The Babe Ruth Deception
Page 24
“So we’ll stay here. We don’t hold hands in public, touch each other, things that might rile people up. But mostly we feel safe. Safer than New York. It’s hard on Violet and Eliza. They’re not used to it.”
“We’ll make it work, Father,” Violet said. Fraser closed his eyes for a second. He couldn’t find his voice.
Joshua, intent on opening another bottle of champagne, said, “Eliza has told us her Babe Ruth stories.” So, it was to be first names, “Eliza” and “Jamie.” Fraser supposed he could get used to it. “But you must have some Babe Ruth stories of your own now.”
Fraser smiled as he reached his glass out for a refill. “Indeed. Indeed I do.”
Author’s Note
Any history writer must take a deep breath before straying into the field of baseball history, where meticulous record keeping dwells alongside festering prejudices, massive legends, and scores that cry out to be settled. The challenges are even more pronounced when the subject is Babe Ruth, the greatest legendary figure of the game. Let me start with the records.
I have tried to follow faithfully the facts we know about the major league games, the players, and the manager portrayed in The Babe Ruth Deception. Both the box scores and play-by-play accounts of the 1920 and 1921 World Series are available online at www.baseball-reference.com. That Web site also has box scores (though not play-by-play accounts) for regular season games during those seasons. Plus, you can watch all of Babe Ruth’s 1920 feature film, Headin’ Home, at www.archive.org or www.youtube.com. It’s a wonderful opportunity to see the Babe when he was young (twenty-four) and vigorous, not the older, potbellied fellow more often depicted tiptoeing around the bases after a late-career home run. Yes, Babe did film the movie in Haverstraw, New York, on mornings during the 1920 season and then had to dash down to the Polo Grounds for 3 PM game times, sometimes taking the field with his mascara still on. As an actor, the Babe was a great home-run hitter. Babe’s injury, courage, and ultimate failure in the 1921 World Series are all true.
Far more murky is the question whether gamblers “fixed” the 1918 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Babe’s Boston Red Sox. Eddie Cicotte—one of the infamous Black Sox players banned from baseball for fixing the 1919 Series—thought they did, and you can read his statement online at the Web site of the Chicago History Museum. Baseball historians still argue over Cicotte’s claim. Sean Deveney’s The Original Curse is inclined to believe it, while Allan Wood’s Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox finds the evidence suggestive but not conclusive. In 2011, baseball historian John Thorn told the New York Times that he thought it likely that the 1918 Series was rigged by gamblers. When I sifted the known facts, I concluded the allegation was fair game for a writer of historical fiction, though The Babe Ruth Deception doesn’t pretend to settle the question.
Arnold Rothstein, gambling kingpin and all-around force of darkness in America in 1920, is examined thoroughly in David Pietrusza’s Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. Fans of the television series Boardwalk Empire will remember him from that program. I did not have to invent Abe Attell, “the Little Hebrew,” who was featherweight champion of the world from 1906 to 1912. After his boxing career, Attell fell into show business and gambling. He actually was a major investor in Babe Ruth’s feature movie, Headin’ Home (I couldn’t make that up!), and is reputed to have been the man who delivered the bribe money to the White Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series. He was indicted with the Black Sox players, but the Chicago trial judge threw out the charges against him.
The Wall Street bombing at J. P. Morgan Bank in September 1920 killed forty people and wounded more than two hundred. Though widely attributed to radical or anarchist groups, it was never solved. Visitors to downtown Manhattan can still see some of the damage the bomb did to the Morgan building. A full treatment of the bombing appears in Beverly Gage’s The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror. There are many examinations of Prohibition, America’s failed experiment in social virtue. A good one is Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
When I grew weary of book and online research, I turned for ideas and information to my friend and neighbor Paul Dickson, who has written authoritatively on baseball history, on all matters involving alcoholic beverages, and on dozens of other subjects. Insightful comments on an early draft of the manuscript came from Ron Liebman and Gerry Hogan, friends and outstanding writers. Moral support and morale boosting came from the monthly lunches of the Hamlet Group. You know who you are.
This is my third novel with Kensington Books, which has brought me under the wise care of editor John Scognamiglio and publicist Vida Engstrand. More excellent good fortune. Great thanks to my master agent, Will Lippincott, who has willingly ventured with me into the thickets of fiction publishing.
My greatest debt, as ever, remains to Nancy, my love of so many years.