“The Play Is Done”
Friday, September 30, 1927: New York City
“Two games left for the Babe to hit one home run, and break the record!”
That’s all you heard all over town today: I heard it from the porter who brought up my breakfast at the Plaza, the bellman at the front desk, the doorman who hailed my cab, the cab driver who brought me up to the Bronx; Skipper, the guard at the player’s gate, the boys in the grounds crew, the fans in the stands, each and every one of the writers. Everyone, except for the players.
The players are all acting the same way we do when there’s a no-hitter going on. No one’s saying a word about it.
I’ve thrown a couple of no-hitters, not in the majors but one in college and another in the minors back in 1921. When I did it in college, my teammates were so superstitious that none them would even sit near me until the last out was recorded.
That second no-hitter came in my very first minor league game. In fact, it was my very first game as a pro, though not my first playing for cash. That’s because while I was at Penn State, during the summers I played under an assumed name, like all the top college players do, so as not to jeopardize my collegiate eligibility.
The summer before my senior year, I pitched in the Wyoming League under the name Tommy Conover. As Mr. Conover, I was the pitcher of record for the game that won our team the Wyoming League pennant. One of the things I remember most about that game was that afterwards, the photographer for the Wilkes-Barre Record tried to line us up for a team picture, but he gave up after a bunch of us declined to be memorialized, lest we leave any visual evidence of our breaking the N.C.A.A.’s eligibility rules.
My second no-hitter came two days after I arrived in Hartford to play for the Senators. The team was in first place when I got there, but they struggled the rest of the season both at the plate and on the mound, and finished up a distant third in the standings.
Our team’s dive, though, couldn’t compare to the one our manager, Arthur Irwin, took by himself later that summer.
Arthur Irwin was a strange bird to say the least, and an eclectic one.
Before he managed the Senators, he was a big leaguer in the 1880s and ’90s who was good enough to be the starting shortstop on a championship team. After his playing days were over, he became a noted coach at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard.
He was also an entrepreneur — he manufactured baseball gloves and, get this, he invented the first football scoreboard. His patent for his scoreboard earned him $1,500 a year.
And Arthur desperately needed the money because for over 30 years he had been a bigamist and was supporting two families — neither of whom knew of the other’s existence, until that fateful summer of ‘21.
Shortly after I got to Hartford to play for him, Irwin checked himself into a hospital with acute stomach pain, only to find out it was cancer. Even worse for Irwin, in short order both of his wives — one in Boston, the other in New York — and their children found out about Arthur’s double life.
Everything stayed quiet, until Irwin left the hospital. First he went down to New York to say goodbye to his Manhattan family. Then he boarded a steamer for Boston, to say goodbye to his Boston family. Somewhere between the two cities, he decided to disembark while his boat was still far from shore, out in the dark of the Long Island Sound.
Then it hit the papers.
“What are you thinking about?”
Schoolboy Hoyt has caught me staring out onto the field, lost in thought.
“Arthur Irwin.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he says. “He was always around McGraw, and almost as big a bastard. I would have liked to have written his obit.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
Schoolboy starts spastically waving his hands up and down, and making typewriter clacking noises.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
“Arthur Irwin.”
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
“Major leaguer. College coach. Minor league manager. Scout. Inventor. Entrepreneur. And bigamist.”
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
“Just not much of a swimmer.”
Clack.
As always before the game, everyone stops to watch Ruth take batting practice.
Ball after ball goes flying into the stands.
“I wouldn’t want to be Tom Zachary today,” says Schoolboy, referring to the Washington Senators’ starting pitcher.
“Really?” I say.
“Yes, really,” he snarls back at me, like I’m some kind of an idiot.
Then I spring a new thought on him.
“Of course you never want to give up a home run — that’s the way we’re trained to think, that’s the way everyone wants us to think — ’cause we’re pitchers. But consider this, just for a second…”
Schoolboy is staring daggers at me.
“If you throw the ball that Jidge hits for home run number 60, baseball fans will probably remember your name for a hundred years. Right?” I say, basking in my own cleverness.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” says Schoolboy with serious disdain.
“Baseball fans are already going to remember my name in a hundred years. And I’m not giving up home run number 60 to Ruth, or any-fucking-body else.”
It’s a cloudy, late September Friday, and there’s a sparse crowd — 10,000 at most — but still, there’s electricity in the air.
As the game begins, I look up at the press box and see the boys talking to one another, and I think back to spring training, back when anyone with a pencil was asking, “Hey, Babe, do you think you’ll break the record this season?” Just like they’d asked Ruth every year since he’d set the mark at 59, back in ‘21.
For his part, the Babe always good naturedly replied, “If the other teams pitch to me, I think I have a chance.”
Everybody said, “Thanks for the quote, Babe!”, but each and every one of them walked away shaking his head and thinking, “There’s no way that big ape comes even close to 60. Hell, it’s been five years since he hit 59 — and since then he hasn’t even hit 50 in a season — and now he’s 33 years old. Impossible.”
The Babe did look old at the start of the season, batting only .250 and hitting just one home run in his first 10 games.
But then came the Home Run Derby between Ruth and Gehrig.
There’s no doubt that Lou pushed the Babe — it was a friendly competition, but it was definitely a competition.
Ruth was inspired by Gehrig’s youth, God-given talent, and his shy charm. Lou reminds Babe of his own better nature, I think.
Gehrig’s the young man Ruth wishes he could have been: good looking, educated, and possessing a loving mother. Of course, since the Babe never really knew his own mother too well — his parents dropped him in an orphanage when he was seven, rather than take care of him — Jidge doesn’t see how crazy and abnormal Lou’s relationship with Mama Gehrig really is. Actually, he doesn’t seem to notice any of Lou’s neuroses. He just thinks he’s a shy kid.
But while the Babe may wish he had Gehrig’s looks, smarts and family life, he doesn’t resent Lou for possessing them at all. In no small part that’s because of how Lou treats the Babe. Lou treats Jidge like an older brother, and that adds a feeling of family to their relationship, and that’s made sharing the Home Run Derby with Lou especially fun for the Babe this year.
At the beginning of September, after 127 games, with 28 left to play, Ruth had 43 home runs and Gehrig 41 — it looked like they’d both break 50, but not get much more.
Then Mama Gehrig took sick and was hospitalized. At the time, Lou was batting .382 with 151 RBIs. In the three weeks since his mother checked into St. Vincent’s, Lou has been so unnerved by her condition that in the last 19 games he’s hitting a paltry .254, with 1 home run and 8 RBIs.
During the same period of time, the Babe’s batted .368, with 10 homers and 27 RBIs. He’s also been walked 15 times.
While Gehrig still managed to break Ruth’s single season RBI record — he’s got 172 now, and he might have driven in 200 if his mother hadn’t gotten ill — this month has proven just how fragile Lou’s psyche is.
It’s hard to imagine the Babe ever becoming so worried about anything that he’d let it affect his batting for more than a game or two.
During today’s game it quickly becomes apparent that the fans in the stands are completely uninterested in anything other than Ruth’s at bats. There’s a constant mumble-mumble while the Washington Senators bat in the top of the first — it sounds like the audience at a theater before the curtain goes up.
Then Goose Goslin pops out to Koenig at short for the Senators’ third out, and the Stadium goes silent.
The curtain has gone up.
In the first inning, Tom Zachary, the Senators’ pitcher, doesn’t come close to the plate and walks Ruth on four pitches. The crowd practically boos him off the mound.
“If Zachary walks him again without giving him a single pitch to hit,” says Schoolboy, “he might not make it out of here alive.”
“If the fans don’t kill him, I will,” says Silent Bob Meusel, in one of his rare speaking roles this season.
In the fourth, Ruth just gets on top of a 1–1 pitch and singles to right.
The crowd applauds lightly, trying hard to hide their disappointment in the Babe for having only hit a single.
In the sixth, Ruth singles to right, again.
Once more there’s a smattering of polite applause. But everyone including Ruth knows that, as well as Tom Zachary is pitching, the Babe will only have one more appearance before the curtain comes down today.
The scene begins in the bottom of the eighth, with the score tied, 2–2.
With the Babe due up for what might be his last at bat, the entire Stadium is completely on edge. There hasn’t been this much tension at one of our games since last season, and Game 7 of the World Series.
“There aren’t enough shrinks in all of Manhattan to treat the anxiety pulsing through this joint,” whispers Schoolboy.
No one on the team has said a word above a whisper since the bottom of the sixth. Meanwhile, in between his at bats, the Babe has been pacing back and forth in our dugout like a caged animal.
Earle Combs starts off our half of the inning by quietly grounding out. Then Mark Koenig, batting in front of Ruth, smacks a triple down the left field line, and the energy in the Stadium begins to build.
As the Babe drops his warm-up bats and turns to walk to the plate, the Stadium comes to life. There’s only an audience of 10,000 today, but it sounds like 50,000.
“Knock the shit out of it, Babe!” shouts Bob Meusel.
Ruth stops in his tracks and turns around.
Even with thousands shouting, Meusel’s voice cuts through — because in his eight seasons with the Yankees, no one has ever heard Silent Bob shout before. Not even his pal, the Babe.
“Holy shit,” says Schoolboy.
“Holy shit,” says Benny.
“Holy shit,” says Sailor Bob.
Ruth looks into the dugout and points his bat at Silent Bob. Then he winks at all of us.
“Holy shit,” says Schoolboy.
“Holy shit,” says Benny.
“Holy shit,” says Sailor Bob.
Huggins, watching from his perch on the top step of the dugout, shakes his head. And then he smiles.
“Did you see that?” I ask Schoolboy, elbowing him in the ribs. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Huggins smile during a game.
“What the fuck is going on?” is all Schoolboy can say.
Up at the plate, Ruth takes Tom Zachary’s first pitch for a called strike.
“He’s measuring the bastard, to see what he’s got left in the tank,” says Silent Bob.
Zachary’s second offering is high and outside.
“Gutless,” says Silent Bob. “He’s gutless and nervous.”
No one else but Silent Bob is saying a word. The Stadium is as quiet as a tennis match.
Zachary winds up and throws.
The crack of Ruth’s bat sets off an explosion that lights up the Stadium, like a bolt of lightning. All of us — the fans in the stands and the players on both teams — rise as one, pulled out of our seats by the flight of the ball.
Ruth slowly leaves the batter’s box, taking his time to admire his handiwork. He lets his bat fall from his hands, as he has hundreds of times before — more than any man who has ever walked the earth — and slowly strides up the first base line.
Higher and higher the ball soars, as graceful as any bird has ever flown, until it finally finds its nest halfway up the grandstands in right field.
It’s not simply Ruth’s 60th home run. It’s immortality.
Players and fans alike know that we have just witnessed something that will outlive us all.
I’ve never felt so mortal in my life.
As Ruth walks out to right field for the top of the ninth, the Stadium once again rises and gives him another standing ovation.
The fans in right field wave their handkerchiefs in tribute. In return, the Babe stands at attention and presents them with a series of formal military salutes.
The game goes on.
But the play is done.
- Art Irwin, Polygamist
- Arthur Irwin and Kalamazoo Bats
- NEW YORK TIMES, July 21, 1921: “Irwin’s Double Life Bared By Suicide”.
- WILKES-BARRE RECORD, October 11, 1920: “East End Is Champion”.
- September 30, 1927: “Ruth Crashes 60th To Set New Record”. New York Times article and Box Score.
