about Ruth's excesses off the field — he was simply too popular. You can't boo a home run, one reporter noted." — KB
We pitched only 9 curves and 3 fastballs to Ruth during the entire series, and of those 12, 11 set him on his backside.1921 postseason; Ruth violates league rules prohibiting players to participate in barnstorming tours in the off-season and is suspended by Commissioner Landis for the first six weeks of the 1922 season.
— John McGraw
Who does that big monkey think he is? In this office he's just another player.May 1922; Federal Baseball Club v. National League is decided by the Supreme Court unanimously in favor of major league baseball, finding that MLB does not constitute interstate commerce under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
— Kenesaw Mountain Landis
The business is giving exhibitions of baseball, which are purely state affairs. It is true that, in order to attain for these exhibitions the great popularity that they have achieved, competitions must be arranged between clubs from different cities and states. But the fact that, in order to give the exhibitions, the Leagues must induce free persons to cross state lines and must arrange and pay for their doing so is not enough to change the character of the business. [...] the transport is a mere incident, not the essential thing. That to which it is incident, the exhibition, although made for money, would not be called trade of commerce in the commonly accepted use of those words. As it is put by defendant, personal effort not related to production is not a subject of commerce. That which in its consummation is not commerce does not become commerce among the states because the transportation that we have mentioned takes place.May–June 1922; Ruth is suspended by AL President Ban Johnson after an outburst in which "Ruth threw dirt in an umpire's eyes, stormed into the stands to chase a heckler, and when the home crowd booed him, stood on the dugout roof shaking his fist and shouting, You're all yellow!" Weeks later Johnson suspends Ruth yet again, for using vulgar and vicious language to an umpire.
— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
"In essence, baseball could govern itself. The players would have no recourse in federal court; the government would not intervene in their disputes with management. Although antitrust laws applied to other sports, they somehow did not apply to the national pastime. The court's decision still stands to this day." — KB
Your conduct was reprehensible to a great degree, shocking to every American mother who permits her boy to go to a game. A man of your stamp bodes no good in the profession. It seems the period has arrived when you should allow some intelligence to creep into a mind that has plainly been warped.1922 World Series; Despite Ruth's off-year the Yankees win the pennant again and face McGraw's Giants in a rematch, with identical outcome. Ruth hits a dismal .118.
— Ban Johnson
"Ruth sat out nearly a third of the 1922 season and hit only 25 home runs. Attendance fell off."
Just pitch him low curves and slow stuff and he falls all over himself.1922 postseason;
— John McGraw
This has been a tough epoch for kings, but not even those harassed crown-heads of Europe ever ran into greater grief than the once-reigning monarch of the mace fell heir to this week. He hit the ball out of the infield just three times, and during the remainder of the engagement he spent most of his afternoons tapping dinky blows to the pitcher or first. In his last 12 times at bat the once-mighty Bambino from Blooeyland failed to hit the ball hard enough to dent the cuticle of a custard pie.
— Grantland Rice
"That winter, at a baseball writers' dinner, State Senator Jimmy Walker, whose own private life would not have borne close scrutiny, lectured Ruth on the wages of dissipation. The Babe was letting down the little dirty-faced kids, Walker said. Ruth began to cry. He would do better, he promised, get back in shape, concentrate on the game again. I've had my last drink until next October, he told reporters, I'm going to my farm. I'm going to work my head off, and maybe part of my stomach, and then you watch me break that home run record." — KB1923; The Eastern Colored League (ECL) is formed by white financiers to profit off competition with the NNL, luring off Rube Foster's players with better pay.
April, 1923; Yankee Stadium opens on the site of an old lumberyard in the Bronx; the largest baseball park in the country. Sportswriters would dub it The House That Ruth Built.
It is reported on good authority that, when the Babe first walked out to his position and looked about him, he was silent for almost a minute while he tried to find adequate words to express his emotions. Finally he emerged from his creative coma and remarked, "Some ballyard!"June, 1923; Lou Gehrig debuts with the Yankees.
— Heywood Broun
Only one more thing was in demand, and Babe Ruth supplied that. The big slugger is a keen student of the dramatic, in addition to being the greatest home run hitter. He was playing a new role yesterday: not the accustomed one of a renowned slugger, but that of a penitent trying to come back after a poor season and a poor World Series. Before the game he said that he would give a year of his life if he could hit a home run in his first game in the new stadium. The Babe was on trial, and he knew it better than anyone else. The ball came in slowly, but it went out quite rapidly, and as Ruth circled the bases he received probably the greatest ovation of his career; the biggest crowd rose to its feet and let loose the biggest shout in baseball history. Ruth, jogging over the home plate, grinned broadly, lifted his cap, and waved to the multitude.
— New York Times
1923 World Series; Yankees face the Giants a third year in a row. This time, with their own stadium and a reformed Babe Ruth, the Yankees win; the club's first world championship.
1924; Rogers Hornsby, the "Rajah", second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals, who would average better than .400 each year from 1921 to 1925, and achieve a lifetime average of .358 (second only to Ty Cobb), hits .424, the twentieth century record.
Mr. Rogers Hornsby is the greatest right-handed hitter in baseball. If consistency is a jewel, then Mr. Hornsby is a whole rope of pearls. He has led the National League hitters for so many years that the name of the man he succeeded is lost to the memory of the oldest inhabitant.1924 AL pennant race; Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators, perennial losers, stop the Yankees cold.
— Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram
"From the mound Hornsby was a fearsome sight. For his part he never disliked pitchers, Hornsby said, he just felt sorry for them. [...] But Hornsby was too singleminded, too colorless, to seize the public imagination the way Ruth did. He would not even go to the movies for fear of damaging his eyes. When his mother died during the [1926] World Series he postponed her funeral until the series was over, then led his team to victory." — KB
Baseball is the only thing I know.
— Rogers Hornsby
"Rogers Hornsby was at bat, and Bill Klem, magisterial umpire, was behind the plate, and there was a rookie pitcher on the mound and the rookie was, quite reasonably, petrified. And he threw three pitches that just missed the plate and Klem said Ball one, Ball two, Ball three. The rookie got flustered and shouted at him, he said, Umpire, those were strikes! Klem took his mask off, looked out at the young man and said, Young man, when you throw a strike Mr. Hornsby will let you know."
— George Will
"The phrase on the Senators for years was Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League. This was at a time when Clark Griffith owned the Senators. They didn't have much money, and less talent, and he said one day, The fans like home runs, and we have assembled a pitching staff to please our fans."1924 World Series; Senators fight the Giants to Game 7, in which Johnson holds the Giant offense through the last 4 of 12 innings, long enough for the Senators to eke out a 1-run victory; Washington's first and only championship, and Johnson's.
— George Will
"His name is in the record books more times than any other pitcher, in more different categories than any other pitcher. And he was a lovable person. In a sense the whole nation knew that Walter Johnson was doomed to play with the Washington Senators, rooted for him to get into a World Series, which he finally did."
— Shirley Povich
"Johnson was 36 years old and had been pitching since 1907. It may have been a new game, a hitter's game, but he was still capable of leading the league in strikeouts, shutouts, and earned run average. Now he propelled his team to the pennant with 13 consecutive wins, edging out the Yankees by 2 games." — KB
1924; First Negro World Series held between NNL Kansas City Monarchs and ECL Philadelphia Hilldales. Monarchs win after 10 games.
1925; The Bellyache Heard 'Round the World
"Babe Ruth's promises to reform did not last beyond the end of the 1924 season, and by the time he got to spring training in 1925 he was a wreck: 30 pounds overweight, feverish, often drunk, torn between his wife, Helen, who had grown desperate over his womanizing, and a pretty artist's model named Claire Hodgson. On April 7 he collapsed in North Carolina with an intestinal illness so mysterious that some sportswriters speculated privately that Ruth might be suffering from venereal disease. London newspapers reported that he had died. His illness was so severe that major abdominal surgery was followed by seven weeks of absolute hospital rest. Newspapers reported that he had merely eaten too many hot dogs and drunk too many sodas." — KBJune 1, 1925; Lou Gehrig plays the first of what would become 2,130 consecutive games.
It is doubtful that Ruth again will be the superstar he was from 1919 through 1924. Next year Ruth will be 32, and at 32 the Babe will be older than Eddie Collins, Walter Johnson and Ty Cobb at that age. Babe has lived a much more strenuous life.
— Fred Lieb
He was the most valuable player the Yankees ever had, because he was the prime source of their greatest asset: an implicit confidence in themselves.June 1, 1925; Coincidentally, Ruth returns from his illness that same day.
— New York World-Telegram
"He continued to drink and carouse, and to disobey the instructions of his diminutive manager, Miller Huggins. Finally, when he stayed out all night two nights running, Huggins fined him $5,000 and suspended him. Ruth would not be able to come back until he admitted the error of his ways and personally apologized. Ruth refused, saying he would never play for the Yankees again. Then came word that his wife, Helen, had suffered a nervous breakdown, anguished over his infidelity. When Ruth went to see her, cameramen followed him right into her hospital room. They were Catholic, so there was no possibility of divorce, but they agreed to separate. Ruth's suspension lasted only nine days. He could not bear to be away from baseball any longer. And when Huggins demanded that he not only apologize, but do so in front of the whole team, he meekly agreed. Ruth had his worst season in ten years. It seemed that his best years were over." — KBOctober 7, 1925; Christy Mathewson, the 'Christian Gentleman', dies of tuberculosis, age 45. His lungs had never recovered from exposure to poison gas in 1918.
Why should God wish to take a thoroughbred like Matty so soon, and leave some others down here that could well be spared?1925 World Series; Pittsburgh defeats defending champs Washington. Flags fly at half mast for Christy Mathewson.
— Kenesaw Mountain Landis
1926; Rube Foster, under "strain of trying to keep his fledgling league alive, had grown increasingly paranoid and taken to carrying a revolver everywhere he went. Midseason, worn out and suffering from the delusion that he was about to receive a call to pitch in the white World Series, he finally had to be institutionalized [in Kankakee, Illinois]. He died four years later."
1926;
"The last of the great pitchers of an earlier era, Grover Cleveland Alexander, was only a shadow of what he once had been; nearly 40 and almost deaf, subject to seizures, tortured by memories of the Western Front, sodden with drink. In the middle of the 1926 season, Joe McCarthy, the Chicago Cubs unsentimental new manager, let Alexander go. The Cubs had finished last in 1925, McCarthy explained, and if they finished last again, I'd rather it was without him. But Branch Rickey had seen something in the old man. He was sure Alexander had it in him to be a hero one more time, and hired him for St. Louis. The Cardinals won the National League pennant and faced the Yankees in the Series. Few gave the Cardinals much of a chance." — KB1926 World Series;
"But Alexander pulled himself together to win the second and then the sixth game. He celebrated that night, and during the seventh game sat quietly in the bullpen at Yankee Stadium, nursing his hangover. In the seventh inning the Cardinals were leading 3 to 2, and two Yankees were out, but St. Louis was in trouble. New York had loaded the bases. Next up was Tony Lazzeri, a hard-hitting rookie of Italian descent best known for batting in runs. Rogers Hornsby, now the Cardinal manager, motioned to the bullpen: he wanted Alexander, hangover or no hangover. Alexander took his time walking out to the mound." — KB1927 Yankees; Murderers Row. Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs.
I can see him yet, walking in from the left field bullpen through the gray mist. The Yankee fans recognized him right off, of course, but you didn't hear a sound from anywhere in that stadium. They just sat there and watched him walk in. And he took his time. He just came straggling along, a lean old Nebraskan, wearing a Cardinals sweater, his face wrinkled, that cap sitting on top of his head and tilted to one side. That's the way he liked to wear it.
— Les Bell
"Hornsby met him on the mound. When Alexander told him he planned to pitch Lazzeri fast and inside, Hornsby was appalled. You can't do that, he said, Lazzeri was sure to hit it out of the park. Alexander was unconcerned. If he swings at it he'll most likely hit it foul. Then I'm going to come outside with my breaking pitch. Hornsby backed off. Who am I, he said, to tell you how to pitch? Lazzeri was waiting." — KB
"My father, because baseball is dynastic, always said that his saddest moment in life was that famous 1926 last game of the World Series when a drunk and much superannuated Grover Cleveland Alexander was brought in with the bases loaded and Tony Lazzeri almost hit a home run that went foul by a couple feet and then struck out, thereby winning, ultimately, two innings later, the game for the Cardinals."
— Stephen Jay Gould
It was the Cardinals' first championship, and Alexander's first and only.
"James Thurber, I guess, he was the one who said ninety-five percent of American males put themselves to sleep at night striking out the batting order of the New York Yankees... Much easier to do now than it was then!"1927 World Series; Yankees sweep the Pirates in four.
— George Plimpton
When we got to the ballpark we knew we were going to win. That's all there was to it. We weren't cocky. I wouldn't call it confidence, either. We just knew. Like when you go to sleep, you know the sun is gonna come up in the morning.
— George Pipgras
"The 1927 Yankees may have been the greatest team in baseball history. Babe Ruth, dismissed as a has-been two years before, was back again with a vengeance. And there was no pennant race in the American League that year; the Yankees hammered out 110 victories. Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics finished a distant second, 19 games out. The Yankees were in first place from opening day to the end of the season, a feat that would be unequaled for 57 years.
"They did everything well. Yankee pitching was masterful: Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, Urban Shocker, Dutch Ruether, Wilcy Moore and George Pipgras. But at bat they had no equal. They were called Murderers Row: Babe Ruth, Earle Combs, Bob Meusel, Tony Lazzeri and Lou Gehrig.
"He was now one of the best hitters in the game, but he was always in the shadow of his close friend and rival. He batted after Ruth; his home runs didn't soar the same way; he didn't swagger. And when the Yankee front office suggested he make his own headlines, by diving for catches he knew he couldn't make, or pretending easy catches had been hard, he gently refused. I'm not a headline guy, he said." — KB
"The combination of Ruth and Gehrig was not only wonderful in baseball terms, but it was aesthetically pleasing because they were so different in character. Lou Gehrig was a good man, a family man, a steady fellow. The exact opposite of Babe Ruth, who was out of control all the time. They both batted left-handed but Ruth's swing was nothing like Gehrig's swing. But think of the pitchers in those days, who had to face Babe Ruth, then Lou Gehrig!"
— Roger Angell
"For most of the 1927 season Lou Gehrig matched Babe Ruth home run-for-home run, and it was, in part, to distance himself from his rival that the Babe resolved to do something that would have been unimaginable a few years earlier: break his own record and hit 60 home runs in a single season. The public eagerly kept score as the weeks passed and the runs mounted up. Ruth did too, notching his bat every time he hit a home run, until it split after the 21st. On July 8 he hit his 27th, an inside-the-park home run. By September Ruth was carrying his new bat around the bases, to thwart souvenir seekers. When he hit number 56 and an overeager boy ran out to grab it, he dragged the bat and the boy along behind him as he crossed home plate. On September 30, the next-to-last day of the season, and needing just one more home run, he faced Tom Zachary of the Washington Senators." — KB
The first Zachary offering was a fast one which sailed over for a called strike. The next was high. The Babe took a vicious swing at the third-pitched ball and the bat connected with a crash that was audible in all parts of the stands. While the crowd cheered and the Yankee players roared their greeting the Babe made his triumphant, almost regal tour of the paths, and when he embedded his spikes in the rubber disk to officially homer 60, hats were tossed in the air, papers were torn up and tossed liberally, and the spirit of celebration permeated the place.
— New York Times
Sixty! Count 'em, sixty! Let's see some other sonofabitch match that!
— Babe Ruth
"It was generally agreed that no son of a bitch ever would." — KB
1927; Walter Johnson retires, age 40. His record of 110 shutouts still stands.
1928; The Eastern Colored League collapses and disbands midseason. The NNL carries on.
1928 World Series; Yankees sweep the Cardinals in four.
1928; Ty Cobb retires, age 42. Lifetime batting average .367, the highest in history.
It will be a long time before the game develops a second Cobb, and then it will be just that: a second Cobb. You've seen the first and only.January 11, 1929; Helen Woodford, Babe Ruth's estranged wife, dies in a fire. Three months later Ruth marries his longtime mistress, Claire Hodgson.
— Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram
"She cared for his daughter, put him on an allowance, and imposed a stern regimen: no hard liquor during the season, no hot dogs and soda before a game, in bed by 10pm. And to ensure that he kept to it, she traveled with him aboard the Yankee train. Claire Ruth acted very like the mother the Babe never really had, and he thrived on it." — KB1929; Uniform numbers are instituted at the decree of Yankee owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert.
1929 World Series; Connie Mack's Athletics defeat the Cubs. Two weeks later the stock market crashes.
"If ever there were a source for rueful memories, at least for me, it's baseball. A World Series game I could have seen and missed, and it was a memorable one. Nineteen twenty-nine. My friend Jimmy O'Hare says, Let's go, it's the Cubs playing against the Athletics. The Athletics have Lefty Grove, that fireball pitcher; was gonna face Hornsby and Tyler and Stevenson, and Charlie Grimm, Gabby Hartnett — the sluggers! Speedball against the sluggers. Connie Mack puts in a guy he didn't use all season, an old guy named Howard Ehmke, with a ball that's slower than slow. Howard Ehmke strikes out 13 Cubs; they broke their backs swinging at his slowball. I missed that game; Jimmy saw it. A rueful memory of loss."1930; Grover Cleveland Alexander retires, age 43. His record of 90 shutouts is second only to Walter Johnson.
— Studs Terkel
