The Selling of the Babe by Glenn Stout

Hoblitzell came around or Barrow came up with another solution. There was no indication at the time that the move was permanent, or that it was the result of some great revelation or grand design—those claims, by Barrow, Hooper, and others, would come years later. For now, all it meant was that Hoblitzell was hurt, Ruth was left-handed, and someone had to play first, so it might as well be the Babe. He hit sixth.
    Once again, Ruth won the headlines even though the Red Sox lost the game. The one in the Globe read “Ruth Starts Rally, but Red Sox Lose.”
    Ruth’s noise came in the fourth after Wally Schang—usually a catcher, he was pressed into service in left field—doubled. Stuffy McInnis, up next, did what he was supposed to according to the widely accepted baseball strategy of the time and tried to move the runner to third with a bunt—it mattered not who was up next, be it Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb. It backfired, as he bunted straight back to the pitcher, George Mogridge. He put out Schang at third, leaving McInnis at first.
    Ruth did not try to move the runner along. Neither did he simply try to make contact. He tried to hit the hell out of the ball. And he did.
    The bat met the ball square and Ruth lifted a drive to right, not straight down the line but 40 or 50 feet fair and leaving the park, not where the fence was only 258 feet away, but where it was closer to 330, near where the second deck ended. The ball crashed into the low-hanging second deck, which was only a few feet farther back than the fence, the front facade only about 40 feet above the field of play. There, according to Macbeth in the New York Tribune , it “knocked the back out of the seat.”
    In regard to Ruth’s home runs in the Polo Grounds, it’s important to remember that during his time there the second deck in right did not completely enclose the field of play, but stopped at a point estimated to be somewhere around 340 and 350 feet from home. That’s significant, because at the end of the second deck the right field wall angled steeply toward center, and a ball that would otherwise reach the second deck, but struck another 30 or 40 feet more toward center field, would fall 60 or 70 feet shy of leaving the ballpark. In almost every instance, a ball hit into the right field bleachers past the grandstand was a longer drive than one into the upper deck.
    Wherever it hit, it counted, and Ruth’s drive gave Boston a brief lead. But Carl Mays quickly gave the runs right back and plenty more. He was pulled in the fifth and Boston fell 10–3, the only remaining excitement coming in the sixth, when Ruth pulled the ball over the roof of the grandstand, sending the crowd to its feet before they watched the fly ball curve foul, a drive that probably traveled less than his earlier home run, but appeared more impressive. Such was hitting at the Polo Grounds—a ball hit 260 feet but pulled hard down the line could fall for a home run, and a much more solid blast of 400 feet, pulled but not pulled hard, could fall short of the fence. Little wonder that as Ruth grew and matured as a hitter, he became ever more adept at pulling the ball. You got more mileage that way.
    Sitting together in a box just off the field were Harry Frazee and Jacob Ruppert. The two men already knew each other from league business and both kept offices in New York and held the same opinion of Ban Johnson. If the earlier rumor of an offer for Ruth was true, it was likely discussed, and if Frazee had simply been floating the notion, on this day Ruth’s performance gave him the opportunity to bring it up again.
    At any rate, Ruth was certainly the object of conversation, for as Paul Shannon of the Boston Post noted, “Babe Ruth remains the hitting idol of the Polo Grounds.”
    After the game, the Red Sox and Ruth took a train to Washington and the next day faced off against the Senators’ ace, Walter Johnson. The Red Sox,