Pinstripe Empire

by Marty Appel

  Ruth scholar Bill Jenkinson believes there were many Ruth shots down the foul line that entered the bleachers fair but landed in foul territory, and without the aid of a high foul pole were often mistaken by the umpires. At least at the Polo Grounds, the tops of the foul poles were “extended” by having a rope drawn from them to the second deck. Jenkinson thinks as many as 80 would have met this fate; obviously some were indeed foul, but clearly a great many were lost to this oddity. Nevertheless Ruth loved the Yankees, and the Yankees loved Ruth.

  Yankee Stadium was open for business.

  Chapter Ten

  THE ’23 YANKEES ADDED YET ANOTHER top Boston pitcher before the season began, obtaining Herb Pennock for three bench players. It was another steal, and it gave the Yanks’ starting rotation a left-hander to augment the right-handed diet of Shawkey (16–11) Hoyt (17–9), Bush (19–15), and Jones (21–8). Mays’s star was fading, as he won just five games in his final season with the team. Of these six pitchers, all but Shawkey had come to New York from Boston.

  Pennock was twenty-nine and yet was a ten-year veteran, having come up as an eighteen-year-old without any minor league experience when he joined the Athletics in 1912. He came from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, close enough to be a “hometown” player for the Athletics. Claimed on waivers by Boston in 1915, he was 62–59 with the Red Sox and had gone 10–17 in 1922. No one thought of him as an elite pitcher.

  But in his first year with the Yankees, he led the American League in winning percentage with a 19–6 mark.

  The gentlemanly Pennock was a perceptive and devoted student of the game, even serving as an unofficial hitting coach for the Yankees. He regularly invited players to accompany him and his treasured hounds in hunting silver foxes on his estate, a very upscale pastime for a ballplayer. His nickname was “the Squire of Kennett Square.”

  Baseball people loved Pennock, who later had a five-year career as general manager of the Phillies at the time Jackie Robinson broke in. There, his reputation was somewhat sullied as he allegedly told Branch Rickey that his Phillies would not take the field if Robinson was playing. Jackie played; the Phillies took the field; the crisis passed. At his passing less than a year later, it was his Yankee years that were remembered, and with great fondness. His Robinson misstep would attain greater notoriety some years later when historians looked back on the burdens of Jackie’s entrance into the major leagues.

  AFTER THE DRAMA and excitement of opening day, the second game of the season more or less set the tone for the year: a Yankee win before a reported ten thousand fans. “Looking at the crowd and then at the wide expanse of vacant seats, you might have guessed that 3,000 or 4,000 were there,” reported the Times.

  “All the clamor and color of opening day were only memories … the umpires had to throw out the first ball themselves. The American flag was pulled up by as humble a personage as the groundkeeper and there was no band to play the national anthem while the flag was going up. The only parade was the one that the Yanks staged around the bases in the sixth.”

  Indeed, for the balance of the season, the team averaged less than thirteen thousand per date (including two September doubleheaders that drew an estimated 110,000) and barely topped a million for the year—1,026,134. And while they were the only team in baseball to draw a million, it was a drop of some two hundred thousand from the last year in the Polo Grounds. They wouldn’t get back to their peak Polo Grounds attendance until 1946. Perhaps that extra five minutes on the subway into the Bronx was more daunting than imagined. But Ruppert expressed no disappointment, at least not publicly.

  For those who wondered why the president of the United States hadn’t chosen to attend opening day: Not to worry, Warren Harding attended a week later, Tuesday, April 24, and had a special box designed for him with presidential bunting draped over the front. He saw Sam Jones beat Washington 4–0. And that may have been why he didn’t attend opening day—he was waiting for the Senators to play.

  ALTHOUGH HUSTON-RUPPERT DISAGREEMENTS were minor, Ruppert was too gentlemanly to ever let them detract from the team or become overtly obstructive. Still, with Huston departing the scene on May 24, a sort of peace was felt in the organization. It was an era of good feeling. It was an era of relief for Miller Huggins.

  (Dan Daniel later reported that Ruppert, in the interest of peace, was finally prepared to give in to Huston’s desire for Wilbert Robinson. But Robinson had no desire to step into that situation and instead used the offer to get a new five-year deal to manage Brooklyn.)

  The team was good and they knew it. And as the Reach Guide reported, “The team changed completely from a tempestuous go-as-you-please mob of stars to a harmonious and well disciplined team which played the game with excellent system and was entirely amenable to discipline. One of the big factors in the complete reversal of Yankees team form was Babe Ruth who amply made good on his promises of reform … [after his] inadequate [1922] World Series showing.”

  The Yankees took over first place on May 5 and led the rest of the way. They finished sixteen games ahead of the Tigers and won fifty-two of their seventy-six road games.

  At Yankee Stadium on June 15, the Yanks beat the Browns 10–0, and in the ninth inning, Huggins sent a rookie in to play first base for Pipp. Thus Lou Gehrig, four days shy of his twentieth birthday, made his major league debut, recording a putout but not going to bat. Three days later, he pinch-hit for Ward in the ninth, and, after hitting a hard foul down the first-base line, struck out. No one could realize the significance of his arrival. The first signing of note by scout Paul Krichell, he would just play a bit in ’23: 13 games, 26 at-bats, a homer, and nine RBI.

  The Paris-born Krichell, forty, who had caught two seasons for the Browns, had watched Gehrig play for Columbia in a game at Rutgers. According to Gehrig biographer Frank Graham, he told Ed Barrow, “I saw another Ruth today.”

  Krichell followed Gehrig to a game against Penn on the Columbia campus. There, “Lou hit a ball out of South Field with such force that it cleared 116th Street, the northern boundary of the field, and struck on the steps of the library across the street.

  “ ‘I was right,’ [Krichell] yelled exultantly over the telephone to Barrow after the game. ‘He’s another Ruth!!’ “

  He was Ruth without drama, Ruth without nightlife, Ruth without scandal. He lived with his parents. He said things like “swell” and “gosh.” He had muscles to spare when players did no weight training and tended to be lean and lithe. He could read and write in German. Lou Gehrig would become the idol of every boy who loved baseball for his quiet presence, clean standards, and heroic deeds. He was polite and humble. He would park his car three blocks from Yankee Stadium to avoid notice. Graham would eventually write Lou Gehrig: A Quiet Hero, and if you were a boy growing up and loving baseball in the forties or fifties, you read it. Many people became Yankee fans because of what Lou Gehrig meant to the Yankees.

  Wrote Paul Gallico, “There is no greater inspiration to any American boy than Lou Gehrig. For if this awkward, inept, and downright clumsy player that I knew in the beginning could through sheer drive and determination turn himself into the finest first-base-covering machine in all baseball, then nothing is impossible to any man or boy in the country.”

  He did, of course, play in the shadow of the Babe, but it wasn’t as though he competed for attention. The less he had the happier he was. Ruth and Gehrig could never be close friends—they had little in common. But together they were the greatest one-two punch a baseball lineup would ever see.

  ON SEPTEMBER 4 in Philadelphia, Sam Jones hurled the third no-hitter in Yankee history, beating the A’s 2–0 in eighty-three minutes and allowing just a first-inning walk.

  Jones then pitched the pennant clincher on September 15, beating Chicago 10–4. There was still more in the tank, though; on September 28, the Yanks recorded a team record 30 hits in beating Boston 24–4, scoring 11 runs in the sixth inning.

  RUTH HIT A club record .393 for the season, w
ith his home run output at 41. Another four hits would have put him at .400. The reduced number of home runs had a certain appeal to the old-time purists, who saw him as a more complete player. He was unanimously elected winner of the League Award, which predated the baseball writers’ Most Valuable Player Award that began in 1931. It was the only MVP award he ever won, since the rules were that a player couldn’t win it twice. It was chosen by a vote of the Trophy Committee, a single writer in each American League city, eight in all.

  There was to be a $100,000 monument erected in East Potomac Park in Washington on which the winning player—only for the American League—would have his name inscribed each year. The player himself would receive a replica trophy and a medal. But by 1924 the plan was scrapped; it required congressional approval and spending, and never found enough votes to pass.

  FOR THE THIRD year in a row, the Yankees and the Giants would meet in the World Series, this time in their own respective ballparks across the Harlem River. Game one, the first World Series game in Yankee Stadium, drew 55,307 fans—the biggest crowd since opening day. American flags flew proudly, draping the three decks. (In later years, the championship pennants would be hung over the frieze at the annual Old-Timers’ Day.) Sadly, the infield grass was a dried-out yellow, having been destroyed by a rodeo that had played there in August.

  Would Ruth hit the first World Series home run in Yankee Stadium? No, that honor, with great irony, would fall to the aging reserve outfielder Casey Stengel, a McGraw favorite. Stengel, thirty-three, was in his twelfth year and had played just 75 games in the regular season. But McGraw had him batting sixth and playing center field, and with the score 4–4 in the ninth, Casey lined a changeup from Joe Bush deep to left center. As Witt and Meusel chased it down, ol’ Casey put it into high gear and headed around the bases. As he rounded second, his shoe seemed to fly off his foot. Now running with a hobble to slow him down even more, he rounded third and headed for home as Meusel’s throw came in. “You could hear him yelling, ‘Go Casey, go, go go, Casey, go,” said third baseman Joe Dugan. “It was the damnedest thing.”

  He eluded Schang’s tag and scored. The first World Series home run in Yankee Stadium was an inside-the-park job, and it was hit by perhaps the slowest man on the field that day, the man who would one day manage the Yankees in ten World Series. The Giants won, 5–4, on a play that was the stuff of legend.

  “The warped old legs, twisted and bent by many a year of baseball campaigns, just barely held out under Casey Stengel until he reached the plate, running his home run home,” wrote Damon Runyon in the New York American. “Then they collapsed.”

  The “lost shoe” home run became part of Casey folklore. Actually, when his teammates helped him up after his ferocious slide, they asked him why he was hobbling so as he ran. “I lost a shoe at second base,” he said.

  “Lost a shoe?” said Hank Gowdy. “How many were you wearing?”

  It turned out it wasn’t exactly a shoe he lost, but a sponge inside the shoe to protect a blister.

  Game two shifted to the Polo Grounds, itself nicely upgraded by Stoneham. Here at his favorite park, it was Ruth’s turn to shine. He became the third player in history to belt two home runs in a World Series game, lifting Pennock and the Yanks to a 4–2 win, evening the Series and ending a streak of eight straight Giant World Series wins (plus a tie).

  In the third game, back at Yankee Stadium, it was Stengel again, this time hitting a home run into the right-field bleachers that would be all the Giants needed in a 1–0 win over Jones. Responding to catcalls from the Yankee fans, Casey thumbed his nose at them as he rounded the bases. To the Yankee players, he blew a kiss. Ruppert thought he should be fined or suspended for such behavior. Landis said, “A fellow who wins two games with home runs may feel a little playful, especially if he’s a Stengel.”

  Shawkey, who vexingly liked to count to one hundred before each pitch, won game four with relief from Pennock. Bush, his forkball dancing, won game five with a three-hitter; game six, at the Polo Grounds on October 15, would be the possible clincher as Pennock faced Art Nehf. The Giants led 4–1 after seven. But in the eighth the Yanks loaded the bases with the top of the order coming up. Here Huggins sent Bush to hit for Witt, and he drew a walk to make it 4–2. Rosy Ryan relieved Nehf and walked Dugan to make it 4–3 as Ruth came to bat. The crowd was all standing, but Ryan reached back and struck out the Bambino—probably the biggest moment of his career.

  Unfortunately for Rosy, Meusel then delivered a two-run single, with a third run scoring on a Giants error. Five runs were in, and the Yankees led 6–4. For one moment, Ryan was on top of the world. Then he handed the Yanks the lead. That’s baseball.

  The last six outs would be the responsibility of Jones. He stopped the Giants in the eighth, and in the ninth, with 34,172 holding their breath on each pitch, he retired George Kelly on a pop-up and Frank Snyder on a comebacker. Jack Bentley, an extraordinarily good-hitting pitcher, was all that stood between the Yankees and their first world championship. He would pinch-hit for Ryan.

  Bentley hit a grounder to second. Ward, who batted .417 in the Series, fielded it and threw to Pipp for the final out. Pipp jumped in the air. In their twenty-first season, the Yankees were the world champions at last.

  The Yankees ran, jumped, and skipped across the outfield to their newly built locker room, up the stairs in deep center field. Ruth was the first to start hugging Meusel, pulling him, tugging at him, shouting in his ear.

  Attention shifted to Huggins. Everyone was pumping his hand, congratulating him over and over again. “This is the day, boys, this is the day!” Hug shouted.

  Ruth and Bush jumped on the trainer’s table and asked the players to gather around. Ruth spoke. “Boys, we’ve won the world championship and we owe a lot of the accomplishment to the guiding hand of Mr. Huggins. He has done a great job this year in managing the team, and we want to present you with this ring in token of the esteem in which we hold you.”

  Yes, somehow the Babe had arranged for a diamond ring to be “on hand” in case of victory. Huggins was lifted on the shoulders of his players, and the Yanks shouted, “Speech! Speech!”

  “Fellows,” Huggins said, “it is a fine thing to win the American League pennant; it is still finer to go out and win the world’s championship, but this ring which you have given me has brought me more real happiness than any of the victories we have won on the diamond. It is the association with such players as you, players who go on fighting in the face of odds and never give up, that brings the most happiness.

  “We have had our little arguments during the season, but they were not real hard feelings; they only appeared so at the time. Underneath it all and when it is all over there can’t help but be a great friendship between all of us who have fought the greatest battle of all and come out on top. This token of your friendship is one that I shall always treasure and I want to thank you all for the loyal spirit in which it is given.”

  “Three cheers for Huggins!” shouted the players. “Hip-hip hooray!”

  “It’s the happiest day of my life,” said Ruppert to Commissioner Landis, informing him that there would be another celebration that very evening at the Hotel Commodore.

  The joy of victory would be increased a day later when the winner’s share was announced: $6,143 per man. For many it was almost a season’s salary. In addition, each player received a gold watch.

  The world champion New York Yankees. It would be spoken many times over the course of history, but this day, October 15, 1923, was the first.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE 1924 ROSTER WAS ESSENTIALLY unchanged, although Mays was presumed finished. He was sold to Cincinnati and he went out and won 20 games for the Reds, and then 19 two seasons later. He would forever be an enigma.

  The new center fielder was supposed to be Earle Combs, who didn’t have a great throwing arm but had batted .380 at Louisville the year before and looked ready to replace an aging Witt in the outfield. But Combs, h
itting .412, broke his leg sliding home on June 15, the kind of injury from which some players never fully recover. Witt went back to center.

  A six-foot product of Kentucky, Combs would resume play a year later and do just fine. After being discovered in an industrial league, he had played two minor league seasons for manager Joe McCarthy in Louisville. Sold to the Yankees, he became the first in a long line of great Yankee center fielders, a stretch of baseball history that would make center field of Yankee Stadium the most hallowed ground in all of baseball. The bleacher fans came to love him; in 1928, they contributed their pennies, nickels, and dimes to purchase an engraved watch for him, which he treasured his whole life.

  He also hit leadoff, a strategic breakthrough by Huggins, since the lead-off man was typically under five foot ten and strictly a singles hitter.

  Two days before Combs went down, the Yanks got into a massive brawl in Detroit when the Tigers’ Bert Cole threw at Ruth’s head, and then hit Meusel in the ribs. Meusel went after player-manager Cobb with his bat as thousands of fans stormed the field, resulting in a forfeit victory for the Yanks. It was thought to be a rallying moment and they were tied for first after a win at Chicago on September 15, but ultimately they couldn’t catch up to Washington, who won their first pennant by two games. On that team was Goose Goslin, whose lifetime 32 homers at Yankee Stadium were the most ever by an opposing player. For owner Clark Griffith, it was a long-awaited triumph, and for the “Boy Manager” Bucky Harris, twenty-seven, a terrific accomplishment. Fans across the country were thrilled that the great Walter Johnson would at last get to a World Series.

  Pennock, 21–9, was the Yanks’ leading pitcher, while Ruth hit .378 for his only batting championship, adding 46 homers and 142 RBI. The Yankees had managed a strong season; it was just the Senators’ turn.