THE BABE ANSWERED THE CHALLENGE
"Fred Haney, who is not averse to telling stories on himself, tells one about the first time, as a busher just brought up by the Detroit Tigers late in 1922, he made his first appearance at the Polo Grounds, where the Yankees then were playing.
'In my first time at bat,' he says, 'I hit a home run. I'll admit it wasn't much of a blow. It just sneaked over the lower deck of the grandstand, a few feet inside the foul line. But it was a home run. When our half of the inning was over and we were changing sides, I passed Babe Ruth and said to him:
'Watch out, Big Boy. You're still in front, but I'm gaining on you.'
'The Babe didn't let on he heard me but went on his way to the dugout. He was first up in the Yanks' half and he hit a real Ruth homer- a mile-high screamer that came down deep in the upper tier in right. As he trotted by me at third base, head down, as usual when he was rounding the bases, he said, without so much as looking at me:
'How do we stand now, kid?' ' "
-Frank Graham, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, August 1956)
ALL BABE'S 60 WEREN'T OFF ACES
Paul Hopkins, Losing Boston Hurlers Among "Pigeons"
"Two readers out of every three don't want to see Babe Ruth's home run record go down the drain. It is Babe's monument to himself.
'It would be sacrilege, almost,' writes one. 'Ruth would hit 70 with today's souped-up ball,' growls another.
Mickey Mantle confesses he would feel regrets- IF he happened to be the one who first exceeded 60 ... like Rocky Marciano splattering Joe Louis and lamenting, 'I almost bawled to see him lying there.'
Will the first man to hit 61 homers be addressed in the clubhouse mirror as, 'You stinker, you!'?
He won't win any popularity awards judging from the tenor of recent mail- but, in my book, the first man there will have earned it. It won't be an apologetic gesture.
There was 'rabbit' in the ball (1927) Ruth combed into the crowds and a re-examination of the pitching he faced leaves doubt of its quality in your heart.
A dilly of a query for the $64,000 question would be: 'Who was Paul Hopkins?'
Hopkins was the Washington pitcher who yielded up homer number 59 to Ruth, matching the Babe's old record.
He had never been inside a big league ball park until days before, when the Senators called him up from the bushes.
So I can't buy it in retail when one reader beefs, 'Mantle is hitting against a lot of slobs compared to the pitchers the Babe faced.'
Babe's barrier is the 17 homers he clobbered in September, of 1927. Hank Greenberg, Jimmie Foxx, Hack Wilson and Ralph Kiner all knocked themselves about against it.
Seventeen off whom? Five off 'winning' pitchers ... his most memorable entry a grand slam against the great Grove at Philadelphia (No. 57) ... and 12 off Paul Hopkins, Milt Gaston, Slim Harriss, Tony Welzer, et al.
This is not a knock on the immortal Ruth and his towering Big 60 ... but in fairness to modern players who challenge, a correct analysis is imperative:
Ruth hit 11 homers, more than one-sixth of his record, against Boston Red Sox pitchers, who formed this somewhat uninspiring array:
Slim Harriss (April 29, June 30, Sept. 7)- Won 14, lost 21; 4.17 earned run average; in his last season; one winning year in eight.
Harold Wiltse (June 22, two)- Won 10, lost 18; 5.09 ERA.
Danny MacFayden (May 29, Sept. 7)- Won 5, lost 8; 4.27 ERA.
Tony Welzer (Aug. 31, Sept. 6, two)- Won 6, lost 11; 4.45 ERA.
Jack Russell (Sept. 6)- Won 4, lost 9; 4.10 ERA.
Ruth got five homers in two days (Sept. 6-7) against this type of pitching. It gave him the big booster shot he needed to run down his own record of 59.
Was the A.L. green light on for the Babe?
Nobody ever proved it was ... but, under orders or not, they were pitching to him, not putting him on base!
It is a matter of record that Ruth had 107 official times at bat in his 28 September games or an average of almost four per game.
He was never hit by a pitched ball.
There were good pitchers and bad ones when Ruth was making his record. Homers are rarely made off a good pitch, anyway. Let's not fault the first man (Mantle?) to break the Big 60 on pitching.
The Babe hit his share off 'slobs.'
The season of 1927 was a Hitters' year. The archives prove it. Thirty-six A.L. regulars batted from .300 to as high as .398 ... but the Babe faced only four pitchers in the league with an ERA of 3.00 or lower.
I'll shed tears with the next guy when and if the Babe's record falls ... but deal me out if you seek to cheapen the exploit when it happens."
-Jerry Nason, Boston Globe (Baseball Digest, September 1956)
A POINT FOR THE BABE
"Although there were many more .300 hitters in 1927 than nowadays, indicating perhaps that hits were 'cheaper' then, home runs were less than half as plentiful.
There were only 437 homers hit throughout the American League in 1927, an average of 0.71 a game. When Mickey Mantle hit his 30th this year, there had been 562 homers in 317 A.L., an average of 1.77 a game.
Babe Ruth's record 60 accounted for 13.7 per cent of all A.L. homers hit in 1927. Mantle's first 30 this year, however, accounted for only 5.5 per cent of all A.L. homers hit to that point."
-Jerry Nason, Boston Globe (Baseball Digest, September 1956)
THE BABE'S PHANTOM 155TH GAME
Wrenched Knee Kept Him From Extra Chance At 61st Homer
"Because Sammy Hale, an opposing third baseman, made a spectacular catch of a torrid line drive, Babe Ruth got a chance to play in an extra 155th game the year he set his 60-homer record. But because the Babe, a few weeks later, wrenched a knee in an exhibition game at Springfield, Mass., he never got to cash in on that chance and play in that 155th game or in three others, either, in the 1927 season.
These little-remembered sidelights to the Babe's historic season were revealed by recent research and account for the gap between the 151 games Ruth played and the 155 games the Yankees played that year (110 victories, 44 defeats and one tie).
The catch by Hale, veteran Philadelphia third baseman, came in the third game of the season, April 14, after the Yanks had taken the opening two games from the A's, 8-3 and 10-4. With two Yankee mates on base in the eighth inning, Lou Gehrig shot a terrific liner down the third-base line. Hale, according to observers, threw up his glove in self-defense and made an 'unconscious' catch that prevented a 10-9 Yankee victory in regulation time and sent the game into an extra inning. After a scoreless tenth, it was called on account of darkness, a 9-9 tie.
(If it seems peculiar to 1956 folk that a single ball game of ten innings should be called on account of darkness, it should be pointed out that New York games started at 3:15 P.M. in that era, there was no daylight saving, it was early spring and, despite all the modern talk of the fast games of yesterday, the time of the game was 2:50.)
The playoff of the tie was scheduled for an open date on Tuesday, June 28, and when rain prevented much of an intervening Philadelphia-at-New York series, that June series became a six-game one, with doubleheaders Saturday and Sunday and single games Monday and Tuesday.
To crowd the schedule still further, the Yankees had previously arranged to play the exhibition at Springfield with the local Ponies of the Eastern League on Friday. The Babe, of course, was the big attraction and not only went along, but like everything else he did, he played it to the hilt.
What a show he put on for those Springfield fans! The very first inning he poled one over the right-field fence. In the third inning he singled and in the fifth he homered over the left-field fence. In the seventh he fancied it up by crossing over to the other side of the plate and, batting right-handed (a switch-hitter yet!) he doubled to left. With four hits, including two homers, in as many times at bat, most any other star would have called it in an exhibition and retired to the nearest speakeasy. But not the Babe. He played the full game, batting in the ninth, and when he grounded to the second baseman, ran it out as hard as if it had been an eyelash play in the deciding game of the World Series. As a reward, he pulled up lame.
Despite the injury, he played the double-header against the A's in New York the following day, but only aggravated the bad leg. When fluid started collecting at the knee, his physician made him sit out the Stadium double-header while Gehrig got his 22nd homer.
Ruth also was forced to rest during Monday's single game, in which Earle Combs and Tony Lazzeri homered, and he also had to miss the playoff of the tie Tuesday.
That would have afforded Babe a good opportunity for what might have been a 61st homer, for the starting pitcher was Rube Walberg, who, though a southpaw and a good one (he had a lifetime record of 155 victories and 141 defeats), was the Babe's favorite pigeon. Ruth hit 17 home runs off him during his career, four of them during his record 60 year.
It wasn't one of Walberg's better days and the Yanks made 13 hits off him and his successors, with Ben Paschal and Cederic Durst, who shared right field in the Babe's absence, making three of them. Gehrig contributed a homer, his 23rd, to the Yanks' 9-8 victory, though it was against Jing Johnson, a right-handed reliever, rather than against Walberg.
The next day Ruth returned to the lineup as the Yanks beat Boston, 8-2, and though he didn't homer celebrated his return with a double and three singles. Gehrig did homer again that day, for a 24th that temporarily drew him abreast of the Babe, but the following afternoon the Babe resumed his home run stride, with his 25th, against Boston's Slim Harriss, and he eventually wound up with a 60-47 edge over Gehrig.
Because of the playoff game, Ruth actually hit his 60th homer in the 154th game the Yankees played (and his 150th game). That was the day before the season closed and climaxed an exciting week.
Ruth entered the last week of the season with 56 homers and five games to go. That meant he had to hit four in the five games to beat his own record of 59 set in 1921. And during the Monday game against Detroit, he was shut out.
Now he needed four in four games. Tuesday was an open date but Wednesday the A's showed up at Yankee Stadium and the Babe fashioned a grand-slammer off no less a southpaw than Lefty Grove, then just winding up the first of his eight 20-win seasons. Ruth's blow beat Grove, 7-4.
Now it was three games and three homers to go. Another open date Thursday, then Washington reported to the Stadium for a closing series of three games. Babe hit two in the Friday game. The first came off Hod Lisenbee, a freshman right-hander who had won 18 games that year but that day suffered his ninth defeat, 15-4.
Ruth missed hitting his 59th by inches in the second inning when he tripled off the center-field wall. Then in the sixth he smashed one off Reliever Paul Hopkins, a right-hander whose major league service was to be limited to portions of 11 games. That 59th homer tied Ruth's own record.
The next day, Saturday, Babe broke the mark and the victim was Tom Zachary, a fine southpaw who had a lifetime total of 186 victories but who that year was having an off season and won only four. The Babe drew a walk the first two times up then singled.
There were two out in the eighth inning when Mark Koenig singled. Ruth then broke a 2-2 tie and won the ball game for the Yanks with a drive halfway up into the right-field bleachers, number 60!
Ruth went hitless in three trips the next day and in his final time at bat was struck out by Garland Braxton."
-Herbert Simons, Baseball Digest, October 1956
NO BOUNCE HOMERS IN BABE'S RECORD
"Mickey Mantle bounced a double into the bleachers in left center field at Yankee Stadium in the ninth inning of a night game in August to beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-4.
If the rules under which Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927 had been in effect, Mantle would have had a home run, instead of a two-base hit. Prior to 1931, any fair ball that bounced off the field and into the stands was a homer.
How many of Ruth's homers bounced into the stands?
Legend says two or three. Some amateur researcher has said seven. But a three-hour look through the files of the New York Times indicates NONE. One-the-scene reporters of that paper do not describe any one of Ruth's homers that season as having bounced in.
All would have been recognized as homers under today's rules. Mantle is at no disadvantage in that respect.
The Yankees won the pennant easily in 1927 (19 games over the second place Athletics) that interest centered on what was called the Home Run Handicap- Ruth vs. Lou Gehrig.
Ruth trailed Gehrig in late August until he hit his 40th homer. Then he pulled away to win by 13. Gehrig hit only seven homers in the last six weeks.
Eight of Ruth's 60 homers were to left field. Most of them, of course, were to right.
Running down the three-score list, the following homers stand out as Times' reporters described them:
No. 3 - 'High and mammoth' as it cleared the right field fence in Washington, disappearing into a tree 400 feet away.
No. 5 - 'Cobb didn't even bother to turn to see if had killed anybody when it landed.' A line smash to right at New York.
No. 7 - 'The ball landed on the concrete front wall and bounded far back.' At St. Louis, where the range was short.
No. 8 - Into the center field pavilion at St. Louis, only the second, but not as far as his 1926 World Series homer there.
No. 10 - Barely over the short high fence at Cleveland, a 600-foot homer, '300 feet up, 300 feet down.'
No. 14 - Into the upper deck in left at Philadelphia in the eleventh inning to win, off Cousin Walberg.
No. 16 - One foot fair, it cleared the fence in right at Philadelphia, the street outside, and a two-story house. 'Last seen, it was headed for the North Philadelphia station.'
No. 19 - To right center, his second longest at Yankee Stadium.
No. 24 - Into the open space between the stands at Fenway Park, rolling into a vacant lot, and stopping against a garage, 'where six men and two boys fell on it.'
No. 26 - Twelve rows from the top of the center field stands at Washington.
No. 27 - His only inside-the-park homer of the season, standing up at Detroit.
No. 37 - Over the double-decked stand in right at Chicago, first ever hit out of that park.
No. 45 - He ran up on a pitch by Tony Welzer and hit it over the center field fence at Fenway Park. 'All statisticians present were unanimous in declaring it to be the longest hit ever made in Fenway Park.'
No. 48 - 'High over the left field fence, a point he seldom makes a target'- off Danny MacFayden at Fenway Park.
No. 56 - Won game, 8-7, against Detroit at New York. He carried his bat all around the bases, and was met at third by a boy who grabbed the bat and was dragged all the way to the dugout.
No. 60 - With one on in the eighth, the scored tied, 2-2, off Tom Zachary at New York."
-condensed from the Boston Globe (Baseball Digest, October 1956)
BABE'S EPIC
He Fanned Three In Ninth With Bases Loaded!
"It is little known to present-day fans and little remembered by their elders that when Ed Barrow, then managing the Red Sox, switched Babe Ruth permanently from the box to the outfield, he was the best left-hander in baseball and was rising steadily toward greatness. And that among his accomplishments was the pitching of 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series competition against the Dodgers in 1916 and the Cubs in 1918.
In his peak years, when he was the best outfielder in either league and the greatest home run hitter the game has ever known, he talked more about his pitching days than his power at the plate. His brightest memories of these days were of his World Series feats and the time, in the ninth inning of a 1-0 game with the Tigers, he struck out a fearsome trio- Ty Cobb, Wahoo Sam Crawford and Bobby Veach- with the bases loaded. He'd chortle over the latter performance, saying:
'It was easy. I knocked them down with fast balls and struck out them out with curves.'
There is no doubt that if he had continued as a pitcher, he would have wound up among the all-time greats."
-Frank Graham, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, October 1956)
No comments:
Post a Comment