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

consequence for Ruth: it put him into the Red Sox pitching rotation. A spare part in spring training at Hot Springs, Arkansas, destined to pitch during stretches of doubleheaders and from the bullpen, he had been given the start that day owing to injuries (Carl Mays, Dutch Leonard, and Smokey Joe Wood) and ineffectiveness (Ray Collins). A well-regarded pitching staff had become vulnerable during the first month of the season.
    Ruth’s complete-game performance in 13 innings against the Yankees, even though it ended with a 4–3 loss, was enough to give manager-catcher Bill Carrigan confidence in him. He moved into the rotation and stayed.
    The pitcher who had emerged from that first professional year in Baltimore-Boston-Providence-Boston was not a Jack Warhop stylist. The players who faced him said that he threw with an easy three-quarters delivery and threw hard. He definitely was a fastball pitcher. His fastball had a late hop, a jump when it crossed the plate. He had a solid curveball, mixed in a changeup every once in a while, and had just enough wildness to make a batter feel uncomfortable. He was not afraid to throw at a person’s head—Carrigan would yell from behind the plate when it was coming—and was not afraid of consequences.
    “He looked like a prizefighter on the mound,” Del Pratt of the St. Louis Browns, later a teammate, said. “That was the way he was built.”
    The batters he faced pretty much were nameless. The ADHD meant he had trouble with names throughout his life, busy-busy-busy, never taking time to remember them. He didn’t remember the names of most teammates, much less the opposition. (Anyone under a certain age was named “Kid,” pronounced “keed.” Anyone over that age was “Doc.”) Conferences before the game, the little meetings to discuss strategies, were meaningless.
    Carrigan would try, gathering everyone together, going down the lineup of a team like the Detroit Tigers. Ruth would answer how he would attack each hitter.
    “Bush…”
    “Fastball up and inside. Curveball, low and away.”
    “Vitt…”
    “Fastball up and inside. Curveball, low and away.”
    “Cobb…”
    “Fastball up and inside. Curveball, low and away.”
    “Crawford…”
    “Fastball up and inside…”
    And so it went.
    He would recognize stances and quirks, remember who had done what in previous at-bats; he just couldn’t remember the names and dates. He played the games, didn’t talk about them, ran on high emotion, and, again, threw the ball hard. It didn’t matter who was hitting if the ball was thrown fast and to the proper spot.
    On his bad days he was troubled by wildness, and also he tired sometimes in the late innings. He was emotional too when he worked, and that sometimes got him in trouble. (The day he hit his second home run and the Yankees intentionally walked him twice, he kicked a bench in frustration. His broken toe kept him off the mound for the next two weeks.)
    “[Ruth] possesses a wonderful arm and a world of stuff, strength galore, and overwhelming eagerness to be in the game,” Paul Shannon of the
Boston Post
had written in a 1915 preseason analysis of the Red Sox. “The Red Sox have a splendid prospect, but one who lacks a knowledge of real ‘inside baseball.’ Manager Carrigan is confident that he can teach him, and if so he will be a great acquisition to the corps.”
    That was exactly the way the season played out.
    Carrigan tried to pitch Ruth mostly against the second-division clubs in the first two-thirds of the season—part of the learning—then let him pitch against the better clubs in the final third. Ruth delivered, pitching his best baseball in a pennant drive that at one point had the Red Sox winning 19 of 21 games.
    He outlasted the famed Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators, 4–3, easily beat the Browns, 4–1, pitched a terrific no-decision against the Tigers, leaving the game with a 1–1 score in the ninth, stymied the White Sox with a