"Joe DiMaggio's tete-a-tetes with Marilyn Monroe prove he's still got a great batting eye- he doesn't miss many curves."
-Earl Wilson in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, January 1953)
"Every winter it is the custom of the publicity department of the Yankees to send out questionnaires to the players. They are asked to answer a number of queries, one of which is, 'Who is your baseball model, and which player do you admire the most?'
Over the past five years 90 per cent of the answers to this question have been Joe DiMaggio.
Joe's teammates stressed his grace, his pride, his power, his speed. They emphasized his aggressiveness, his high quality as a team player, his effortlessness, superlative skill.
As a judge of a fly ball, Guiseppe, in his heyday, was in a class by himself. I will never forget that catch he made years ago, to the chagrin of Hank Greenberg. It happened in the Stadium. Hank, with the Tigers, aimed for the center field bleachers, into which no one has yet been able to drive a baseball. The drive barely fell short, and became involved with the center field flagpole. DiMaggio 'had it all the way,' in the argot of the diamond, and made one of the most amazing catches it has been my good fortune to see.
During the 1934 season, Joe went through a particularly wearing Sunday double-header in San Francisco. He felt like going home and into bed. But there was a family dinner at a sister's home, and Joe just had to be there.
The fatigued outfielder got into a jitney bus at the Seals Stadium, and soon found himself sitting in a very cramped position in an overcrowded vehicle. When Joe reached his destination, he stepped to the curb on a leg which had become numb. The leg buckled under him, the knee was injured, and Outfielder Joe DiMaggio found himself a casualty.
The major league fraternity showed reduced interest in Joe. The word got around that his knee injury was chronic. With no decent offers for him, DiMaggio found himself detoured from his major league objective. Back he went into Coast League competition in 1935.
Joe played in 172 games that year, hit .398. The late Bill Essick and Joe Devine had developed a fresh interest in Guiseppe. They were working for Edward G. Barrow, general manager of the Yankees, and told him that they believed that DiMaggio's knee was responding to treatment. Barrow obtained permission from Owner Charley Graham of San Francisco to submit that knee to examination by a Los Angeles specialist.
'That leg should not hamper Joe's career,' Essick and Devine were told.
Barrow drove a hard bargain with Graham. He obtained DiMaggio for $25,000 in cash, and five players. One of these, Dr. Edward Farrell, now a flourishing dentist in New Jersey, refused to go the Seals, and retired from baseball. Barrow had to shell out another five grand to make up for Farrell.
No sooner had the Yankees closed the deal for Joe than they were besieged with offers for him from other major league clubs. I was with Barrow in the Yankee offices one afternoon when the late Eddie Collins, of the Red Sox, called Cousin Ed over the telephone and tried to land Joe for $55,000. 'Make that $155,000 and you still get nowhere,' Barrow told Eddie.
Had the Red Sox obtained Joe DiMaggio, with Ted Williams to follow, the pennant situation in the American League certainly would have been changed. As it was, the coming of Guiseppe to the Stadium enabled the New York club and Joe McCarthy to set an American League record, and match John J. McGraw's record with the 1921-24 Giants, by winning four consecutive pennants. Marse Joe bettered Mac's showing by hanging a world championship onto each of those four league titles."
-Dan Daniel, New York World-Telegram and Sun (Baseball's Greatest Lineup, Baseball Digest, February 1953)
"Hollywood wags report Joe DiMaggio purchased Marilyn Monroe a 'baseball gown.' It shows a lot of curves, has a diamond back and a grandstand view in front!"
-Irv Kupcinet in the Chicago Times (Baseball Digest, May 1953)
DISENCHANTMENT
"Junior Standish, a Latin Quarter beauty, was dated by Joe DiMaggio while he was out of the lineup because of a batting slump and an injured heel. The next day DiMaggio went back into the lineup and got two hits. All ball players are superstitious, and to him Miss Standish and hits became cause and effect. He continued to date her, and continued to hit. Her place in his affection became secure- for two weeks, while his batting spree continued. Then, one day, Joe went hitless. The first gossip-columnist to make a deadline reported, without fear of contradiction, that 'Junior Standish and Joe DiMaggio have split.'"
-Leonard Lyons in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, October 1953)
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
1953 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth
"I never knew a great man- and Babe Ruth was truly great- who was more completely himself every minute he lived. My years in the pressbox and Ruth's on the field ran concurrently. More than that, he was an intimate friend. It is a cherished delight to remember that more than once I helped him break training, a minor contribution to be sure. My old friend never needed much help when the circumstances were inviting.
There are two nights with the Babe I remember particularly.
The first was in October, 1928. The Yankees have just beaten the St. Louis Cardinals four straight. Ruth has been the standout with a record .625 batting average and three home runs in the wrap-up game. We are aboard the Yankee special headed back east. Ruth is stripped to the waist, wearing only his pajama pants. Hours later he and Waite Hoyt and Bob Meusel are to lead through the train a roistering party, which is to leave everybody with torn ties and shirts. At the moment he is sitting in his drawing room, which is stacked high with bottled beer, and on the card table is an immense mound of the great man's favorite snack food: spiced barbecued ribs. Boisterous good fellowship reigns as the train roars through the night.
Along about 1 A.M. there is a stop in Mattoon, Ill., where a railroading process of some nature takes place. Even at this hour there is a crowd at the station, hundreds it seems, and you note with surprise two women with sleeping babes in arms. The crowd sets up a cry: 'We want Ruth! We want Ruth!'
Presently the Babe, his torso still bare, a bottle of beer in one hand, a messy hunk of the vile ribs in the other, appears on the platform of the car. At the sight of the great man there is awed silence. By this time the Babe has been around long enough to have developed a loose social sense. This is a situation which clearly calls for acknowledgment and proper appreciation. Wiping his lips with his forearm he commands:
'Three cheers for the Yankees!'
There is a pause after the response. Then with the acquired faculty he had for doing the right thing he sensed that these people must be Cardinal fans by geographical propinquity.
'Three cheers for the Cardinals!'
But before the willing and eager audience could organize a cheer Ruth lifted a restraining paw.
'Aw, to hell with' em. They quit.'
I cherish my memory of the incident as an illustration of the man's studied kindness on the one hand and his raw integrity on the other. It would be decent to cheer them but really they had no cheer coming. You and I more likely would have been disposed to play it straight. The Babe simply didn't know how.
The other night I have in mind was October, 1934. The locale is again St. Louis. The Detroit Tigers are one up on the Cardinals in the Series and the scene is shifting back to Briggs Stadium for the final two games. The Babe is experting for the Hearst newspapers. I am accompanying him from the ball park to the station with a stopover for refilling at one of the Babe's favorite pubs. It is still some minutes before departure time and as we walk down the platform the Babe says: 'Let's go up front and look at the engine.'
It is indeed a monster and the Babe consumes its massive lines with the wonder of a small boy. The engineer looks down from the upper structure of his cab and by way of making conversation asks:
'How many home runs you gonna hit for the Yankees next year, Babe?'
'Nuts with the Yankees,' the Babe barks. 'I'm through with them cheapskates.'
To my knowledge this was the first disclosure Ruth had made that he was ending his long association with the Yankees. Up to that time there had been no outside inkling he was not returning to the Stadium. Only Jake Ruppert and Ed Barrow, and very probably Ruth's wife, knew the breaking point had been reached. It was typical of the Babe that the first outsider to know would be an anonymous engineer he had never seen before in his life.
The Babe had begun to fade badly. That season his hitting dipped under .300, he got but 22 home runs and played in only 125 games. The handwriting was on the wall, in large, clear, portentous strokes. He was just about through. What next? Managing, of course. The reward of every great ball player. It had come to Cobb, to Speaker, Hornsby, Sisler, Johnson, Mathewson. 'Why not me?' Ruth must have asked himself. 'After all, they said I built Yankee Stadium.'
It was the result of what had been an unsatisfactory showdown with Ruppert that the Babe was telling the unknown engineer in the St. Louis yards that night. Ruth had virtually demanded that Ruppert make a choice between him and Joe McCarthy. It wasn't Ruth's way to approach a delicate problem with finesse or diplomacy.
Patience is all Ruth needed to get the manager's post. Ruppert was dubious of the Babe's ability to handle men, but he recognized Ruth was entitled by performance and precedent to the opportunity. Ruppert suggested a fair compromise. Manage the farm club in Newark for one year. To the Babe this was an affront. There would be no minors for him in any capacity. The Yankees under McCarthy had finished second in 1933 and 1934 and were destined to finish second again in 1935. Ruppert was insistent on winners and the situation was such that if Ruth had gone to Newark or even deferred the showdown he almost surely would have been made manager of the Yankees in 1936.
For a while, Ruth was puzzled, hurt and embittered that not only the Yankees but no other major club would make room for him as a manager, and a great many fans shared these emotions, I'm sure. On the surface it was extremely difficult to understand. I used to get letters from my mystified readers asking if there was a conspiracy against him. There wasn't, of course.
Ruth wasn't fashioned to be a manager. A manager must preach and practice restraints, impose law and order, make hard, tough decisions and maintain a certain aloofness from the players. The Babe was incapable of doing any of these things. It would have been unnatural and that was not the Babe's way. I never joined a campaign to make Ruth a manager of any club. I was too sure the results would have been unhappy. And in his later years, when he had become more understanding, I think he agreed, though he never admitted as much in my presence. I must believe, however, that one of the best breaks my old friend ever got was that he was never made manager of a big league ball club.
The Babe brought such a gay spirit to his work and performed his heroics with such seeming ease and was so seldom in the middle of what the boys call rhubarbs that there was a tendency to ignore his great competitive ardor. But even if he didn't wear it on his sleeve he had it to a very marked degree. So often it has been observed that the Babe never failed to rise to the occasion. What could that have been but a fierce burning urge to win and excel? Give him a high audience, the spotlight and a dramatic situation and he was sure to take over the center stage.
I'm always astonished whenever I come across people who do not remember or who have never heard of Ruth as a pitcher. As a boy the Babe was one of those oddities- a left-handed catcher- but it was as a pitcher that he came into professional baseball. And don't let anybody tell you he wasn't good. He was more than good. He was great. And if he had remained as a pitcher he might well have established himself as the greatest left-hander anybody ever saw. He was fast, had a corking curve, excellent control, remarkable poise.
Ruth's over-all pitching record was 94 won and 46 lost for .671 with an earned run average of 2.28. And keep in mind he had not reached his peak when Barrow made him over into an outfielder for keeps in 1919. At that time he was only 24. When you consider that he lasted 16 more years there is no telling how far he would have gone as a pitcher, how many dazzling exploits he might have achieved. Ruth was always proud of his pitching. Sitting with friends in his New York apartment in a den filled with mementos of his career, trophies, pictures, cartoons and such, he'd give you a pitch-by-pitch detail of what he called his greatest thrill.
Detroit was playing the Red Sox. Detroit was the heaviest hitting team in baseball. 'It's the last of the ninth and we got 'em beat 1-0 in their own park, and nobody's coming up but Veach, Cobb and Crawford. That's all. Just Veach, Cobb and Crawford. Three tough cookies. And we got only a one-run lead. Well, what does the old Jedge do (a name of vague origin he used for himself) but get'em out in order. Not only that, I strike 'em out. And on ten pitched balls. Do you hear me? Ten pitched balls. And some of these jerks say I was just a thrower. Hell, I was a great pitcher.' And that he was. One of his more resplendent pitching records is still in the book; that of pitching 29 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play. Ruth liked to remember that one, too, and you could be sure that before the night was over he'd remind you whose record he'd beat. 'Christy Mathewson's. No thrower's going around beating Matty's records, I'm telling you.'"
-Baseball's Greatest Lineup by Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram and Sun (Baseball Digest, February 1953)
QUOTING RUTH: "I NEVER SHOULD HAVE POINTED!"
"'Don't let anyone ever tell you Babe Ruth didn't point where he was going to hit that homer in Chicago (1932 World Series),' admonishes Cy Perkins, the Phillies coach who was the Babe's roommate at the time. 'He pointed twice. Once before the first pitch and the second time right before the third pitch.
'You know about the argument. The Babe was never one to ride the other clubs. He didn't do that, but he did kid the Cubs about cutting Mark Koenig (their shortstop who hadn't been with Chicago the entire season) for only half a share instead of a full one. The Cubs got on the Babe and in this game, he was really hot.
'They were still giving him the business when he went up to the plate. That's when he pointed to center field. He fouled off the first pitch. The second was a ball. Then the Babe pointed again and on the third pitch- wham!- that was it.
'In the room that night, the Babe told me what a sucker he was to point. It sure put him on the spot.
''Look how many ways they could have got me out,' he said. 'I'd have given $10,000 not to have done it.'"
-Ed Pollack in the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, April 1953)
THE BABE'S FIRST CALLED HOMER
"To anyone even faintly familiar with the amazing feats of Babe Ruth, the most magnetic and dramatic ball player of all time, his home run off Charlie Root in the 1932 World Series stands out as one of his most famous. The Cubs were really on Babe in that Series. The bench jockeys were using both foul and fair means to get his goat. To silence them, Ruth pointed dramatically toward the center field bleachers, which many observers interpreted as meaning he was indicating he would hit the next pitch up there for a home run. He did!
The Babe's success in apparently calling his shot naturally has become a legend. The fact remains, however, that 11 years prior to the 1932 World Series- in 1921- I saw the original of that unbelievable trick, performed in much more dramatic circumstances- and it was dismissed casually by most sports writers with a brief line that 'the Babe hit one into the center field bleachers at the Polo Grounds, the first time it had ever been done.'
The details leading up to this home run by the Babe were exciting, memorable and tragic. On Aug. 16, 1920, the Cleveland Indians invaded the Polo Grounds with a team heading for the pennant. The Yankees, only a half-game behind, were fighting hard to overtake them. Carl Mays was on the mound for the Yankees. Ray Chapman, a fine shortstop and hitter, was at bat for the Indians.
Mays wound up and delivered the ball. There was a resounding crack and the ball bounced out over the pitcher's head toward second base. Chapman, hit on the head, slowly crumpled to the ground, unconscious. I was sitting on the bench then and the first thought that came to me was to take a glass of water out to him. But Chapman never had a chance to drink it. Without regaining consciousness, he died that night.
A great deal of controversy developed. Was the pitch an accident or was Mays trying to dust off Chapman? Fiery Ty Cobb, though he was playing with Detroit at Boston that day, claimed Mays deliberately tried to bean Chapman. The Yankees and particularly Babe Ruth jumped to Mays' defense. A bitter feud developed between Cobb and Ruth.
The feud carried over until the following season. In June the Tigers invaded the Polo Grounds. In the course of one of the games (June 13), Cobb went tearing in for a Texas Leaguer that fell just out of his reach. He was near second base. Ruth was stepping into the batter's box. Cobb yelled some vilification at the Babe. Infuriated, Ruth yelled out, 'You dirty so-and-so, get back to the outfield.' And dramatically pointing his finger to a spot in the far away center field bleachers, blasphemed, 'I am going to hit the --- ---- ball up there.' He did."
-Alfred Kunitz [former Yankee batboy] (Baseball Digest, August 1953)
There are two nights with the Babe I remember particularly.
The first was in October, 1928. The Yankees have just beaten the St. Louis Cardinals four straight. Ruth has been the standout with a record .625 batting average and three home runs in the wrap-up game. We are aboard the Yankee special headed back east. Ruth is stripped to the waist, wearing only his pajama pants. Hours later he and Waite Hoyt and Bob Meusel are to lead through the train a roistering party, which is to leave everybody with torn ties and shirts. At the moment he is sitting in his drawing room, which is stacked high with bottled beer, and on the card table is an immense mound of the great man's favorite snack food: spiced barbecued ribs. Boisterous good fellowship reigns as the train roars through the night.
Along about 1 A.M. there is a stop in Mattoon, Ill., where a railroading process of some nature takes place. Even at this hour there is a crowd at the station, hundreds it seems, and you note with surprise two women with sleeping babes in arms. The crowd sets up a cry: 'We want Ruth! We want Ruth!'
Presently the Babe, his torso still bare, a bottle of beer in one hand, a messy hunk of the vile ribs in the other, appears on the platform of the car. At the sight of the great man there is awed silence. By this time the Babe has been around long enough to have developed a loose social sense. This is a situation which clearly calls for acknowledgment and proper appreciation. Wiping his lips with his forearm he commands:
'Three cheers for the Yankees!'
There is a pause after the response. Then with the acquired faculty he had for doing the right thing he sensed that these people must be Cardinal fans by geographical propinquity.
'Three cheers for the Cardinals!'
But before the willing and eager audience could organize a cheer Ruth lifted a restraining paw.
'Aw, to hell with' em. They quit.'
I cherish my memory of the incident as an illustration of the man's studied kindness on the one hand and his raw integrity on the other. It would be decent to cheer them but really they had no cheer coming. You and I more likely would have been disposed to play it straight. The Babe simply didn't know how.
The other night I have in mind was October, 1934. The locale is again St. Louis. The Detroit Tigers are one up on the Cardinals in the Series and the scene is shifting back to Briggs Stadium for the final two games. The Babe is experting for the Hearst newspapers. I am accompanying him from the ball park to the station with a stopover for refilling at one of the Babe's favorite pubs. It is still some minutes before departure time and as we walk down the platform the Babe says: 'Let's go up front and look at the engine.'
It is indeed a monster and the Babe consumes its massive lines with the wonder of a small boy. The engineer looks down from the upper structure of his cab and by way of making conversation asks:
'How many home runs you gonna hit for the Yankees next year, Babe?'
'Nuts with the Yankees,' the Babe barks. 'I'm through with them cheapskates.'
To my knowledge this was the first disclosure Ruth had made that he was ending his long association with the Yankees. Up to that time there had been no outside inkling he was not returning to the Stadium. Only Jake Ruppert and Ed Barrow, and very probably Ruth's wife, knew the breaking point had been reached. It was typical of the Babe that the first outsider to know would be an anonymous engineer he had never seen before in his life.
The Babe had begun to fade badly. That season his hitting dipped under .300, he got but 22 home runs and played in only 125 games. The handwriting was on the wall, in large, clear, portentous strokes. He was just about through. What next? Managing, of course. The reward of every great ball player. It had come to Cobb, to Speaker, Hornsby, Sisler, Johnson, Mathewson. 'Why not me?' Ruth must have asked himself. 'After all, they said I built Yankee Stadium.'
It was the result of what had been an unsatisfactory showdown with Ruppert that the Babe was telling the unknown engineer in the St. Louis yards that night. Ruth had virtually demanded that Ruppert make a choice between him and Joe McCarthy. It wasn't Ruth's way to approach a delicate problem with finesse or diplomacy.
Patience is all Ruth needed to get the manager's post. Ruppert was dubious of the Babe's ability to handle men, but he recognized Ruth was entitled by performance and precedent to the opportunity. Ruppert suggested a fair compromise. Manage the farm club in Newark for one year. To the Babe this was an affront. There would be no minors for him in any capacity. The Yankees under McCarthy had finished second in 1933 and 1934 and were destined to finish second again in 1935. Ruppert was insistent on winners and the situation was such that if Ruth had gone to Newark or even deferred the showdown he almost surely would have been made manager of the Yankees in 1936.
For a while, Ruth was puzzled, hurt and embittered that not only the Yankees but no other major club would make room for him as a manager, and a great many fans shared these emotions, I'm sure. On the surface it was extremely difficult to understand. I used to get letters from my mystified readers asking if there was a conspiracy against him. There wasn't, of course.
Ruth wasn't fashioned to be a manager. A manager must preach and practice restraints, impose law and order, make hard, tough decisions and maintain a certain aloofness from the players. The Babe was incapable of doing any of these things. It would have been unnatural and that was not the Babe's way. I never joined a campaign to make Ruth a manager of any club. I was too sure the results would have been unhappy. And in his later years, when he had become more understanding, I think he agreed, though he never admitted as much in my presence. I must believe, however, that one of the best breaks my old friend ever got was that he was never made manager of a big league ball club.
The Babe brought such a gay spirit to his work and performed his heroics with such seeming ease and was so seldom in the middle of what the boys call rhubarbs that there was a tendency to ignore his great competitive ardor. But even if he didn't wear it on his sleeve he had it to a very marked degree. So often it has been observed that the Babe never failed to rise to the occasion. What could that have been but a fierce burning urge to win and excel? Give him a high audience, the spotlight and a dramatic situation and he was sure to take over the center stage.
I'm always astonished whenever I come across people who do not remember or who have never heard of Ruth as a pitcher. As a boy the Babe was one of those oddities- a left-handed catcher- but it was as a pitcher that he came into professional baseball. And don't let anybody tell you he wasn't good. He was more than good. He was great. And if he had remained as a pitcher he might well have established himself as the greatest left-hander anybody ever saw. He was fast, had a corking curve, excellent control, remarkable poise.
Ruth's over-all pitching record was 94 won and 46 lost for .671 with an earned run average of 2.28. And keep in mind he had not reached his peak when Barrow made him over into an outfielder for keeps in 1919. At that time he was only 24. When you consider that he lasted 16 more years there is no telling how far he would have gone as a pitcher, how many dazzling exploits he might have achieved. Ruth was always proud of his pitching. Sitting with friends in his New York apartment in a den filled with mementos of his career, trophies, pictures, cartoons and such, he'd give you a pitch-by-pitch detail of what he called his greatest thrill.
Detroit was playing the Red Sox. Detroit was the heaviest hitting team in baseball. 'It's the last of the ninth and we got 'em beat 1-0 in their own park, and nobody's coming up but Veach, Cobb and Crawford. That's all. Just Veach, Cobb and Crawford. Three tough cookies. And we got only a one-run lead. Well, what does the old Jedge do (a name of vague origin he used for himself) but get'em out in order. Not only that, I strike 'em out. And on ten pitched balls. Do you hear me? Ten pitched balls. And some of these jerks say I was just a thrower. Hell, I was a great pitcher.' And that he was. One of his more resplendent pitching records is still in the book; that of pitching 29 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play. Ruth liked to remember that one, too, and you could be sure that before the night was over he'd remind you whose record he'd beat. 'Christy Mathewson's. No thrower's going around beating Matty's records, I'm telling you.'"
-Baseball's Greatest Lineup by Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram and Sun (Baseball Digest, February 1953)
QUOTING RUTH: "I NEVER SHOULD HAVE POINTED!"
"'Don't let anyone ever tell you Babe Ruth didn't point where he was going to hit that homer in Chicago (1932 World Series),' admonishes Cy Perkins, the Phillies coach who was the Babe's roommate at the time. 'He pointed twice. Once before the first pitch and the second time right before the third pitch.
'You know about the argument. The Babe was never one to ride the other clubs. He didn't do that, but he did kid the Cubs about cutting Mark Koenig (their shortstop who hadn't been with Chicago the entire season) for only half a share instead of a full one. The Cubs got on the Babe and in this game, he was really hot.
'They were still giving him the business when he went up to the plate. That's when he pointed to center field. He fouled off the first pitch. The second was a ball. Then the Babe pointed again and on the third pitch- wham!- that was it.
'In the room that night, the Babe told me what a sucker he was to point. It sure put him on the spot.
''Look how many ways they could have got me out,' he said. 'I'd have given $10,000 not to have done it.'"
-Ed Pollack in the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, April 1953)
THE BABE'S FIRST CALLED HOMER
"To anyone even faintly familiar with the amazing feats of Babe Ruth, the most magnetic and dramatic ball player of all time, his home run off Charlie Root in the 1932 World Series stands out as one of his most famous. The Cubs were really on Babe in that Series. The bench jockeys were using both foul and fair means to get his goat. To silence them, Ruth pointed dramatically toward the center field bleachers, which many observers interpreted as meaning he was indicating he would hit the next pitch up there for a home run. He did!
The Babe's success in apparently calling his shot naturally has become a legend. The fact remains, however, that 11 years prior to the 1932 World Series- in 1921- I saw the original of that unbelievable trick, performed in much more dramatic circumstances- and it was dismissed casually by most sports writers with a brief line that 'the Babe hit one into the center field bleachers at the Polo Grounds, the first time it had ever been done.'
The details leading up to this home run by the Babe were exciting, memorable and tragic. On Aug. 16, 1920, the Cleveland Indians invaded the Polo Grounds with a team heading for the pennant. The Yankees, only a half-game behind, were fighting hard to overtake them. Carl Mays was on the mound for the Yankees. Ray Chapman, a fine shortstop and hitter, was at bat for the Indians.
Mays wound up and delivered the ball. There was a resounding crack and the ball bounced out over the pitcher's head toward second base. Chapman, hit on the head, slowly crumpled to the ground, unconscious. I was sitting on the bench then and the first thought that came to me was to take a glass of water out to him. But Chapman never had a chance to drink it. Without regaining consciousness, he died that night.
A great deal of controversy developed. Was the pitch an accident or was Mays trying to dust off Chapman? Fiery Ty Cobb, though he was playing with Detroit at Boston that day, claimed Mays deliberately tried to bean Chapman. The Yankees and particularly Babe Ruth jumped to Mays' defense. A bitter feud developed between Cobb and Ruth.
The feud carried over until the following season. In June the Tigers invaded the Polo Grounds. In the course of one of the games (June 13), Cobb went tearing in for a Texas Leaguer that fell just out of his reach. He was near second base. Ruth was stepping into the batter's box. Cobb yelled some vilification at the Babe. Infuriated, Ruth yelled out, 'You dirty so-and-so, get back to the outfield.' And dramatically pointing his finger to a spot in the far away center field bleachers, blasphemed, 'I am going to hit the --- ---- ball up there.' He did."
-Alfred Kunitz [former Yankee batboy] (Baseball Digest, August 1953)
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