The House That Ruth Built by Robert Weintraub

Author:Robert Weintraub [WEINTRAUB, ROBERT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation / Baseball - History
ISBN: 9780316175173
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

Before leaving on the rail tour of the American League, the Yanks had swept eight straight at home against Philly and Washington. The signal game of the home stand was played on July 3. In the eleventh inning of a 1–1 game against the Senators, Ruth made a spectacular catch to rob Goose Goslin of a hit. In the process, the Babe knocked himself unconscious. Team doctors and a couple of volunteers who were called in from the Yankee Stadium grandstand circled Ruth. Finally it was decided that, in their best medical opinion, the cure for Ruth’s possible concussion was a glass of water to the face.

Ruth came around, wondering why his head and chest were dripping wet. He then ended the game in the fifteenth by launching his sixteenth home run of the season over the right-field fence off George Mogridge, who had pitched all fifteen innings (as did Bullet Joe Bush for New York—indeed, it was a different time). Roughly a thousand fans poured onto the field to greet Ruth at the plate after the homer, his most dramatic of July.

Bob Meusel was emerging as the team’s second-best hitter. On the Fourth of July, the Yankees swept a doubleheader against Washington, 12–6 and 12–2. Meusel had five hits and six RBI in the two games. The spree put him over .300 as he took the league lead in RBI from Pipp, with sixty. Meusel was slugging fifty points higher than Pipp as well. Meanwhile, the day before, the Giants beat the Phils, 4–2, at the Baker Bowl. Irish Meusel knocked in all four runs on two homers, his sixth and seventh of the season. It was a typically productive couple of days for the slugging brothers Meusel.

Ballplayers of the ’20s called good conversationalists “barbers.” Bob Meusel was not a barber. To the contrary, he often went days without uttering a word. He was called “Silent Bob” or “Languid Bob” when he wasn’t being called “Long Bob” in reference to his 6'3" frame. One time Irish returned from a long road trip to the apartment the brothers shared. Bob rose, grabbed his bags, and left on a road trip of his own. No words passed between the two siblings. Bob may have been silent, but that didn’t mean he was shy—he was almost as big a carouser as the Babe. He was described in one New York paper thusly: “A strange, cloistered gentleman is Mr. Meusel, impervious to gibes, threats or criticism. He moves through life in solitary splendor.”

Irish, on the other hand, was friendly—downright ebullient. He was three years older than Bob but wasn’t nearly the physical specimen. Bob was tall and leanly muscled, with a rocket for an arm. Irish was only 5'11", 178 pounds, with a popgun for an arm. Decades later fans still talked about a throw he launched virtually sideways into the right-field grandstand at the Polo Grounds. One time Irish and McGraw were standing in front of a hotel when a homeless man with an arm missing approached.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.