The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Montville Leigh

Author:Montville, Leigh [Montville, Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385518703
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

For Ruth, the 1924 season unfurled as a pleasant continuation of the previous year. He received his certificate—“his diploma,” he called it—as the 1923 MVP on May 14, Babe Ruth Day at the Stadium, and went from there, leading the American League in both home runs (46) and batting average (.378). For the Yankees, the day was a step down. They hoisted their first World Championship flag in center field on Ruth Day, then lost, 11–1, to the St. Louis Browns.

They were trying to become the first team in AL history to win four consecutive pennants, but as the season progressed they never caught the right fire to move away from the pack. There always was the feeling, “We’ll turn it on when we need it.” The light switch, alas, never was pulled. The Washington Senators, already known as “first in peace, first in war, last in the American League,” were the surprise winners under youthful manager Bucky Harris with a big month of September. The Yankees finished two and a half games back in second.

“We just sort of loafed and lazied along when we should have been doing our stuff,” Ruth admitted. “I’m sure we were a better team than Washington, but Harris’s Senators got playing together and his pitchers could be counted on nearly every time they went to the rubber and so they beat us.”

The most interesting afternoon of the season came on June 13, Friday the 13th, in Detroit. The two clubs were on edge from a built-up pile of incidents, most recently a fight between Mike McNally and Tigers first baseman Lu Blue at the Stadium. All business was conducted at the far edges of baseball etiquette. The game was now in the top of the ninth at Navin Field, the Yanks with a 10–6 lead.

Ruth had been brushed back twice by Tigers pitcher Bert Cole during the day, once in the ninth, and was not happy about the fact. Watching from the dugout, he now thought he saw his nemesis, player-manager Ty Cobb, give a signal from center field for Cole to drill Bob Meusel with the next pitch. He shouted out that information to Meusel, and when the next pitch hit Meusel in the back, the Yankees outfielder threw his bat toward Cole and immediately followed it.

The benches emptied, Cobb ran straight in from center field, and Ruth, out of the dugout, ran straight for him. It was a confrontation straight from the fan imagination. What if the two best players in the game ever fought? Could the nastiness of Cobb overcome the size and strength of Ruth? Or vice versa? More words had been written about these two men than about any other baseball players who ever lived. Cobb was the personification of the wily, all-around player, the strategist and hustler, the schemer. Ruth was the slugger who had made all of that obsolete, taking away the headlines. The two men had never reached even a veneer of civility. Cobb hated everyone. Now they came straight at each other, both of them filled with anger and purpose.

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