will be in the car and will whisk Ruth to the Ascension Field at I and Tioga Streets.”
“The Ascension-Lit Brothers game is scheduled to start at six o’clock.”
“It is expected that all attendance records in independent ball will be broken. The proceeds of the game will be used to pay off the indebtedness of the Ascension Field.”
As Reverend Casey finished reading the article, he was not at all pleased.
“They only gave us two inches at the very bottom of page number twenty. We are underneath the article about some Swedish girl breaking a swimming record. I don’t think anyone is going to get to read this article,” he said.
I know that Reverend Casey was worried that not nearly as many people were going to show up as some people expected. He was hoping for a very high profile article in the morning paper to get people excited about the game. He shook his head in mild disgust, and folded the newspaper up and laid it on the floor of the car.
The ride to Shibe Park only took ten minutes, too quick to feel uncomfortable about not talking to Michael, especially since Reverend Casey had spent most of the trip reading the newspaper article. As we arrived at the stadium the reality of what was going on began to hit me. I was going to see a major league baseball game, with the greatest team in baseball. Not only that, I was going to see the great Babe Ruth play.
We parked the cars and began a two-block walk to the park. The game was not scheduled to begin until 3:15, but Reverend Casey had set up meetings with team officials prior to the game to make sure all the details had been worked out. His meeting was scheduled for twelve thirty so he walked into the Park as soon as we arrived.
“They want me to enter through the player’s entrance,” he said. “The rest of you wait out here until the meeting is over and then I’ll be back out to grab you.”
The meeting seemed to go on forever. I did not have a watch, but I heard one of the men say that it was almost two o’clock. Everyone in our group seemed nervous.
“This is going on too long, there must be something wrong,” one of the men said,
“If there were no problems Reverend Casey would have been out long ago,” another added.
“I am sure everything is fine.” Mr. O’Brien replied.
Outside the park, the fans were beginning to arrive for the game. A small crowd formed outside the player’s entrance to watch as the Yankee’s players arrived. The crowd would cheer and yell out the name of the players as they came to the gate. The first player I recognized was Bob Meusel, and then Aaron Ward. Then Herb Pennock, who was the winning pitcher for the Yankees in the second game of Monday’s double-header.
I had seen photographs of these players in the newspaper before but seeing them in person was an unbelievable thrill. Just then, I saw a big crowd forming at the corner of 21st and Lehigh Avenues. I heard yelling and the crowd was surging towards the gate where I was standing. It looked like a fight was breaking out, but I could not tell who was fighting. As the crowd surge moved closer to me, I began to become afraid that I would be right in the path of the combatants. It was still hard to make out what was happening as the noise level continued to grow. I could feel my heart racing as I looked to see where the other men in my group were, but they were watching the crowd moving towards them with fear showing in their eyes.
“Can you tell what’s going on?” Mr. O’Brien asked.
“I’m not sure,” replied Mr. Scanlon.
As the crowd pushed right up to where I stood, I was finally able to see what was happening. Standing five feet away from me was Babe Ruth himself, surrounded by about ten kids, most of them the same age as me.
He was so close I could reach out and touch him, but my arms and legs were frozen. I could not move or talk, I just starred at him. I wanted so badly to say something, but nothing came out. Just as he was about to move past me, he seemed to turn his head to the side and for a brief moment our eyes made contact. As he walked past me, he reached out and rubbed the hair on the top of my head.
“Hey kid!” he said, as he and the kids following him passed me by and moved towards the gate.
I watched him go up to the gate, still frozen and motionless. As he approached the entrance, the two attendants moved in to try to protect Babe from the crowd. They pushed the kids back to allow him enough room to enter through the turnstile.
Babe turned to the attendants and yelled, “Hey what’re doin’, they’re with me.”
The attendants both looked at Babe with a puzzled look.
“They can’t come in, they don’t have tickets,” one of the attendants said to Ruth.
“Well if they don’t go in, then I don’t go in. Now do you two want to explain to the Yankees why Babe Ruth didn’t get into the park today?” Babe said smiling at the two men.
The attendants looked at each other, not knowing what to say or what to do. About ten seconds passed without a word being spoken, all the kids walked through the gate, and the Babe waited for the last one to enter before he followed them into the park.
25
A moment passed, the Babe walked through the gate and disappeared into the player’s tunnel. I stood motionless. Did that really just happen? I thought that Babe Ruth just touched my hair, but did he really? I squeezed my hands tight into fists to make sure I could feel them, to be sure that I was awake and not dreaming. I looked around to try to get confirmation of what had happened from someone else, but I did not recognize anybody.
For a moment, I had forgotten that Johnny was not here with me, as I wanted to revel in what had just happened. There was nobody to share the experience with, and there would be no way to describe, the greatness of the moment when I would tell Johnny about it later. This could have been one of those moments in time that Johnny and I could talk about for the rest of our lives. We could be old men playing with our grandchildren and laugh about the time that Babe Ruth patted our heads. I wondered if Johnny would even believe me when I told him what had happened.
The crowd around the gate began to disperse as The Babe went inside. I walked back to the bench where everyone else in our group was still waiting. It looked like none of them moved at all during the commotion. I wanted to tell them what had just happened, how I stood right next to Ruth, and how he had touched me, but who would I tell? I did not really know any of these people, and surely did not want to share this moment with them. The anger I felt towards Johnny rose up again. How could he miss this? How much better this moment would have been if he were here to share it with me.
The hell with Johnny, I thought. I would tell him everything when I saw him later back at Boger Field. He would be sorry that he did not get to the church on time, and missed out on all this excitement.
I sat back on the bench and waited for Reverend Casey to return from his meeting. Five minutes after I sat back on the bench, Reverend Casey reappeared from inside the park. He walked out through the same gate that Babe Ruth had used to enter.
“Reverend Casey, what took you so long?” one of the men asked.
“I had to wait for Mr. Ruth, we couldn’t make any plans until he arrived,” Reverend Casey replied. “Mr. Ruth was fine with the arrangements we have made, he will be ready to leave as soon as the game ends.”
“Where will we meet him and how will we get him out of the stadium with the crowds all around?” Mr. O’Brien asked.
“The Philadelphia Police Department was at the meeting and they will help escort Mr. Ruth out after the game. They will also be escorting our automobiles back to the rectory building and then onto the game,” Reverend Casey answered.
Reverend Casey motioned for me to come over to him. Then he did the same to the others in our group, until we all stood in a circle around him.
“I have a letter from the owners of the Athletics that allows us to go in and watch the game,” Reverend Casey said. “We do not have actual seats so we have to stand off to the side and stay out of the way,” he continued.
He led the way up to where the attendants were
standing. We followed behind him in a single file line; I was close behind Reverend Casey.
As we approached the gate, I could hear the attendants still discussing the Ruth dilemma.
“I bet we get fired for letting all those kids in for free,” the first attendant said.
“We certainly would have been fired if we didn’t let Ruth in,” the second attendant responded. “Let’s face it; we really didn’t have much of a choice.”
Reverend Casey walked up to the attendant and handed him the letter. He read it and then handed it to his coworker.
“Look Reverend Casey, I know you can go in, but I don’t know about all these other people,” the attendant said, looking slightly confused.
“Maybe we should just open the gate and let everyone in today,” said the second attendant. “I don’t care, you all can go in and you can take a bunch of vagabonds off the street in with you,” the guard yelled in a sarcastic tone.
Reverend Casey did not say a word, he just walked right in and we all followed without even looking at the attendants. It felt as though we were breaking into a bank vault and someone was going to catch us at any moment. However, we were in, and nobody was chasing us.
Reverend Casey led us into a small room. It was the same room where he had just met with Ruth. The room had a heavy brown wooden table surrounded by six wood chairs. Some of the men sat down, while I stood at the back of the room and
Me, Johnny, and The Babe Page 21