Free The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville Page A

homer—certainly not the Babe—that this was a first baby step in that direction. Like most home runs of the era, it seemed to be another odd confluence of physical forces wrapped in a good bit of luck. No one
tried
for home runs, they just happened—something like lightning striking the oak tree on the lawn.
    The leading home run hitters a year earlier had been Frank “Home Run” Baker of the A’s in the American League with eight and Gavvy Cravath of the Philadelphia Phillies with 18 in the National. The Red Sox as a team had hit 17. The total number of home runs in the American League was 160, an average of 20 per team.
    The balls were not made for home runs. They also were scuffed up, roughed up, spit upon, and used for as many as 100 pitches in a game. The bats, heavy and thick through the handle, were not made for home runs. The mind was not made for home runs. A line drive was perfection. A fly ball was a mistake. A bunt was a grand strategic tool. Batting average was the true test of a player’s worth.
    “The little things of baseball are all important,” F. C. Lane declared in
Baseball America
in 1913, a statement of strategic thinking. “And whether or not they seem sensible to the veteran player, who is inclined to view all scientific analysis of his work as so much bunk, there is in reality no more fascinating theme in the whole range of sport.”
    Frank Baker, whose “Home Run” nickname came from a pair of important home runs in the 1911 World Series, never hit more than 12 in a season. He was asked years later how many he might have hit if he had played a year under the conditions that developed.
    “I’d say 50,” he said. “The year I hit 12, I also hit the right-field fence at Shibe Park 39 times.”
    The home run was such an oddity in 1913 that just that day in Boston, Gertrude Halladay Leonard, chairman of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, had issued a curious proposition for the members of both the Red Sox and the Boston Braves.
    For the two-fold purpose of showing our sincere interest in the good work of our home teams and of identifying the home teams with the equal suffrage movement in Massachusetts in the minds of all lovers of our national game, we desire to make the following offer, good for the entire season:
    For every home run made on the home grounds by a home player during this season the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association will mail a check for $5, payable to the player.
    Five bucks for catching lightning in a bell jar. Five bucks for hitting a ball over the fence. The suffragettes—the “suffs”—were looking for some publicity and some support in their effort to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, women’s right to vote, which was part of the coming state elections. Little did they know they were on the first floor of a second cultural revolution.
    The announcement of the beginning was in the
New York Times
the next day.
    “Mr. Edison has been of great service to his country and to the world,” the
Times
editorialized on page 12. “Besides his improvement in the means of telegraphic communication, the incandescent lamp, the phonograph in all its forms, and the kinetoscope, which made the moving picture possible, are directly due to his wonderful skill as an originator or adaptor.”
    “He [Ruth] put his team in the running by smashing a mighty rap into the upper tier of the right-field grand stand,” the
Times
said on page 11. “Ruth also had two other hits to his credit.”
    Twenty-seven days later, back at the Polo Grounds, the confrontation was repeated, Warhop on the mound, Ruth at the plate. In the second inning, man on first, Ruth unloaded a longer, higher shot into the right-field grandstand. This was number two. Yankees manager Wild Bill Donovan ordered him walked intentionally his next two times at the plate. The amusement of men, women, and children had begun.
     
    The May 6 game, the day he hit his first homer, also had a more immediate