Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign Against Its Biggest Star
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Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball's Campaign Against Its Biggest Star
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826274090 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Missouri Press |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2018 |
| Series: | Sports and American Culture |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
BASEBALL'S SEARCH FOR ORDER
"Very Poor"
Destitution enough to break most men ruled the early life of George Herman Ruth. Born into a struggling working-class family in 1895, Ruth was essentially abandoned as a youth. His parents, overwhelmed evidently by illness and financial pressures, either could not or would not care for their firstborn child. Instead, almost from birth, the boy largely fended for himself on the dangerous and debasing streets of the southwest Baltimore neighborhood unaffectionately known as Pigtown.
Ruth's early life appears through a dense prism of legend created, shaped, and reshaped by sportswriters and promoters. Yet in some accounts, a stark truth breaks through. In a 1928 ghostwritten biography penned by baseball journalist and future commissioner of baseball Ford Frick, Ruth recalled his "earliest recollections" as centered "about the dirty, traffic-crowded streets of Baltimore's river front." There he remembered bustling thoroughfares and "heavy trucks whose drivers cursed and swore and aimed blows with their driving whips, at the legs of kids who made the streets their playground." Spiteful teamsters, "coppers patrolling their beats," and "shopkeepers who took bruising payment from our skins for the apples and fruit we 'snitched' from the stands and counters" hounded bands of semihomeless children. Frick undoubtedly sharpened the Dickensian imagery, but the grim scene rings true, as does Ruth's memories of family as "poor. Very poor. And there were times when we never knew where the next meal was coming from."
Much remains in doubt about Ruth's youth, but the reality of poverty and delinquency seems irrefutable. Prospects for the young boy would not have been high. Few surviving such an upbringing could escape deep emotional scars and a base view of mankind. That Ruth emerged with not only a warm view of his fellow man but also a remarkable appetite for life defied all expectations.
Credit for Ruth's turnabout belongs largely to the intervention of the Xaverian brothers, a Roman Catholic religious order dedicated to education. Without question, the good brothers made the essential difference in the boy's life. At seven years of age, for reasons unknown, George Sr. and Katherine Ruth turned their incorrigible son over to St. Mary's Industrial School, a reformatory and orphanage operated by the Xaverians. On the surface the school, which featured many of the same rudiments as a prison, hardly appeared a vehicle for salvation. Some eight hundred boys in total lived in huge dormitories lined with neat beds. Privacy was nonexistent and conditions Spartan. Breakfast consisted of oatmeal with tea or coffee; lunch and dinner were hearty bread and soup. A slice or two of baloney decorated plates on Sunday. Discipline was strict, and rule breakers could expect physical punishment. Days consisted of basic school instruction and long hours of industrial training. Ruth toiled as an apprentice tailor, making collars in a four-story shirt factory, which produced clothes for an independent contractor. Despite his austere surroundings, Ruth quickly settled into the structure of life at the industrial school, and he bonded with a number of the brothers who emerged as surrogates for his absentee parents. His real parents purportedly never visited him.
Baseball proved essential in Ruth's acclimation to his new habitat. Inspired by the Victorian philosophy that organized sports promote good habits and hearts, not to mention the very real necessity of funneling energy from the throngs of adolescent males, St. Mary's kept residents occupied with a never-ending regiment of athletics, especially baseball — a game played nearly year-round at the school. Each dormitory had its own ballyard, where nonstop competition took place after work and on weekends. For boys and their caretaker brothers alike, baseball provided the major antidote to the monotony and austerity of life at St. Mary's. Competition was intense, and the Xaverians, many of whom played alongside their charges, were fine coaches. Early on, young Ruth's natural abilities caught all eyes. He excelled at every position, including pitching, and he was a feared hitter. Soon he was playing with older boys and honing talents that would take him far beyond the confines of St. Mary's. The experience prepared him well for his career as a ballplayer, although less so for the challenging world he would face as a modern sports hero.
By 1913, the teenage Ruth competed on weekends with local amateur teams. Word spread of his prodigious talents. That year, Jack Dunn, owner and manager of the minor league Baltimore Orioles, signed Ruth to his team. Since the Babe was under age twenty-one, Dunn became his official guardian, perhaps foreshadowing for Ruth the paternalism of the baseball world that he would face for the rest of his life. With little experience outside St. Mary's School, and probably never having traveled outside Baltimore proper, Ruth boarded a train for Fayetteville, North Carolina. Dunn well understood Ruth's potential. "This fellow Ruth," he informed St. Mary's administrators, "is the greatest player who ever reported to a training camp."
By all accounts Ruth loved his new life, his newfound freedom, and his first taste of money. Yet he remained centered in his hometown and closely connected to St. Mary's, his only real home. Often he returned to his old stomping grounds to visit and play ball. Swarms of boys greeted him — his introduction to the hero-worshipping that followed him, for good and bad, the rest of his life.
In midsummer 1914 came a sudden shock. Struggling with competition from the Baltimore Terrapins, a newly founded Federal League team, Dunn sold Ruth and several other players to the Boston Red Sox. Ruth's salary would grow, and he was now poised to play major league baseball. Still, the hometown boy bristled at the prospect of leaving Baltimore. Not for the last time in his career, Ruth learned he would have no choice in the matter: he was under contract to Dunn, and Dunn had sold him. If he wished to continue playing baseball, it would be in Boston.
The "evil has grown to such proportions that the very life of the game is threatened"
Ruth's formative years in baseball, in fact, coincided with the most challenging times the national game has ever faced. Indeed, the period beginning around the time Ruth broke into professional baseball through to the end of the decade almost brought baseball to its knees. Longstanding threats — gambling, "rowdyism," and labor strife — resurfaced with vengeance. As reformers scrambled to contain the damage, Ruth, an emerging star, could not help but find himself caught up in the turmoil swirling around the game. This context is crucial to understanding why baseball later viewed Ruth both as a savior and a threat.
Those championing baseball in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries envisioned and promoted the game as a uniquely American, democratic sport embodying the best virtues of the young nation. In truth, gambling and the ancillary threat that players or umpires might be manipulated by gamblers afflicted professional baseball almost from its birth. In the 1870s, just as organized baseball emerged from its infancy, the first gambling scandal struck the game and the newly formed National League. "A mischievous and demoralizing element," according to sporting goods entrepreneur Albert Spalding, had infiltrated and corrupted the ranks of players. Low salaries, scanty job security, and exhausting schedules fed temptations. When revelations surfaced in 1877 that members of the Louisville Grays had thrown games, the league acted quickly to expel four suspects and shore up rules against gambling in ballparks.
Professional baseball worked to eradicate the problem. Reformers, in particular, pushed to rid ballparks of the ubiquitous presence of gamblers, some of whom had connections to the larger criminal world. Gambling, however, proved resilient. By the second decade of the twentieth century, it appeared more prevalent than ever. A Pittsburgh newspaper in 1912 charged that gamblers operated openly in major league ballparks around the country. Wagering represented an ongoing "nuisance and a menace to the integrity of the sport." So brazen were bettors, the newspaper reported, that on one notable occasion, two clergymen trying to enjoy an afternoon at a ballpark were forced to relocate themselves several times to escape exposure to "bookmakers and hustlers." Betting at New York's Polo Grounds was particularly omnipresent. The "example set by professionals became infectious," reported one paper, "and soon there was betting on a small scale all through the big stand." The small private security detail at the Polo Grounds focused much of its attention on pickpockets and drunks, leaving it no time to root out gamblers. Blatant gambling at other parks rivaled that at the Polo Grounds. Exiting Boston's Braves Park around 1913, a sportswriter watched scores of "bookies ... with bills spread through their fingers in real professional style to pay off after games." With gambling increasingly part of baseball culture, fretted one sportswriter, "Umpires and players will be tempted."
Indeed, reports of corruption swirled particularly around the annual World Series as the fall event became the nation's top sporting ritual. Rumors surfaced in 1913 when the Athletics and Braves played in that year's fall classic. Later, after losing the 1916 league championship to crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers, Giants manager John McGraw bitterly accused his players of "not doing their best," comments that "aroused more than just a breath of scandal to rest upon the heretofore carefully guarded virtuous sport." As concerns mounted, sportswriter Hugh Fullerton warned, "There is more gambling today in the United States than ever before; the business is better organized, the earnings of the gamblers greater and the odds against the players much heavier."
If the gambling amounted to a corrosive, shadowy menace potentially undermining the game, violence — rowdyism, as it was known — presented a more visible threat. Ballpark rowdyism — fights in the stands, attacks on umpires, assaults by players on fans, brawls between teams, scraps between players — like gambling, dated from the dawn of baseball. In fact the American League formed in 1901 in part out of an impulse by reformer Ban Johnson to curb rowdyism, especially violence against umpires. Still, the likes of Johnson made little headway stamping out the rowdyism that seemed woven into the game. "Brawling was common on the field and in the seats and baseball was regarded as a sport for low grade stags which no lady would be caught dead at," recalled sportswriter Westbrook Pegler of the game before the First World War.
A brief survey of violent episodes flaring during the 1913 season, the year before Babe Ruth began his professional career, more than affirms Pegler's assessment. Trouble began in 1913 before regular season play even started. As often proved the case, umbrage at an umpire's ruling sparked passions. Playing on the West Coast against the Los Angeles Angels, Chicago White Sox players grew agitated by the officiating. Taunts and threats built until the umpire sought police protection. It would hardly be the last time that season an umpire would feel physically threatened. At Ebbets Field on May 22, the visiting Pirates took a 1–0 lead over the Dodgers when it began to rain. Despite fan pressure to call the game, umpire Bill Klem resisted. Spectators then took the matter into their own hands: two thousand angry Brooklyn fans swarmed out of the bleachers and onto the field, refusing to vacate and effectively ending the game. In July, Chicago saw a similar rebellion when an altercation between Cubs manager Johnny Evers and an umpire turned into an all-out riot. Stirred up, four thousand fans poured from the stands of the Cubs' stadium in support of Evers. Police struggled to restore order.
Throughout his career, New York Giants manager John McGraw proved a particular magnet for violence, and 1913 was no exception. The pugnacious son of impoverished Irish immigrants, McGraw began his career in the 1890s with the Baltimore Orioles, a team renowned for rowdyism. As a player first and then manager, McGraw viewed intimidation and "judicious kicking" of umpires as legitimate tactics. McGraw's methods, however, often spiraled out of control. June 30, 1913, found McGraw's Giants jousting on hostile grounds: playing the Philadelphia Phillies in the City of Brotherly Love — a city noted even then for fanatical and sometimes violent fans. Throughout the game, McGraw swapped vicious insults with opposing players. After the game, while attempting to exit the claustrophobic Baker Bowl (home of the Phillies), McGraw was violently attacked from behind. His trademark face badly cut, McGraw struggled to regain his footing as thousands of fans surged from the stands to join what a reporter described as a "melee and a scene of wild disorder." The Giants blamed a Phillies pitcher, whom they had "rode" mercilessly during the game, for launching the preliminary attack.
When the Giants returned to Philadelphia later that summer, all parties anticipated trouble, and none were disappointed. During the game, Phillies' fans seated in a portion of the bleachers normally left unoccupied removed their jackets to create an allwhite background, aimed at hindering visibility when Giants hitters came to bat. When the reigning umpire ordered spectators to put their jackets on, predictably, fans impolitely declined. In desperation, the umpire called the game a forfeit — essentially dousing the fire with gasoline, and "20,000 indignant fans swarmed the field." Giants players frantically fled, but several were caught in a gauntlet of rioters. Later, the battle reignited at the North Philadelphia Train Station as the Giants attempted to catch a train out of town.
Not only did teams brawl with each other, with fans, and against umpires, but intra-team fights also broke out throughout 1913. Rivalries among McGraw's Giants resulted in "fisticuffs" between teammates after one game. Members of the St. Louis Browns likewise came to blows over a missed fly ball at New York's Polo Grounds. As Browns players struggled to separate the two brawlers, New York fans bolted onto the field, some seeking a better look at the fight, others joining the melee. Violence afflicted the minor leagues with even greater frequency than the majors. The Negro League likewise suffered its share of near-riots, including a May 20 fight between Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants and the visiting Cuban All-Stars, which spiraled into a brawl involving armed fans. Police struggled to bring the riot under control.
The rowdyism that plagued 1913 appears no worse than any other season in the early twentieth century. While no deaths were reported in the major leagues that year, fifteen young men reportedly died playing baseball in semipro and other leagues — ten struck fatally in the head by pitched balls. Increasingly the baseball establishment worried that the game's reputation for vice and violence would be a barrier to attracting, or even drive away, middle-class customers and their sizable disposable incomes.
Violence on the field and the mounting temptation of gambling reflected the often-grueling life of ballplayers. Meager compensation, the constant threat of injury, endless travel, and the denial of basic workplace rights all ate at players. Mirroring the great labor struggles of the time, players strove to assert some semblance of control over working conditions and compensation.
From the inception of major league baseball until the Marvin Miller era of the late 1960s, professional baseball officials fervently resisted player organization and preserved labor regulations that gave team management unique control over its employees. Central to that power was the reserve clause. Written into every major league contract beginning in 1887, the clause essentially bound players to teams and prohibited free agency by allowing employers automatically to renew contracts every year. Short of receiving an unconditional release from a contract, players could not negotiate with another team. Conversely, teams could unconditionally release players with a mere ten days' notice. Club owners naturally relished the firm control over their workforce provided by the reserve clause and the stability it afforded their enterprises. Many fans likewise valued the mechanism that tethered popular players to hometown teams. Some players even saw utility in a system that maintained a certain stability. Still, many seethed at the restraints a New York State Supreme Court judge in 1914 concluded amounted to a "species of quasi peonage unlawfully controlling and interfering with the personal freedom of the men employed."
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