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Authors: Glenn Stout
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second when he botched a pick-off throw, and the Red Sox took a 2â1 lead in the bottom of the inning, Ruth knocking in run number two with a hard single past Aâs first baseman George Burns.
Ruth pitched the rest of the game as if he didnât have a care in the world and Boston cruised to an easy 7â1 victory, one that barely stirred the crowd, which the Globe described as behaving âwith a sort of conservation of appreciation apparent.â In other words, they sat on their hands bored out of their minds.
If Ruth hadnât a care in the world, Harry Frazee had nothing but worry to contend with. Although he had acted boldly during the off-season, as had, to a lesser degree, owner Charles Comiskey of the White Sox, the rest of his brethren, in particular AL president Ban Johnson, were cowering before an uncertain future. In short, they were mucking everything up.
The previous December, when Frazee was acting boldly, baseball had announced it would proceed regardless of the war and play a full 154-game schedule. But they had since backtracked, cutting the season back to a scheduled 140 games. To someone like Frazee, who had acted with confidence, the loss of fourteen playing datesâseven at homeâhurt. Players were paid by the season, not by the game, and he had budgeted accordingly. Had he known that was going to take place, he may not have been quite so audacious. Now he was stuck.
And he was also stuck with the repressive presence of both Bostonâs Puritan past and its more Catholic present. At the time, weekday games started at 3:00 p.m. to accommodate professional men who could scoot out of the office early. Factory workers didnât have that luxury. They could generally only attend games on holidays and weekends, and in Boston, that meant Saturday: so-called blue laws were in place, and Sunday baseball was banned. That cost the Red Sox ten or twelve lucrative home dates a year. Only a few years before, that hadnât been a problem. Sunday baseball had once been banned almost everywhere, but that was changingâit was legal now in several American League cities and would be legal in New York in 1919, helping the Yankees to turn their first profit under co-owner Jacob Ruppert and his financial partner, Tillinghast LâHommedieu Huston, more often known as Cap Huston. Already, Frazeeâs Broadway shows had to shutter on Sundays (one of the reasons he was so eager to take his shows on the road to smaller cities with looser restrictions), but on Broadway at least, everyone had to play by the same rules.
He must have found it galling that the competition was allowed to profit when he was not. Indeed the inability to play baseball on Sunday would hamstring Bostonâs major league franchises for more than another decade. Whereas the Aâs, for instance, might pull in a crowd of 40,000 or 50,000 over a weekend, usually ten times what they would draw on weekdays, Frazee, at best, could count on only one large crowd, on Saturday. Increasingly, this left the Red Sox at a severe disadvantage, one that soon would become even more pronounced. They courted the Church and politicians with free tickets and season passes, but didnât get much for their generosity
To no oneâs surprise, the Red Sox got off to a quick start in 1918, opening the season with six straight wins at home including three against the Yankees before finally falling in the last game of their four-game series. Ruth picked up win number two on April 19, defeating Hank Thormahlen 9â5, and chipping in a single and an RBI, but the crowds remained disappointingâand the team was forced to play a doubleheader after a rainout the previous day. In his next start, Ruth picked up another hit, but fell 3â0 to the Aâs. For the first time all year, he had a complaint; he said his arm was sore.
Still, everything seemed to be going more or less according to plan as the Red Sox finished the month
Ruth pitched the rest of the game as if he didnât have a care in the world and Boston cruised to an easy 7â1 victory, one that barely stirred the crowd, which the Globe described as behaving âwith a sort of conservation of appreciation apparent.â In other words, they sat on their hands bored out of their minds.
If Ruth hadnât a care in the world, Harry Frazee had nothing but worry to contend with. Although he had acted boldly during the off-season, as had, to a lesser degree, owner Charles Comiskey of the White Sox, the rest of his brethren, in particular AL president Ban Johnson, were cowering before an uncertain future. In short, they were mucking everything up.
The previous December, when Frazee was acting boldly, baseball had announced it would proceed regardless of the war and play a full 154-game schedule. But they had since backtracked, cutting the season back to a scheduled 140 games. To someone like Frazee, who had acted with confidence, the loss of fourteen playing datesâseven at homeâhurt. Players were paid by the season, not by the game, and he had budgeted accordingly. Had he known that was going to take place, he may not have been quite so audacious. Now he was stuck.
And he was also stuck with the repressive presence of both Bostonâs Puritan past and its more Catholic present. At the time, weekday games started at 3:00 p.m. to accommodate professional men who could scoot out of the office early. Factory workers didnât have that luxury. They could generally only attend games on holidays and weekends, and in Boston, that meant Saturday: so-called blue laws were in place, and Sunday baseball was banned. That cost the Red Sox ten or twelve lucrative home dates a year. Only a few years before, that hadnât been a problem. Sunday baseball had once been banned almost everywhere, but that was changingâit was legal now in several American League cities and would be legal in New York in 1919, helping the Yankees to turn their first profit under co-owner Jacob Ruppert and his financial partner, Tillinghast LâHommedieu Huston, more often known as Cap Huston. Already, Frazeeâs Broadway shows had to shutter on Sundays (one of the reasons he was so eager to take his shows on the road to smaller cities with looser restrictions), but on Broadway at least, everyone had to play by the same rules.
He must have found it galling that the competition was allowed to profit when he was not. Indeed the inability to play baseball on Sunday would hamstring Bostonâs major league franchises for more than another decade. Whereas the Aâs, for instance, might pull in a crowd of 40,000 or 50,000 over a weekend, usually ten times what they would draw on weekdays, Frazee, at best, could count on only one large crowd, on Saturday. Increasingly, this left the Red Sox at a severe disadvantage, one that soon would become even more pronounced. They courted the Church and politicians with free tickets and season passes, but didnât get much for their generosity
To no oneâs surprise, the Red Sox got off to a quick start in 1918, opening the season with six straight wins at home including three against the Yankees before finally falling in the last game of their four-game series. Ruth picked up win number two on April 19, defeating Hank Thormahlen 9â5, and chipping in a single and an RBI, but the crowds remained disappointingâand the team was forced to play a doubleheader after a rainout the previous day. In his next start, Ruth picked up another hit, but fell 3â0 to the Aâs. For the first time all year, he had a complaint; he said his arm was sore.
Still, everything seemed to be going more or less according to plan as the Red Sox finished the month
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