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

two-hitter. In late September, his relief-aided 3–2 win over the second-place Tigers pretty much clinched first place.
    He finished the season with an 18–8 record on a staff that had five pitchers with 15 wins or more. His ERA was 2.44. He had 112 strikeouts, walked 84 batters. He also finished with a .315 batting average and four home runs. Number three was the only $5 shot for the suffragettes at Fenway, the second-longest home run ever hit in the park. Number four was in St. Louis, the longest homer in Sportsman’s Park history, over the right-field fence and across the street and through the window of a Chevrolet dealership. The league leader in home runs, outfielder Braggo Roth of the White Sox, had seven.
    In the World Series against the Phillies, the home games played at newly opened Braves Field off Commonwealth Avenue to handle larger crowds, Ruth never pitched. It wasn’t a great surprise, although he was said to be disappointed. The Red Sox won easily in five games, and Carrigan said years later that he never pitched Ruth because he simply had other, better pitchers at the time. He preferred right-handed pitchers against the slugging Cravath of the Phillies. He rejected the longtime rumor that Ruth never pitched in the Series due to disciplinary problems.
    The manager did not say that a disciplinary problem didn’t exist with the young pitcher.
     
    The 20-year-old Babe Ruth (who thought he was 21) was a kid let loose in the adult funhouse in 1915. He was loud. He was profane. Nights ended only when morning arrived. There was no such thing as ordinary self-discipline or self-control. Joe Lannin had jumped his salary to a very respectable $3,500 for the season. Money removed the last of few inhibitions. He was off to fill in all the blanks.
    Nothing mattered except the fun. Action. His first trip around the baseball circuit had been taken with bug-eyed wonder. Now he had an idea of what was out on the table—and it was time to grab.
    He and Helen rented an apartment in Cambridge in the shadow of Harvard University, and the fog moved in tight around their relationship. They would do things together, be seen in public, go to bowling parties and events, but he clearly had an outside paper route too, one that did not include her. Very early there was an accommodation for infidelities. What did she think about that? Fog.
    The later-distributed picture of his personal life was a mosaic of anecdote, rumor, speculation, exaggeration, and a headline every now and then. Exclamation points usually accompanied each addition. He liked to eat! He liked women! He used three swear words in every five words he spoke! There was a question about when he started drinking—teammate Harry Hooper said he never remembered Ruth drinking in Boston; other people did—but when he did start to drink, he liked to drink!
    Ernie Shore, the other young pitcher and a college graduate, did not last long as an early roommate. He said in public that he didn’t like Ruth using his toothbrush all the time. He said in private that he didn’t like a roommate who never flushed the toilet, who walked around naked, who never sat down, never slept. A pride for personal flatulence and exaggerated belches also was not an admired quality.
    The consumption of food was always a wonder. The emerging Babe liked his steaks uncooked and he liked them large. Helen told an interviewer that he would eat two large uncooked steaks at a sitting, consuming an entire bottle of chili sauce on the side. He would order piles of sandwiches when the train stopped in the night on the road, eat them in rapid order. He would eat six, eight, ten hot dogs at a time, wash them down with four, six, eight bottles of soda (“On Sunday we had three hot dogs, which we called “weenies…”). He would eat before the game, after the game, during the game, until Carrigan ruled there was no eating on the bench, and then Ruth snuck food into the clubhouse. He ate every day like a man