Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America by Donald L. Miller

Author:Donald L. Miller [Miller, Donald L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), Social History, General
ISBN: 9781476745640
Google: mVxvAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1416550208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-05-06T07:00:00+00:00

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“Hard as nails and . . . in wonderful condition,” Ruth recovered splendidly in the 1926 season. He focused almost entirely on baseball and mended his relationships with teammates and Miller Huggins. The Yankees won the pennant by three games and Ruth hit .372, with 47 home runs and 153 RBIs. His stirring performance inspired the popular song “Along Came Ruth,” written by Christy Walsh with music by Irving Berlin: “He’s the King of Swat/He’s the big shot/The idol of the day.”

The idol of the day made the final out of the seventh and deciding game of the World Series with the underdog St. Louis Cardinals. With hard-drinking forty-year-old Grover Cleveland Alexander pitching flawlessly in relief into the ninth inning, after shutting down the Yankees in the previous game, Ruth worked the count and drew a walk with two outs and the Yanks down 3–2. Up to this point he had been the outstanding player of the game, making a sensational diving catch on the warning track and hitting his fourth home run of the series. With Yankee slugger Bob Meusel at the plate, Ruth took off on the first pitch and was gunned down by a perfect throw from catcher Bob O’Farrell. It was a close play, with the Rogers Hornsby, “The Rajah,” applying the tag as Ruth executed a hook slide into second base.

The previous year, he would have been singled out as the goat of the game, but this was the remade Ruth, the darling once more of New York sportswriters. Even Miller Huggins sprang to his defense. “We needed an unexpected move. Had Ruth made the steal, it would have been declared the smartest piece of baseball in the history of World Series play.”

Ruth had a great season, but felt his comeback was incomplete. The Yankees had fallen one game short of a world championship, and his home run total had fallen far short of his expectations. Yet he had done well enough, he thought, to merit a sizable raise; and he counted on Marshall Hunt to help him get it.

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