Back to Boston
Babe Ruth’s final playing days, and beyond
Bygone baseball by C. Philip Francis – April 15, 2005
Prologue:
Babe Ruth’s major league baseball career began on July 11, 1914 with the Boston Red Sox as a left-handed pitcher. After winning 89 games while losing 46 for the Beantown team, Red Sox owner, Harry Frazee, sent Ruth to the New York Yankees on January 3, 1920 for $125,000 in cash, and a $300,000 loan. Although he did appear in five games as a pitcher throughout his playing years with the Yankees, the Babe was moved to the outfield to use his outstanding batting power. During his 22 years on the field, Ruth was in 10 World Series, three with Boston and seven with New York, the last one in 1932 - a member of one the great ball clubs in baseball history.
***
The 1933 season was the last in which Babe hit over .300 and knocked over 30 round-trippers. The following year the Bambino dropped to .288, well under his career average of .342, and just 22 homers. Was Ruth washed up at the age of 39? The Yankee management thought so. The right fielder had made $35,000 in 1934, but his new contract was for one dollar although he could make more providing he produced in spring training.
The New York club also offered Ruth a job as manager of their Newark minor league team, but Babe said no. He was a big leaguer, and had his pride to think about. If he was going to manage, it would be a major league team. Then the Boston Braves offered Ruth a position of vice-president, assistant manager, and right fielder for the 1935 season at the salary of $35,000. The Babe would switch from the American League to the National League
Braves Field was not unfamiliar to Ruth. The ball field had been borrowed by the Red Sox for Game 2 in the 1916 World Series with the Brooklyn Robins and Boston Red Sox. In that game the young Ruth pitched a complete 14-inning game winning 2-1. The Robins, named for the well-liked Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson, scored one run in the first when Hy Myers sent a screaming liner to center. The ball bounded over the outfielder, and rolled to the fence for an inside-the-park home run and a one-run lead. After the Sox tied the game in the third, the fans saw a brilliant pitching duel until Boston scored in the 14th.
In spite of his new fancy titles, Ruth was signed for only one reason – a name that would bring the fans into the ballpark. There were problems from the beginning. The Babe joined the team in St. Petersburg, Florida for spring training, out of shape and weighing 245 pounds, 30 over his prime years. Huge crowds came to see the Great Ruth, and a game on March 16 with his former New York team brought in the largest gathering to see an exhibition in Florida. “For the first time in my life, baseball was drudgery. It was more and more of an effort to move in the outfield or run down to first base…It was a rotten feeling.” Later he said, “It was pretty much of a nightmare.”
It was cold on Opening Day, April 16. 1935, in Boston’s Braves Field with 25,000 fans waiting to see their new ballplayer, 40-year old Babe Ruth, and Boston’s Ed Brandt facing future Hall of Famer, Carl Hubbell, of the New York Giants. Ruth batted in or scored each of the four runs in a Braves victory 4-2, and even made a “circus catch” in the outfield. From then on it was all downhill for Babe with his age, weight, and legs all against him. His batting average fell to .155, and had hit only three home runs.
On Saturday, May 25 in Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field it was the old Sultan of Swat. In the first inning he sent a two-run homer into the lower right-field grandstand – career number 712. In the third the slugger nailed his second home fun of the day – number 713 off Pirates pitcher, Guy Bush. Following a run-scoring single in the fifth, the Babe walked up the plate in the seventh. This time Ruth parked a curve ball over the right field double-deck stands and out of the stadium, his third four-bagger of the day, and final homer of his career – it was number 714. It was also the only fair ball ever hit out of Forbes Field. It should have been Ruth’s “last hurrah” after his wife, Claire, urged her husband to quit, but Ruth would not.
On Memorial Day, May 30, the Braves had a double-header with the Philadelphia Phillies where it was also Babe Ruth Day. When the Bambino hurt his leg chasing a fly ball in the first inning, he took himself out of the lineup, and never played another major league game. The Braves lost both games.
Babe Ruth, the greatest ball player of all time, had hit .181 in his final 28 games. He had not helped the team, and when the Babe left Boston the team was in last place winning only 10 games and losing 27. They ended the season at 38-115, 62 1/2 games behind the Chicago Cubs. Although Ruth knew his playing days were over, he expected to hear big league managerial offers soon. They never came.
Ruth later claimed that when he phoned Yankee Stadium for tickets for the 1936 opening game, he was told to first send in a check.
***
Epilogue:
The Ruth family was able to live comfortably on his baseball earnings with a frugal wife. The now former ball player hunted and fished, bowled, seriously considered becoming a professional golfer, and was inducted into the newly established Hall of Fame. Then in mid-1938 Larry MacPhail, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, called to ask Ruth if he would be interested in a coaching job. The Babe quickly agreed as he loved to work with the younger players.
Again, however, it didn’t work out. At the end of the season Dodger manager Burleigh Grimes was fired, and replaced by Leo Durocher in his first managing position. Ruth hated the new skipper whom he first met as a brash rookie with the Yankees, and knew he did not belong with the Dodgers.
Throughout World War Ruth helped selling war bonds, talked with servicemen, and after the war he assisted in youth baseball leagues. In 1946 friends noticed that his voice had become hoarse. It was cancer.
George Herman “Babe” Ruth died on August 16, 1948 in New York City.