The Selling of the Babe by Glenn Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

racetrack. Ruth was the primary reason.
    He loved the attention and played to the crowd every chance he had. When he took batting practice, he made no pretense of trying to do anything but hit the ball as high and far as possible—as a pitcher, he didn’t have to. Years later, the Tigers’ Ty Cobb noted that this was a huge advantage for Ruth, saying, “He could experiment at the plate. He didn’t have to get a piece of the ball.… No one cares if a pitcher strikes out or looks bad at bat, so Ruth could take that full swing.” And that’s exactly what he did, and had been doing since reaching the big leagues, often using an oversized bat that weighed as much as ten or twelve ounces more than the bats many other players usually used.
    The result in four big league seasons so far had been 68 strikeouts in 361 major league at bats, something that made the game’s wise old heads shake their heads. Striking out nearly 20 percent of the time was unacceptable—for anybody, regardless of the result the other 80 percent of the time. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1918, Boston’s fledgling pitching corps complied and grooved the ball for Ruth as the writers breathlessly noted his accomplishment and whether he made contact or not. They also noted that most of the veteran players made sure to wait and take their batting practice off the new recruits instead of Mays, Ruth, or the other front liners who trickled in every day.
    On March 20, Ruth managed to scatter the gators four more times during batting practice. Each one meant a lost baseball, leading Harry Frazee to mutter, “This is getting painful,” a reference to the cost of a replacement ball. Burt Whitman of the Boston Herald took to referring to Ruth as “the Colossus,” and a cartoon in the Boston Post showed Ruth pestering Barrow to play in the field, but that was as much a reference to his enthusiasm as his batting prowess. (Note: the Boston Herald and Boston Journal merged in 1917 and were known in 1918 as the Boston Herald and Journal , becoming simply the Boston Herald in 1918. To avoid confusion I refer to it as the Boston Herald .)
    Word of Ruth’s performances continued to spread. The home runs might have been cheap, but nevertheless they were home runs, and no one else in camp was hitting them so frequently. Ruth had filled out and was now man-strong, topping 200 pounds. When the Sox and Brooklyn traveled to Little Rock for an exhibition only to have it be rained out, Ruth entertained the big crowd of soldiers by taking batting practice and swinging for the fences, dropping four or five balls over the barrier just for fun. According to one hyperbolic report, the balls landed thirty feet farther away than “the right field pavilion at the Polo Grounds,” a good poke if not a very specific one, as the stands were only 258 feet from home down the line but much deeper where the pavilion ended. The soldiers looked at Ruth just as he had once looked up to Brother Matthias, his mentor at St. Mary’s, when he was hitting home runs one-handed.
    The next day, 2,000 fans turned up for another exhibition at Whittington Park. With first baseman Dick Hoblitzell finally in camp and needing work, and both Carl Mays and Ruth scheduled to pitch, Barrow knew good business and stuck Ruth in right field to start the game. He didn’t disappoint. In the third inning, pitcher Al Mamaux grooved one. Barrow had already told his men to swing and swing hard against the Brooklyn scrub and Ruth did, once again hammering the ball over the fence in right. If press reports are to be believed, this time the blast cleared not only the gators but both a street and a duck pond. Astounded witnesses called the drive the longest they’d ever seen at WhittingtonPark, some claiming the ball traveled 500 feet, something normally possible with the dead ball only if one included a considerable roll.
    Still, his performance was more