Read Online The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Leigh Montville
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Shortstop Jack Barry, when he came to the team a year later, would say the words “Big Baboon” sotto voce every day during team meetings. Big Baboon. Big Baboon. Big Baboon. This only stopped when Ruth, tears in his eyes, stood and challenged whoever had said it to step up and fight. Barry never moved.
“I felt sorry for the kid,” outfielder Harry Hooper said. “I went up to Barry afterward and told him that I knew it was him. I said if he didn’t stop it, I would tell the kid who was doing it.”
Ruth lived in a rooming house on Batavia Street and had to find his own friends and entertainment. He found the waitress at Landers Coffee Shop. Her name was Helen Woodford, and the fog settles in a bit around her. She lived in South Boston, was born in East Boston, maybe had lived for a while in Meredith, New Hampshire, and her parents were from Newfoundland. Or maybe Galveston, Texas. She was pretty and available. In the long tradition of lonely young men in faraway towns and bored waitresses looking for adventure, the baseball player and the South Boston girl became a couple.
“He didn’t drink when he came to Boston,” Hooper said. “And I don’t think he’d ever been with a woman. Once he found out about it, though, he became a bear.”
On July 30, 1914, an important event happened in Chicago. At the American League offices, Red Sox owner Joe Lannin made another purchase, picking up the Providence franchise in the International League for $75,000. Ruth had a place to go. He pitched and won a couple of exhibition games in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire, for the Red Sox at the start of August, his first action in almost a month, and on August 18 he finally cleared waivers and reported to the Providence Grays, also known as the Clamdiggers.
He wasn’t excited about the change, especially with Helen Woodford in his social plans, but Providence was the perfect place for him. He not only returned to work but returned to tons of work. The Clamdiggers were in a chase for the pennant, and he soon was pitching every third or fourth day. In his first start, 12,000 people overflowing the stands at Melrose Park, he pitched nine innings and helped win his own game with a triple in the bottom of the ninth that traveled so far that “a thousand straw hats were lost in the wild demonstration of joy that signalized the longest hit ever made at the ball park,” according to the
Providence Journal.
In six weeks he won nine games, lost three. In one stretch he pitched four games in eight days. He was 12-for-40 at the plate, a .300 average. He hit his first professional home run in Toronto, a shot that went over the right-field fence at Hanlan’s Point Stadium and landed in Lake Ontario. The Grays/Clamdiggers took the International League pennant and finished with an exhibition against the Chicago Cubs at Rocky Point Park in Warwick, Rhode Island. Ruth pitched a complete game, an 8–7 win, and hit a home run that landed this time in Narragansett Bay. A small boy fell into the water trying to retrieve the ball.
And then the Babe went back to Boston.
The city was afire with baseball interest, but that interest did not involve the Red Sox. The Boston Braves, the other team in the city, were in the midst of pulling off the greatest comeback in baseball history. Losers of 18 of their first 22 games, in last place on July 4, they now were running away with the National League pennant. Their home games had been switched, with Red Sox owner Lannin’s consent, to the newer Fenway Park with its greater capacity, and the team was known as “the Miracle Braves.”
Ruth rejoined the Red Sox in the play-it-out stage, the A’s already champs by a wide margin, the Red Sox locked into second. He pitched two games in the last week, winning one, losing the other, and was done. It had been quite a year.
The boy who had left the closed environment of St. Mary’s School on March 2, 1914, to take his first train
“I felt sorry for the kid,” outfielder Harry Hooper said. “I went up to Barry afterward and told him that I knew it was him. I said if he didn’t stop it, I would tell the kid who was doing it.”
Ruth lived in a rooming house on Batavia Street and had to find his own friends and entertainment. He found the waitress at Landers Coffee Shop. Her name was Helen Woodford, and the fog settles in a bit around her. She lived in South Boston, was born in East Boston, maybe had lived for a while in Meredith, New Hampshire, and her parents were from Newfoundland. Or maybe Galveston, Texas. She was pretty and available. In the long tradition of lonely young men in faraway towns and bored waitresses looking for adventure, the baseball player and the South Boston girl became a couple.
“He didn’t drink when he came to Boston,” Hooper said. “And I don’t think he’d ever been with a woman. Once he found out about it, though, he became a bear.”
On July 30, 1914, an important event happened in Chicago. At the American League offices, Red Sox owner Joe Lannin made another purchase, picking up the Providence franchise in the International League for $75,000. Ruth had a place to go. He pitched and won a couple of exhibition games in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire, for the Red Sox at the start of August, his first action in almost a month, and on August 18 he finally cleared waivers and reported to the Providence Grays, also known as the Clamdiggers.
He wasn’t excited about the change, especially with Helen Woodford in his social plans, but Providence was the perfect place for him. He not only returned to work but returned to tons of work. The Clamdiggers were in a chase for the pennant, and he soon was pitching every third or fourth day. In his first start, 12,000 people overflowing the stands at Melrose Park, he pitched nine innings and helped win his own game with a triple in the bottom of the ninth that traveled so far that “a thousand straw hats were lost in the wild demonstration of joy that signalized the longest hit ever made at the ball park,” according to the
Providence Journal.
In six weeks he won nine games, lost three. In one stretch he pitched four games in eight days. He was 12-for-40 at the plate, a .300 average. He hit his first professional home run in Toronto, a shot that went over the right-field fence at Hanlan’s Point Stadium and landed in Lake Ontario. The Grays/Clamdiggers took the International League pennant and finished with an exhibition against the Chicago Cubs at Rocky Point Park in Warwick, Rhode Island. Ruth pitched a complete game, an 8–7 win, and hit a home run that landed this time in Narragansett Bay. A small boy fell into the water trying to retrieve the ball.
And then the Babe went back to Boston.
The city was afire with baseball interest, but that interest did not involve the Red Sox. The Boston Braves, the other team in the city, were in the midst of pulling off the greatest comeback in baseball history. Losers of 18 of their first 22 games, in last place on July 4, they now were running away with the National League pennant. Their home games had been switched, with Red Sox owner Lannin’s consent, to the newer Fenway Park with its greater capacity, and the team was known as “the Miracle Braves.”
Ruth rejoined the Red Sox in the play-it-out stage, the A’s already champs by a wide margin, the Red Sox locked into second. He pitched two games in the last week, winning one, losing the other, and was done. It had been quite a year.
The boy who had left the closed environment of St. Mary’s School on March 2, 1914, to take his first train
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