Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} 's Own Book of by Babe Ruth The Day Babe Ruth Came to Crowley. Wherever Babe Ruth barnstormed, throngs turned out for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the great Bambino in person. Wherever Babe Ruth barnstormed, whether in the United States or across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in Europe and Asia, throngs turned out for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the great Bambino in person. Anticipation was always high, and the magnetic Ruth never disappointed. Even if Ruth didn't connect on one of his titanic home runs, his mere presence thrilled the crowd. Ruth did more for baseball than any player in the game's history. Not only was Ruth baseball's most productive player, but he would have been one of the all-time greatest left-handed pitchers had he not switched from moundsman to a slugging right fielder. In 1921, Ruth and his ' teammates made a swing through Louisiana, and stopped in Crowley, Louisiana, an event which baseball historian Gaylon White described in his new book, "The Best Little Baseball Town in the World." Crowley's baseball-crazy fans came out to root for their colorful minor league franchise, the Millers. A baseball scribe calculated that the Millers' 1952 throng of 119,333 represented nearly 10 times Crowley's population, the rough equivalent of the New York Yankees drawing 80 million fans. True to their reputation as rabid fans, when Ruth and his came to Crowley on St. Patrick's Day exactly a century ago, nearly half the city squeezed into a hastily built baseball field inside a racetrack. By 1921, Ruth had hit 54 homers the previous season, was on his way to 59 that year, and eventually 60 in 1927, all records at the time. But the Shreveport Times reported that on March 17, Ruth's "remarkable" day "was without strikeouts, bases on balls and homeruns," categories that he normally led the league in. But Millers' fans didn't need Ruth's presence to field an interesting if not bizarre cast of unusual characters on the diamond. The brightest Millers' star was heavy-hitting Conklyn Meriwether, remembered not so much for his baseball talents, but for inexplicably killing his mother-and-father-in- law with an axe years after he retired. Although Meriwether never played in the major leagues – he won a roster spot on the 1946 St. Louis Cardinals' roster in 1946, but never got into a game – the six-foot, 210-pounder racked up impressive credentials during his 15 minor league seasons, four of them with the New York Yankees farm system. Meriwether hit .307 in his career with formidable power, blasting 280 home runs for an average of nearly 20 a season. A World War II veteran, Meriwether was declared insane by a Florida judge, and committed to an institution, thus avoiding a certain death sentence. Millers' Johnny George, the popular skipper who won two league titles out of the three years he piloted the team, was in fact a con man. George died at age 36 in a Birmingham jail awaiting his trial on embezzlement charges. The word buzzed among disappointed Crowley citizens: the manager was a crook. "The Best Little Baseball Town in the World" reads more like fiction than fact. But the book tells the important story of in the 1950s. The Millers were part of the Evangeline League, known variously by the nicknames "Tabasco," Hot Sauce" and "Pepper Pot" because of the countless wild events that passionate fans came to expect. Fans berated umpires and fellow players in Cajun French. The Crowley Millers' history has taken on special importance today because MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has overhauled minor league baseball, and callously removed franchises from small town American communities like Crowley. Not only are middle-America's baseball fans deprived of their summer enjoyment, but Manfred's actions also take away important jobs from blue-collar workers who need employment or to supplement their earning with part-time jobs. White's book takes readers back to a more joyous baseball era, and entertains them every word of the way. Babe Ruth’s Half Season with the Baltimore Orioles in 1914. Babe Ruth began his career in 1914 as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, a minor-league team in the . Long-time Baltimore Sun sportswriter Jesse Linthicum witnessed firsthand Ruth’s 19 weeks with the Orioles. “I saw Babe Ruth hit his first home , pitch his first game and obtain the nickname of Babe,” he wrote in 1948.1. Linthicum was at St. Mary’s Industrial School in February 1914 when 19-year-old Ruth was summoned to the school’s reception room to meet Jack Dunn, the owner and manager of the Orioles. A number of Ruth’s school teammates and small kids from St. Mary’s who idolized him accompanied him to the office. Dunn, who had never seen Ruth play, had heard plenty about the school superstar — a highly-rated pitcher and hitter, capable of playing every position. He was a left-handed thrower and a switch hitter who hit .537 in 1913. Dunn, who sought big ballplayers, liked the fact that Ruth was over six feet tall, muscular, and weighed a lean 183 pounds. After Ruth accepted Dunn’s contract offer without the slightest hesitation, the St. Mary’s ballplayers responded like a well-rehearsed chorus. “There goes our ball club,” they moaned.2. When Ruth and the Orioles arrived in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for spring training, Ruth made an immediate impression in the team’s first inter- squad game. “The youngster landed on a fastball and circled the bases before Billy Morrisette had retrieved the hit in deep right field,” a sportswriter reported.3 Linthicum called him “a prestigious clout that sent the locals down to main street talking to themselves.” As Linthicum trailed Ruth and Dunn while heading back to the hotel following the game, the writer heard Dunn say, “This Baby will never get away from me,” and according to Linthicum, “Then and there Ruth acquired the nickname of ‘Babe.’”4. Ruth began spring training as a left-handed throwing who handled all fielding chances “with ease and grace,” an observer noted.5 The observer was also impressed when he saw Ruth fan four batters in three innings in his first pitching appearance. Ruth was noted to have terrific speed, but still needed some work: “Ruth lacks one quality of a successful pitcher: He has never had experience with fast company.”6 But when he made his first pitching start of the spring exhibition season, he looked as though he was learning when he defeated the Phillies. The next day the Orioles trailed the Phillies, 6-0, in the sixth-inning when Ruth was called in from the bullpen to put out the fire. He quickly ended the inning by whiffing Eddie Matteson and Dode Paskert and held the Phillies scoreless while his teammates chipped away at the lead and won, 7- 6. Six days later, Ruth again proved his abilities when he defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-2. “Ruth, who went the full 9 innings, pitched beautifully,” wrote Jesse Linthicum. “Not at any stage of the contest did he show any signs of nervousness. The Athletics paid him a big compliment by saying he is one of the best youngsters they have seen in a long time.”7. Three days later the A’s got another crack at Ruth, and they were ready. “The Athletics started in on Ruth as though determined to drive the juvenile off the rubber,” opined a Philadelphia sportswriter.8 The first four Philadelphia batters reached base and the A’s went on to win, 12-5. Frank Baker led the A’s hitting attack by going 4-for-5. “Baker hit the ball on the nose each time and the hits shot out to the outfield like bullets,” wrote Linthicum.9. Before one of Baker’s at-bats, Orioles Ben Egan told Ruth about his signal to waste a pitch. When Baker came to the plate, Egan flashed the signal to Ruth, but instead of wasting one, Ruth threw the pitch over the heart of the plate, and Baker sent the ball for a long ride. Egan then went to the mound and asked Ruth why he didn’t obey his signal. “I threw it waste high,” Ruth answered.10. Just three months after making his professional debut with the Baltimore Orioles, Babe Ruth was sold to the and reached the major leagues on July 11, 1914. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS) Not discouraged by the powerful Athletics’ rough treatment, Ruth “tossed like a million dollars” in a win over the Dodgers the following week. “In the first 5 innings, he had the visitors breaking their backs in an effort to reach his benders,” penned a Baltimore sportswriter, “and when he got himself into a hole, he showed he had the necessary backbone to pull himself together.”11 In addition to striking out six, Ruth socked a two-run and hit two out of the park during batting practice. “The more I see Ruth the hitter, the more I like him,” Dunn said.12 “When batting, Ruth takes a long lunge at the ball and meets it on the nose,” noted Linthicum. “He holds his bat down at the end and puts all his weight behind the swing.”13. On April 22, Ruth blanked Buffalo in his first International League start, 6-0. He yielded 6 hits and struck out 6 while going 2-for-4 at the plate. He dropped his next game, 2-1. “Ruth pitched an excellent game,” wrote Linthincum, “and should have won, 1-0. An led to one run and a walk led to another.”14. On May 1, Ruth pitched his second win, in a relief role. With the game tied, 1-1, after nine innings, Ruth entered the game and pitched a scoreless 10th and 11th inning. In the bottom of the 11th, the Orioles had a man on first when Ruth approached the plate for his turn at bat. After taking a ball and a strike, he belted one to the left field scoreboard, far enough to allow the runner to score from first base for a 2-1 win. Ruth won his third game the next day and “again was the hero,” wrote Linthicum. “His sensational work in the box and at bat stood out as the most prominent feature.”15 He struck out seven and hit a two-run triple in an 8-3 win. He upped his record to 4-1 when he hurled 11 innings in a 5-3 win at Buffalo, but then cooled off, dropping his next two decisions. On May 23, Dunn decided to start Ruth in right field and place him in the leadoff spot. Ruth had held his own as a shortstop in spring training, but Dunn was unsure about using a left-handed shortstop. The experiment was deemed a failure, as Ruth went 0-for 3. The next day Ruth was tagged for seven hits in 3 1/3 innings in a relief role. The humiliation from the first game did not prevent Ruth from coming back in the nightcap. Ruth pitched 11 innings in the nightcap for his fifth win of the season. He closed out the month of May with another win to up his season record to 6-3. Ruth started June by splitting his first six decisions. On June 20, he didn’t even make it through the second inning. He was removed after yielding back-to-back home runs, one of the two hit by a named Wally Pipp. On June 23, when Ruth blanked Toronto to win his 10th, Linthicum wrote, “Ruth pitched his most brilliant game. The youngster allowed only 5 scattered hits, 2 of which were the infield variety. He had 8 strikeouts to his credit.”16 Two days later, with the Orioles trailing, 7-0, Ruth was sent in as a relief pitcher. He held the opposition and the Orioles rallied for a 13-8 win. In his next start, Ruth allowed three runs on three hits in the first inning, but then settled down, allowing six hits in the last eight innings in a 10-5 win, his 12th of the season. On July 4, Ruth yielded two runs in the first inning. “From that point until the 7th, the visitors did not have a chance,” wrote C. Starr Matthews of the Baltimore Sun , “for Ruth twirled like the winner he is.”17 Later in the game, Ruth smacked a RBI to help his own cause in a 4-3 win, his 13th of the season. On July 6, Ruth won in relief to up his season record to 14-7. With the season now at its halfway point, the Orioles were in first place and appeared to be heading for the pennant. But Dunn was losing money. Fans were flocking to see the Baltimore Federals, a new major league team. Dunn entertained the thought of moving his franchise to Richmond, Virginia, but that idea was nixed by the International League, leaving him with no choice but to break up his team. Dunn knew there would be interest for Ruth, so he offered him to his good friend Connie Mack, manager and partial owner of the Athletics. Mack was also feeling the effects of the Federal League. His attendance was down and his players were demanding new contracts mid-season, using the threat of jumping to the Federal League as leverage. “Jack, you have a great young pitcher in Ruth,” Mack told Dunn, “but I can’t give you what he is worth.”18. White Sox ivory hunter George Mills, who spent time scouting Ruth and the Orioles, made a recommendation to his boss Charles Comiskey to pay $60,000 for Ruth and five other Baltimore players. Dunn was thrilled when hearing this, but no action was ever taken. Fortunately for Dunn, another financially stable team was interested. Boston Red Sox scout Patsy Donovan came to town and stayed a while to get a good look at Ruth. When he reported back to Red Sox owner Joseph Lannin, he highly recommended the young ballplayer. On July 6, while the Red Sox were playing in Washington, Dunn traveled to Washington to meet with Lannin. Three days later, Dunn and Lannin had a long-distance phone conference to finalize the deal. Ruth and two other Orioles were sold to the Red Sox for $25,000. “If I had made the deal in 1913, I would have made twice the amount,” said a disappointed Dunn.19 And thus concluded Babe Ruth’s brief season with the Baltimore Orioles. GARY A. SARNOFF has been an active SABR member since 1994. A member of SABR’s Bob Davids Chapter, he has contributed to SABR’s Bio and Games Projects, and to the annual National Pastime publication. He is also member of the SABR Negro Leagues Committee and serves as chairman of the Ron Gabriel Committee. In addition, he has authored two baseball books: “The Wrecking Crew of ’33” and “The First Yankees Dynasty.” He currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia. Notes. 1 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Babe Ruth, ‘a natural,’” August 17, 1948, 15. 2 Baltimore Sun , “Cree and Ruth on Job,” March 11, 1914, 5. 3 Baltimore Sun, “ by Ruth feature of game,” March 8, 1914,part 2, 1. 4 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Babe Ruth,’ a natural,’” August 17, 1948, 15. 5 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Yanigans show class,” March 14, 1914, 7. 6 Baltimore Sun , “Cree and Ruth on job,” March 11, 1914, 5. 7 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Birds beat Athletics,” March 26, 1914, 5. 8 Philadelphia Inquirer , “Mackies make merry music meeting Ruth,” Sporting Section, 1. 9 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Baker’s batting helps to defeat Dunn’s Orioles,” March 29, 1914, part 2, 1. 10 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Babe Ruth, ‘a natural,’” August 17, 1948, 15. 11 Baltimore Sun , “Ruth beats Dodgers,” April 6, 1914, 8. 12 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Orioles win in ninth,” March 19, 1914, 5. 13 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Baker’s batting helps defeat Dunn’s Orioles,” March 29, 1914, part 2, 1. 14 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Orioles lose both,” April 28, 1914, 7. 15 Jesse Linthicum , Baltimore Sun , “Orioles divide doubleheader with Leafs,” May 3, 1914, part 2, 1. 16 Jesse Linthicum, Baltimore Sun , “Ruth blanks Leafs,” June 24, 1914, 5. 17 Starr Matthews, Baltimore Sun , “Birds and Clams split,” July 5, 1914, part 2, 1. 18 Frederick G. Lieb, The Baltimore Orioles , (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1955), 141-42. 19 Starr Matthews, Baltimore Sun , “The rise of Babe Ruth,” July 10, 1914, 5. Babe Ruth’s New York @100. W hen Babe Ruth started hitting home runs, the US started to change. Baseball fans both diehard and dilettante were dazzled by this singular figure who propelled the ball harder and farther than anyone else and rounded the bases with unimagined frequency, more often than entire teams. In 1919, when Ruth hit a record 29 home runs, attendance soared at games both in his home city of Boston and on the road. Observing Ruth’s marketability, baseball’s overseers changed the very machinery of the game; they introduced a livelier ball, more tightly wound, that would facilitate home runs, which began to occur at unprecedented rates. Baseball was shaken to the core, and the aftershocks were felt well beyond the sport. Home runs in baseball—like horn solos in jazz and close-ups in movies (other revolutions of the time)—focus attention on the individual at the expense of the collective. Baseball’s change and Ruth’s popularity were part of a reshaping of US attitudes toward individuality, a new emphasis on persons, not people, and on the transcendent beings among—but not of—us. It was an era of transition: New York was displacing Boston on the US cultural scene, moving pictures and recorded sound were substituting for live performance, and the culture of mass-reproducible celebrity was infiltrating all facets of society. Babe Ruth’s renown, skills, and canny business sense—manifesting in his dramatic trade from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees—illuminate these shifts. The story of this most modern of celebrities highlights the emergence of an individuality we live with to this day. All of these changes can be seen, in microcosm, on January 5, 1920, when the Yankees announced that they had bought Ruth from the Red Sox. Ruth’s fame would explode in the media hothouse of New York, landing him on vaudeville stages and movie screens. The city’s first tabloid, The New York Daily News , not yet a year old, assigned a reporter just to cover Ruth. For the intensifying celebrity culture, Ruth was an ideal specimen: larger than life, vaguely scandalous, possessed of seemingly superhuman abilities, and always good for an irreverent quip to the sportswriters. His physique helped make him instantly recognizable, iconic. People who had never seen a baseball game knew what he looked like, as people who had never seen a motion picture knew what Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp looked like. During Ruth’s first season in New York, Dorothy Parker wrote a theater review mentioning “a Russian dancer who looks startlingly like Babe Ruth”; she could expect her readers to instantly get the picture, and the joke. 1. Ruth embodied a very new, and yet very old, phenomenon—celebrity—at a time and place and technological era poised to capitalize on him. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, renown was fundamentally changing, constructed through an admixture of images, publicity, and marketing—and a teasing of the line between public performance and private lives. Above all, the rise of first photography and then moving pictures introduced a cognitive contradiction: reproducible images of unique people who were supposedly unreproducible, their inimitability becoming a marker of value in a marketplace where people were now commodities. For the newly mass-technologized society, celebrity served to recenter the individual against the backdrop of the anonymous crowds. 2. Going Deep: Baseball and Philosophy. In Ruth’s time, the most recognizable version of celebrity was the Hollywood star system, which relied on a combination of marketing materials and fan magazines that reminded audiences about the star’s life and fame beyond the movies—what Walter Benjamin called “the artificial build-up of the ‘personality’ outside the studio” 3 —and cinematic plots that would invoke and even enlist that public persona. Another major component of Hollywood film stardom was the device of the close-up, which D. W. Griffith called a way of “photographing thought”—suggesting that the image can capture the inner life of the individual. 4 Close-ups in particular invite the audience to set aside story and focus on the star, bigger than the movie plot. Ruth’s celebrity paralleled cinema stardom. From 1919 onward, every home run he hit was marveled at by fans, emphasizing the individual whose abilities were so exceptional that he could transcend baseball. When he hit a home run it was tantamount to a close-up, a pause for admiring the person. A ball hit over the fence is no longer in play; the hitter performs a victory lap. Home runs freeze the action and showcase the player, not the team, a rare example in sports where one accrues points by rendering the other players on the field momentarily irrelevant. More than any other player, when Ruth was at bat he became more than a participant in the game’s unfolding narrative, instead existing outside that time—as the Babe, a luminous signifier of the 1920s US zeitgeist. George Herman Ruth, Jr., was born in Baltimore in 1895 to tavern keepers George and Kate, who quickly realized their incapacity to handle their son’s wayward behavior. At seven, Junior was sent to Saint Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, where for the next 12 years the Xaverians were tasked with containing him. The brothers taught him baseball, and it took; as a teenager pitching for the school’s team, Ruth became a local hero. His repute stemmed from his dominating play and his striking physical features: he grew to be six foot two, tall and broad-shouldered for his day, the torso tapering into shockingly spindly legs. On top of this, he kept his baby-face cheeks, and therefore was christened “Babe.” In 1914, Ruth was scouted and signed by the Baltimore Orioles (no relation to the current organization), who played in the International League— professional, but subordinate to the major leagues. Ruth immediately outmatched hitters, catching the eye of the Red Sox, who bought his contract. From 1915 to 1918, Ruth helped Boston win three championships as a star pitcher. He was meant for more. Pitchers have never been expected to contribute much offense. But Ruth, batting roughly one-quarter as often as nonpitchers did, was making hay of his turns at the plate. So in 1918 manager had Ruth start 60 games in the field, and as a part-time hitter, Ruth managed 11 home runs, a tie for most in the sport. The rest of his team hit four. In 1919, still not getting a full season of at bats, Ruth hit 29. The rest of his team hit four. As the disparities suggest, home runs were rare before Ruth. At the time, many baseball fans and observers thought of home runs as tawdry, preferring the traditional style of offense that relied on stringing together hits and stratagems that would cumulatively advance runners. Whereas stars like and had excelled at knocking balls around the field, rarely striking out, Ruth was willing to frequently miss altogether in order to occasionally hit pitches hard and far. He sacrificed control for force, gripping the bat at its end rather than sliding his hands up the barrel as was customary. Many sportswriters, league officials, managers, and players objected, in print, in jeers, and in more sinister devices such as attempts to denigrate Ruth with rumors that he had African American ancestry, and epithets to that effect. Babe Ruth pitching for Boston (1914-19). Photograph courtesy of Francis P. Burke Collection / Wikimedia Commons. Establishment antipathy toward Ruth was obscured by the undeniable draw of the home run; he served as a magnet for crowds and press attention. With success came conflict. Ruth had always been known for impulsiveness and immaturity both on and off the field. Since his departure from the Xaverian brothers, his unruly propensities had flourished, and as his stature grew his nonconformity put him at odds with his team. An inveterate carouser, Ruth ignored curfews, routinely squabbled with Red Sox owner Harry Frazee over money, and fought with Barrow​, leading to multiple suspensions from the team, usually followed by public reconciliations. Ruth was not the first athlete to party, act out against management, or demand raises (Cobb had done so), but these episodes, combined with his skill set, made it easy for his detractors to categorize him as a selfish player unconcerned with the team’s fortunes. 5 Boston newspapers enjoyed pointing out that Ruth’s increased home run output had coincided with a disappointing finish for the team in 1919. After the 1919 season, Ruth announced that he would not play in 1920 unless Boston doubled his $10,000 salary. It forced Boston’s hand; Frazee reached out to the Yankees to talk trade, and, anticipating a possible backlash, began a smear campaign against Ruth, whispering to newspapers that his selfishness was unbecoming a player in a team sport, and questioning whether a team could win championships with a home run – hitting centerpiece. In December, Frazee and Barrow met at the bar of the Knickerbocker Hotel at 42nd Street and Broadway. Frazee, presumably feeling that Barrow should hear it directly from him, hinted that a trade was all but done. The two teams signed the paperwork on December 26, 1919. Whose Brooklyn? On January 5, Yankees president Colonel , Jr., announced that he had bought the rights to Ruth. It was a 10-day-old story. Though some reporters had been in on the secret, all waited to write about it until Ruppert’s statement to the press, as if collectively sensing that the fact of the transaction was less momentous than its public unveiling. The reports reveal celebrity culture in operation, treating Ruth as a commodity; his cost, not his ability or his future effect on the standings, seemed the most newsworthy item. ’s first sports page blared, “Ruth Bought by New York Americans for $125,000, Highest Price in Baseball Annals,” in an eight-column headline, and continued with smaller headers that reemphasized the money. Other newspapers disagreed on the dollar amount, thus setting in motion the discourse of guesswork and mythologizing of Ruth’s price. The Boston Globe stated the cost as “probably $100,000 and possibly more.” The News had it at $150,000—an early exercise in tabloid extremism—but the extremism was apt: any six-figure price would have been an outlier amount for a baseball deal. The papers were astute to treat Ruth as a business asset. Ruppert wanted to make the Yankees more profitable, as Prohibition was about to severely impair his business empire. The day the Ruth deal was announced, Ruppert was hit with bad news. Representing the United States Brewers Association, he had challenged Congress’s constitutional right to define intoxicating beverages, a final legal wrangle before the Volstead Act would go into effect on January 17. At stake for Ruppert was the imminent shuttering of his family’s Ruppert Brewery, sometimes called Knickerbocker Brewery after its most successful beer brand. He lost, and it made the Times ’s front page. 6. Ruppert was banking on Ruth to rebrand the Yankees and help them compete for attention. Figuratively, the Yankees toiled in the shadow of the older, more successful New York Giants (the baseball team that would relocate to San Francisco 37 years later). 7 Literally, the Yankees played on the older team’s turf, the . The Ruth deal made sense in the context of the postwar rise of public relations as a concern and a business. Ruth himself, late in 1920, would meet Christy Walsh and agree to a professional athlete–agent arrangement that is considered history’s first. Walsh would ghostwrite columns for Ruth, place him in advertisements and film roles, and generally conduct the business of trading on his stardom. Ruth had been doing all right, though. His friend Johnny Igoe, a Boston drugstore owner, had served as a sometime business representative for years. The day after the trade was announced, from a Los Angeles golf course, Ruth sent Igoe a telegram: “Will not play anywhere but Boston.” Igoe spread the word. This was an act, and a transparent one; baseball players had no real power to refuse trades in those days. Ruth’s display of resistance was a canny use of the media that soon led to a raise and an announcement that he had changed his mind. Frazee, meanwhile, was continuing to justify the deal by characterizing Ruth as a detriment to the notion of a team, to the culture of the Red Sox franchise, in both his playing style and his offstage antics. 8 There is some irony to Frazee’s positioning himself as a guardian of old-school New England aesthetics. He ran the Red Sox from his New York offices and his New York home at 565 Park Avenue, spending little time in Boston. A native midwesterner born into a working-class family, Frazee had become a theater mogul in his twenties. Moving to New York, he built the Longacre Theater, had several hits, and accrued enough wealth by 1916 to buy the Red Sox. 9. Known as a fast-talking wheeler-dealer of a Broadway producer, like Florenz Ziegfeld but without the budget, Frazee was rumored, wrongly, to be Jewish. There were no Jewish baseball owners at the time, but fear of Jewish control of the major leagues was rampant; the racist Henry Ford railed at the “smothering influence of the chosen race” in baseball. Frazee, associated with New York’s multicultural modernity—its entertainment industry, spectacle, new money, and new Americans—had drawn his ire. But Frazee’s own history was irrelevant when his remarks to the press cast Ruth as too brash, too big, too individual for the Red Sox. Thus, the owner helped solidify the popular understanding of the divide between antiquated, stuffy Boston and brash, big, and individualist New York. It is likely that 1920s New York would have become the world’s capital of arts and entertainment culture regardless of Babe Ruth, but Ruth helped seal that deal. The relocation of Ruth capped decades of transition in which Boston ceded its place as the nation’s cultural capital to New York. Through much of its history, the country had looked to Boston for developments in literature and the arts. By 1920, that must have seemed eons ago. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, New York City overtook Boston in these areas, as it had previously done in population, industry, finance, and modernization. 10 While Boston passed an 1891 ordinance preventing the construction of buildings higher than 10 stories, New York allowed developers to build modern high-rises, soon to be called skyscrapers , “restricted only by the amount of elevator service.” 11 In 1920, New York was eight times the size of Boston; its population had reached almost 6 million, in contrast with the roughly 700,000 back in Boston. New York had become recognized as the cultural epicenter by leading the way in popular entertainment (theater, popular song) and entertainment technology (photographic and print reproduction, including inexpensive books and magazines and innovations like book-of-the-month clubs) and eventually catching up in the spheres of art considered more elite. It could afford to fund a new symphony, the Philharmonic, in 1909, and import Gustav Mahler as its first conductor. It is likely that 1920s New York would have become the world’s capital of arts and entertainment culture regardless of Ruth, but Ruth helped seal that deal. In February 1920, he returned to the East Coast. Arriving in New York on February 28, he dropped off his stuff at his new digs in the Ansonia Hotel on West 72nd Street, met up with the rest of the Yankees, and got on a train for spring training. Embarking on a career that would make him an icon, he was ready for his close-up. Taking advantage of baseball’s new, livelier ball, Ruth proceeded to hit 54 home runs in 1920 and 59 in 1921; meanwhile, other players’ totals started creeping toward his level. Prompted by Ruth, baseball changed utterly, as did the world. Cal Ripken / Babe Ruth certification. When I was the All-Star Coach for 9U our league made us take the test and provide a Certificate in order to be considered as a Head Coach for the Regular Season. Several people were not selected in some age groups. Say what you want about their Baseball Knowledge but the Ripken Brothers know how to pimp out their Brand. $$$$ Comment. Join Date: Dec 2013 Posts: 4019. Comment. Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 5486. Comment. Join Date: Dec 2013 Posts: 4019. Comment. Join Date: May 2014 Posts: 1306. Comment. Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 5486. Comment. Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 8355. The stupid is strong there. Comment. Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 5486. Comment. Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 14201. Comment. Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 5737. I've been through several of these types of tests/certifications/etc. Initially, I would resent them-still do to some extent-but now, like Jake, I mostly smile and go with the flow. One thing's for sure, somebody is always making money off of them or someone's high paying job is being protected (liability). In our neck of the woods, high school coaches are run through the ringer on all of these certifications. The easiest thing is to smile and move forward or you won't be getting any soup. Jump through the hoop. The Best Babe Ruth Book. Just finished by thurman munson and Ten Rings by Yogi. I am in the middle fo Koppett's Concise History of MLB and was now looking for a book on the Babe. Can anyone point my in the direction of one of the better ones. No adjenda, no speculation. just his life on and off the field. Always collecting Yankees. Especially: Jeter, Posada, Munson, Melky Cabrera, Mattingly. Good Traders : Dalkowski110, dmbfan, Freakazoid1014, actually I have had too many good trades to list everyone. Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 1016. This is a cliched selection, but my choice for the greatest American sports bio PERIOD, as well as the greatest Ruth bio, remains the same: Robert Creamer's timeless: "Babe: The Legend Comes to Life." Exhaustively researched, it was published in the early 1970's, I believe. That gives it the advantage of having been written and researched while a lot of men who knew Ruth, and played with or against him, were still alive. This included, for instance, the man who threw the alleged called shot in 1932, and the man who threw his famous titanic HR #714, when Ruth was totally washed up, but the ball went a zillion feet. And Creamer is a very good writer. God only knows how many hours Creamer spent researching this book, which is slightly over 400 pages long in a small paperback version. But you will learn about EVERYTHING, including things you don't really want to (e.g., a discussion on the size of Ruth's penis, as well as those of Frank "Home Run" Baker and Del Pratt, both of whom apparently were built more like equines than we mere men, in that regard). You come away from the book concluding that the truest and most important line in the book was at the end of the chapter on his "incarceration" with the Xavieran monks, who included the man he admired like no other, the towering Brother Mathias (born before the Civil War and over 6'6", plus huge): The animal was out of his cage now, and nothing but death was ever going to put him back. But Creamer came away from all his research with the clear sense that despite Ruth's incredible lack of any sophistication or civilization whatsoever ("Hey, [name of teammate], who was that c--- I saw you with last night?", when it was the guy's WIFE), Ruth was a guy nobody could truly dislike. except Leo Durocher. There is SO much material in that book. I've read it about 12 times, and have never wearied of it. If you get going on a day where you have nothing else you want to do, you can go right through it. But it won't be the last time you read it, I promise you that. Comment. Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 11281. This is clear cut boat race imo. It all starts with Creamer's work Bryan. If this were a brainstorming web, Creamer's book belongs in the middle of the page, circled in a bold color. Others can stem from that. You can expand and learn other tidbits here and there, depending on how deep you want to go, or what direction you want to dig from there, but Creamer's is the centerpiece. As real as it gets. I believe it took him around 7 years to write the book but he was also writing for SI at the time, so he wasn't exactly able to hurry or focus on just it. Came out in '74 along with Wagenheim's, which is also good. That and Smelser's book should probably be next on your list. Babe in Red Stockings and Launching the Legend are also great. Even though its not an autobiography in the truest sense of the word, "" is a nice read. Tom Meany's book is not something I'd recommend. About halfway through "Big Bam" right now and its surprisingly good, with bits of info I wasn't aware of. apparently wrote a very good book about Ruth a long time ago but its very hard to find. I'm currently looking for a copy of it. So BHN has it right on. The short answer is obvious. Creamer. Depending how how much deeper you want to go from there with Babe, there are other books on him, and other books about other players, where you can still learn things about him. For instance "The Pitch That Killed," or "Luckiest Man," or hundreds of others. Comment. Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 11281. A great part in Creamer's book. He has a way of pulling you back through time and making you feel like you're right there. On Sunday, June 13, 1948, the Yankees celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of , and Ruth was invited to be there along with other members of the 1923 Yankees. Sick as he was, he was delighted with the idea. The Yankees held a banquet for all the old players at Ruppert's brewery the night before the game, but Ruth was not well enough to attend that. There was concern that he might not be at the Stadium either on Sunday because it was a dank, rainy day. But he came. The other old Yankees were already in the locker room when he arrived. "Here he is now," one of them said in a low voice, and Ruth came in slowly, helped by Paul Carey and Frank Dulaney, his male nurse. His face split into a grin, a shriveled caricature of the beaming one he used to have, and in his croacking voice he spoke to his old teammates, calling most of them by their nicknames. Dulaney helped him take off his street clothes and put on his uniform. The old teammates stayed away until he had his uniform on, and so did the photographers. Then they began to take pictures, with Ruth posing willingly. The old Yankees were gathered together for a group photograph. Ruth, stooped, smiling, stood in the middle of the back row. , standing half behind him, had a hand on his shoulder, and so did Wally Pipp. The oldtimers began to go out onto the field, and Ruth, accompanied by Dulaney and Carey, followed slowly down the runway to the . It was early and Ruth paused in the runway, a topcoat slung over his shoulders to keep off the chill. "I think you'd better wait inside," said Dulaney. "It's too damp here." Ruth was led back to the clubhouse and stayed there until it was nearly time for him to appear on the field. Then he came down the runway again and into the dugout, where room was made for hiim on the bench. Mel Harder, a Cleveland coach who had pitched against Ruth, came over to say hello. Ruth said hoarsely, "You remember when I got five for five off you in Cleveland and they booed me?" "Line drives," Ruth croaked, "all to left field. And they booed the **** out of me." All the other oldtimers had been introduced, the applause from the big crowd rising and falling as each name was called. It was time for Ruth. He got to his feet, letting the topcoat fall from his shoulders, and took a bat to use as a cane. He looked up at the photographers massed in front of the dugout. His name rang out over the public address system, the roar of the crowd began and, as W.C. Heinz wrote, "He walked out into the cauldron of sound he must have known better than any other man." He walked slowly and he was smaller than Babe Ruth should have been. He paused for the photographers, leaning on the bat, looking up at the crowded tiers of people. Near home plate he was met by Ed Barrow, a month past his eightieth birthday, who hugged him. At the microphone Ruth spoke briefly, saying how proud he was to have hit the first home run in the Stadium and how good it was to see his old teammates. When the ceremonies were over and other old players trotted out to their positions for a two-inning game, Ruth left the field at Yankee Stadium for the last time. He was helped down into the dugout and back along the runway to the clubhouse. The topcoat was put over his shoulders again, and he kept it on in the clubhouse. He felt chilly. The glow of the excitement was wearing off. Dugan, who played only one inning of the oldtimers' game, came into the clubhouse. "Hiya, Babe," Dugan said, sitting down next to him. "Can you use a drink?" A small bar had been set up in a corner of the locker room, and Dugan got a drink for himself and a beer for Ruth and brought them back. They sat there awhile, sipping their drinks.