Ben Bova: The Babe, the Iron Horse, and Mr. McGillicuddy

Mack took off his straw hat, used the back of his hand to mop his brow, and put the hat back on. “Well, Louis, it’s more that we choose not to. It just doesn’t seem right to me. We are, after all, on the side of the angels, Louis. I thought we ought to play the game the way it’s meant to be played.”

And Lou nodded in agreement, then turned to look up into the box seats, where the Babe sat, watching.

To the Babe’s credit, by the bottom of the first he was pretty much done with the hot dogs and beer and was limiting himself to an occasional peanut, carefully squeezing the shell to crack it, then breaking off the top half of the shell and tossing the nuts, nestled there in the bottom half, into his mouth.

But that was all, just the peanuts. Oh, and a sip of beer once in a while to wash them down. And just one more hot dog now and again.

But he was slowing down on the eating because, in truth, the game was beginning to bother him. He knew it was just some sort of exhibition, and so they were being a little easy on the rules and all, but not only were Comiskey’s guys substituting right and left, coming in and then out of the game whenever they seemed to want to, they were also playing a mean, vicious brand of ball.

In the top of the second, for instance, Ty Cobb, at the plate again even though he’d hit in the first and wasn’t due up, slashed a line drive into the gap in right that had stand-up double written all over it. The Negro kid in right, though, got a good jump on the ball and chased it down on the third hop, before it got to the warning track. Then he turned and fired to second, and it was suddenly a close play as the ball and Cobb approached the bag at the same time.

And damned if Ty didn’t come in with those spikes up high, trying to move the shortstop, that Rizzuto guy, off the bag or cut him if he stayed in. Rizzuto, to his credit, stood his ground, catching Aaron’s throw on the first hop and bringing the glove down in front of Cobb’s right foot as it approached the bag. Out.

But the left foot, up high, caught Rizzuto on the right calf, tearing right through the baggy flannel and cutting open a good six-inch gash that bled badly until the trainer, Bob Bauman from the Cardinals, trotted out from the dugout to get enough pressure on it to stop the flow.

Rizzuto limped off the field under his own power, but he was obviously in pain. Marty Marion, tall and lanky for a shortstop, came out to replace him. Cobb, glaring defiantly, watched it all, hands on hips, until Rizzuto left, then trotted into the Comiskey dugout to a few handshakes and back slaps from his teammates.

And in the bottom of the second Carl Mays hit two of Mack’s players. First he put a fastball into Aaron’s ribs, then he followed that up with another heater that caught Brooks Robinson on the left wrist. If Brooks hadn’t gotten that hand up in the way, the ball might have caught him in the face. There was an audible gasp from Mack’s dugout as the dull thwack of the ball hitting flesh echoed through the park. Then there were angry shouts, but Mays, imperious on the mound, ignored them, and Klem, behind the plate, bade the game go on.

The Babe, munching peanuts, scowled as he sat in the stands. It wasn’t right. He was starting to get downright mad about it. Okay, it wasn’t like Comiskey’s guys were a bunch of choir boys, they were rough, tough players, by God, and everybody knew it; but the Babe thought this game was meant to be for fun, for the love of the game and all that. Those guys shouldn’t be cutting each other up out there. They’re playing like it was a World Series, like their lives depended on it.

They took Mays out after Charlie Gehringer whacked a double down the right-field line. The Babe stared, wide-eyed, at Comiskey’s new pitcher. The guy had a beard! Must be from the House of David team. He was a southpaw, in to face Williams and then Lou.

Williams walked. Lou swung and missed a really wicked curve ball. The bearded left-hander grinned on the mound and yelled something the Babe didn’t quite catch, maybe in Spanish.

He tried his curve again. Wrong move. Lou smashed it way, way out there, so high and deep the ball disappeared into the bright sky. Three-run homer. That was all for the bearded left-hander.

But Comiskey’s guys started hitting, too. And slashing any infielder who got in their way. Durocher barreled into Charlie Gehringer at second on a routine double-play ball, knocked him flat. It was such a cheap shot that the Babe jumped out of his seat and yelled at Durocher as he trotted in from the field. Leo glanced up at the only man in the stands and seemed to look—embarrassed? The Babe sat down again, stunned at that.

The game went on, seesawing back and forth. The Babe would roar whenever Comiskey’s guys pulled one of their lousy stunts. It felt real good, in fact, to let the anger explode, tell those cheap-shot bums what bush-league bastards they were, get the juices flowing again like they hadn’t in a long, long time.

“By God,” the Babe muttered to himself, “if I weren’t so old, if I weren’t in such rotten shape, I’d go out there and teach those sonsabitches a lesson they wouldn’t forget.”

But he was old and fat and useless. And he knew it.

Then came the sixth inning.

A chunky right-hander named Wynn was pitching for Comiskey now. Lou was at the plate, and the Babe was thinking about all the good years he and Gehrig had put in together.

Truth be known, the Babe had always had mixed feelings about Lou. On the one hand, he envied the Dutchman a bit, that tight focus on the game, the way he always kept himself in shape, the reputation he had as a nice guy and a smart one, a real gentleman. In a lot of ways, the Babe wished he could have been more of a gentleman.

But, on the other hand, the Babe thought that Lou had always been so busy being nice that a lot of times he didn’t seem to be having much fun. The booze, the women, the highlife—it was all part of the fun, and if the game wasn’t fun, why play? My God, it ought to be fun, that was the whole point. Lou had always seemed so damned serious about everything, and that was too bad.

That was part of what was making the Babe so mad right now about these other fellows, these guys playing for Comiskey. The way they were playing was too low, too mean, for it to be any fun. They had forgotten what the game was about. It wasn’t life and death, it was baseball, for Christ’s sake, the joy of hitting, of catching and throwing the ball, or rounding third on a home-run trot, of sliding into second with a double, of just knocking the dirt off the cleats with the handle of the bat.

Ah, yes, the bat. Watching Lou take two balls low and away, then swing and hit a long foul ball out into the right field seats for a 2-1 count, the Babe could almost feel the way it was to hold his old Louisville Slugger, to swing it and make contact. He leaned back in his seat and stretched his arms out, opening and closing those meaty hands, tightening the arm muscles, feeling good in doing so.

He brought his hands together, made fists, placed the left fist over the right as if holding a bat, and brought the two fists back into a stance, as if he were waiting for a pitch, a good fastball out over the plate, rising, begging to be hit. He felt good doing it, real good, like a kid again, having fun.

“Damned if it wouldn’t feel good. Just one more time,” he said aloud, to no one in particular. “Damned if it wouldn’t.”

It was calming, thinking about that. The Babe almost forgot how infuriated he’d been by the rough play, when Wynn changed all that, almost forever. First he came inside on Lou for ball three, and then, while the Babe watched, horrified, Wynn—despite the count—brought in a rising fastball, high and tight, that caught Lou just above the ear and laid him out cold in the dirt.