Me, Johnny, and The Babe

by Mark Wirtshafter

Michael and this car ride would be forever etched into my memory.

  None of us knew what to expect when we arrived at the field.

  “I sure hope we got a decent turnout,” Reverend Casey said in a whisper to Mr. Deegan. “I’ll be terribly embarrassed if we get Mr. Ruth there and only a few hundred people show up. I don’t know what I would say to him after he was so kind to do this for the children.”

  “Please don’t worry Reverend; I am sure that our parishioners would not let you down.”

  “I hope not, but there is no way of knowing until we get there.”

  The fact that the streets near the rectory were deserted only added to his concern.

  When the car pulled to within a block of Boger Field, I could see that at least some people had come to see the game. We still had our police escort and our motorcade slowly turned onto Tioga Street. As we made the turn, I could see that the crowd seemed bigger than I had thought at first. As the cars drove up to the corner we were immediately surrounded by another group of Philadelphia police officers who had been waiting there to greet us.

  Once again, fans surrounded our cars. It was not until I squeezed my way out of the car that the magnitude of what was going on around me actually struck. There were people everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. Every seat in the grandstand was taken, and people were standing inside the enclosure and all along both sides of the field. Up the hill alongside the Pennsylvania railroad tracks thousands more were crowded. There were groups watching from all the mill windows in the buildings that stood along the sides of the field. Unbelievably people had even climbed up onto the rooftops of the surrounding houses, as every single rooftop appeared to be full.

  The scene astounded me. I had never seen any crowd as large as this. I did not know how many people there were, but I knew that there were a lot more people here than at the Yankee game at Shibe Park. There must have been at least ten thousand people watching, maybe more. There were waves of people moving in every direction.

  Reverend Casey smiled as he looked out at the crowd. I guess that he realized that not all the hard work to put this together had been in vain. It did not matter that there was no possible way that all these people could have paid for tickets. I am sure he felt a great sense of relief that the Babe would feel as though he did something good, and that certainly it would help the kids of Kensington. All that to do now was play a baseball game.

  29

  As we pushed our way through the crowd, I tried to spot Johnny. The police lined up on both sides of us, clearing a path as we walked. There were people everywhere, as we squeezed our way through. Not only did I not see Johnny, I did not see one face that I recognized. The crowd surged as we passed.

  By the time we reached the players bench, all the Ascension players were standing and waiting to greet the Babe. The first one in line was Bill Ferguson, the manager of the Ascension team. He grabbed Ruth’s hand and shook it so hard that I thought he might break it off. The other players introduced themselves to Ruth one at a time, and he took a moment to shake each one of their hands and repeated back their names.

  “What position would you like to play Mr. Ruth?” Bill Ferguson asked.

  “Well since you’re asking, it might be fun to play first base for a change,” the Babe answered.

  “Really, I assumed you would want to play the leftfield like you usually do,” Mr. Ferguson replied. “After all there is a whole bunch of action going on around first base.”

  “I don’t mind a little action,” Ruth said. “Playing baseball without action wouldn’t be much fun.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” said Mr. Ferguson.

  Ferguson walked slowly away from Ruth. He knew that first base was a much more difficult position than leftfield, and he could not believe that the Babe would want to have that many more balls to handle.

  Standing about ten feet away from Ruth when he told Ferguson, I could see the immediate confusion rush through his head. He grabbed a pencil and frantically starting making changes on his lineup card.

  The game started very quickly, everything had been set up by the time we arrived. They hurriedly announced the lineups to the crowd. For the Lit Brothers team the starting pitcher was their ace Lefty Gransbach and for Ascension, it was our best pitcher Bradley. Ruth was batting fourth, the cleanup spot for Ascension.

  Both teams went scoreless in the first inning. Ruth was the leadoff batter when Ascension came to bat in the bottom of the second. The game paused just as Ruth approached the plate. Reverend Casey and three of the other Ascension players came out to home plate to greet Ruth as he stepped up to bat.

  “Mr. Ruth,” Reverend Casey started, “what you are doing here today is one of the finest acts I have ever witnessed. The people of our parish and all the people in this neighborhood will never forget what you have done for us here today. The boys will think of you, each time they take this field to play and know that without your kindness this would not have been possible. I am certain that history will long remember the day that Babe Ruth came to Kensington.”

  Reverend Casey then presented The Babe with a diamond stickpin. Ruth was deeply moved by the gesture, tears started to well up in his eyes as he listened to Reverend Casey’s words.

  Lefty Gransbach wrapped up his warm up pitches and Ruth settled in to the batter’s box. Babe watched the first two pitches go by and they were both called balls, far out of the strike zone. As Lefty leaned back to throw the next pitch, I could see the Babe start leaning into the pitch. He swung with a mighty force, far greater than I had ever witnessed on the baseball field. The ball jumped off his bat and soared up into the heavens. I saw the right fielder on the Lit Brothers team, turn towards the crowd behind him, and he watched the ball soar way over his head. Unbelievably, the ball seemed to be still rising as it left the field.

  The people in the stands were stunned.

  “That ball must have gone over five hundred feet,” one of the Ascension players speculated from the bench.

  “Are you kidding me, that was at least six hundred feet,” another player chimed in. “If it was at Shibe Park that would have been a hundred feet out of the park.”

  “I think the umpire is calling it a ground rule double,” Bill Ferguson said. “We had to make that a ground rule since so many people were standing so close to the outfielders. We didn’t expect anyone to hit a ball three hundred feet over them.”

  “If they play baseball for the next thousand years that will be the longest double that will ever be hit,” said the third baseman Costello.

  Ruth did not complain, and went to second base as the umpire instructed. He was stranded there, as Gransbach got the next three hitters out in order.

  The game remained scoreless until the top of the fourth inning when Lit Brothers team scored two runs. Gransbach dominated the Ascension hitters. The next two times that Ruth came to bat he hit the ball hard, once a mile straight up in the air and the other time down into the ground. Both times a Lit Brothers player was there to get him out.

  When Ruth went out onto the field at the beginning of the eight inning, he took a baseball with him and ran over to left field, throwing it out to one of the kids standing over the fence. When he took the field for the ninth inning, he took two more balls out with him and threw them to other youngsters that were watching the game. In the ninth, he also carried a bat out into left field with him. He grabbed the bat off the ground and began hitting balls over the wall to people who were scrambling to grab the souvenirs. The fans were enjoying every minute of it. The crowd loved Ruth and he certainly seemed to love them back. To watch his spirited interaction with the crowd was quite moving.

  He could have showed up and did the very minimum, and he would have been hailed as a hero. There he was playing the game with the same intensity he did in the major league games, and smiling through each inning.

  During the fifth inning, Reverend Casey asked the Babe if he would mind signing a few baseballs.

  “W
ould you be kind enough to sign these baseballs Mr. Ruth?” the Reverend asked. “We would like to sell them to the fans and help raise a bit more money to pay for the field.”

  “Sure father, I’ll sign as many as you got,” Ruth replied.

  He handed him a big box of new baseballs and Ruth spent the whole bottom of the fifth inning sitting on the bench signing each one. Reverend Casey then took the balls out to a stand where they sold for five dollars each.

  Finally, it was the bottom of the ninth inning. The score was still two to zero with Lit Brothers still ahead. Ruth came to bat with one out and nobody on base. Gransbach had gotten Ruth out the last two times and it seemed that he was un-hittable at this point in the game. Gransbach concentrated as he looked down towards his catcher Barger. Ruth dug his back foot into the dirt and waited for the pitch.

  Ruth swung at the first pitch and the ball again went a mile high in the direction of the left fielder Marshall. I tried to find the ball in the sky, but it was out of sight. Apparently, Marshall was having the same problem, as he franticly searched the sky for the ball. At the very last moment, he must have spotted it, but he had to lunge for the ball and it popped out of his glove. Ruth had run full speed and was able to get all the way to second base on the play. It was ruled an error on Marshall.

  The next hitter was the catcher Charlie White.