The House That Ruth Built

Who says my interests are not wide and varied?

Robert Weintraub “The House That Ruth Built”  Little Brown & Co., 2011, 376 pp.

On May 3, 1922 the agreement to begin construction of Yankee stadium at an initial estimate cost of $1.1 million, but a final cost of just over $2.5 million, was made--work began two days later.  Until the 1923 season the Yankees had been rental tenants at the Polo field of the Giants, sharing the same field.  But McGraw threw them out in the biggest mistake of his life.  This book mostly devotes itself to the humiliating defeat of the Yankees in the 1922 World Series (particularly Ruth’s dismal performance) as well as the entire 1923 baseball season of the Yankees and Giants culminating in their 1923 meeting in the brand spanking new Yankee stadium.  Of course the drama and history associated with this stadium all died when the Yankees moved to a new $2.3 billion structure built across the street ($1.2 billion came in the form of taxpayer subsidies.)  By mid-2010, there was barely anything left of the original House That Ruth Built.

I enjoyed the book even though I am no longer a fan of the current players.  I do still remain fascinated with the past eras containing players like Ruth—in fact, any era up to when-the-Braves-left-Milwaukee.  You could read the first chapters of this book and then skip to chapter 34 and avoid all the minute detail of the 23’ season.  I didn’t, but you may not be as strange as I.

Here is an inspiring paragraph about the Babe by writer Walter Camp:

 “Today he ranges over the right field territory like a shaggy buffalo endowed with the legs of an antelope; he throws to the bases with bullet-like speed and accuracy; he slides on a close play with all the abandon of an express train trying to make up lost time, and at bat he crashes his terrific home run to right field, crosses a wary infield with a delicate bunt, or shortens his grip and pokes singles and doubles to any field.”  (How about that use of semi-colons and commas?).

My Notes:

Pg. 15:  “I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had,” Ruth said from the distance of adulthood.  “Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore.”

Pg. 36:  The time before Babe Ruth became a New York Yankee in 1920, after the Red Sox’s sold him, was known as the dead-ball era.  Runs came at a premium, earned with difficulty through cunning, aggression, and patience.  The sacrifice hit, the stolen base, and the hit-and-run play were the pillars on which the game rested.  So too the spitball, taking the extra base, and sliding with spikes raised.  Then along came the Babe.  Ruth’s power at the plate combined with new rules that emphasized offense.  The sport enacted fundamental changes with more tightly wound baseballs, smudged balls tossed out of the game immediately in favor of whiter balls that were easier for the hitter to sea.  Trick pitches that required foreign substances, like the spitball, the emery ball, and the mud ball, were banned.  Taken cumulatively, the effect was explosive: scientific baseball was on the wane, power baseball on the upswing (pun intended). 

Pg. 80:  McGraw called all the Giant’s pitches from the bench.  They used different hand positions on a bat to signal the pitch to the pitcher and catcher. 

Pg. 125:  McGraw was the highest-paid figure in baseball in 1923; he made $65,000, not including stock dividends from his roughly 25 percent share of the Giants.  The Babe got $52,000 that year.

Pg. 214: Casey Stengel had studied dentistry before becoming a ballplayer, to the point where his friends called him “Doctor.”  Calling upon his training, Stengel chased after Weinert to attempt extracting his teeth.  It took two policemen to wrestle Casey off the field as he screamed curses over his shoulder.  Such scrappiness won McGraw’s heart.

Pg. 268:  The first legal Sunday game in New York wasn’t held until 1919.  Sunday baseball was a major success, and the cities that didn’t allow it, like Philadelphia and Boston, were at a major financial disadvantage.

Pg. 314:  Tickets for the 1923 World Series cost $6.60 for box seats; $5.50 for lower grandstand reserved seats; $3.30 for upper deck mezzanine, and unreserved seats; and $1.10 for the bleachers, or “sun seats.”   At this time, women seldom attended; one estimate had fewer than 150 women in attendance for Game One (this would rapidly change).

Pg. 348:  Despite its name, polo was never played at the Polo Grounds.  The original park, built in 1876, had been home to polo matches, and the name was thereafter given to any place the Giants called home.