By Marty Appel<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chicago Cubs, buoyed by a heritage that had the poem \u201cTinker to Evers to Chance\u201d in the minds of fans everywhere, had seen the Frank Chance era end in 1912, followed by a stretch of mostly second-division finishes save for pennants stretched apart in 1918 and 1929. (Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance were lauded infielders on the Cubs of the 1900s). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joe McCarthy, never having worn a major league uniform, had been brought in to manage in 1926, and in 1929, took the Cubs to a 98-win season before losing the World Series in five games to the Philadelphia Athletics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Losing did not sit well with Cubs\u2019 owner William Wrigley Jr., nor with Cubs fans, who were tough on McCarthy throughout the 1930 season. Growing disillusioned with his situation, McCarthy let it be known to a few sportswriters that 1930 would be his last year with the Cubs. He resigned with four games left in the season, and was succeeded by hitting great Rogers Hornsby. The Cubs then finished third in 1931, and led the league in attendance, while McCarthy signed with the Yankees. They had now gone 24 years without a world championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hornsby was not an easy guy to play for, perhaps because the game came to him more easily than the men he managed and his patience could wear slim. His reign would be brief. He managed the 1932 Cubs for just 99 games, and was fired on August 3 with the team in second place, five games out of first. The players voted him no World Series share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was replaced by affable, banjo-playing first-baseman Charlie \u201cJolly Cholly\u201d Grimm, 33, and the Cubs immediately won seven of nine to move into first place, and then reeled off a 14-game winning streak, capturing their sixth National League pennant. Under Grimm, the team went 37-18. Its 1.5 million attendance then stood as a major league record for 14 years. But their .584 percentage was the second lowest ever for a National League pennant winner, so they were hardly going to be favorites in the World Series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grimm was a well-liked figure in baseball, and this would be his first managerial assignment. (He went on to manage for 19 years). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wrigley Field, in its 19th<\/sup> season, did not yet have ivy on its outfield walls, and its big centerfield scoreboard would be replaced five years later by the one that essentially sits there today. For the World Series, temporary bleachers in left and right field were added atop scaffolding over Waveland and Sheffield Avenues, as had been the case for the 1929 Series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0The Yankees won the first two games of the Series, and then the scene shifted to Chicago.\u00a0 On Saturday afternoon, October 1, the temperature at game time was 78, there was a mix of sun and clouds over the field and a Chicago-like steady wind.\u00a0 A grandstand seat cost $5.50, (costly, during the Great Depression) the game began at 3 pm, and the Cubs had no problem selling out.\u00a0 Wrote John Drebinger in the New York Times<\/em>, \u201cChicago puts a great deal more fervor in its baseball than does New York.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A paid crowd of 49,986 turned out, taunting Babe Ruth, and tossing lemons his way. The Chicago Tribune\u2019s<\/em> Westbrook Pegler, on the field for batting practice, quoted Ruth as yelling at the Cubs, \u201cYou mugs are not going to see the Yankee Stadium any more this year. The World Series is going to be over {tomorrow}. Four straight!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charlie Root, who hadn\u2019t pitched in two weeks, was the Cubs\u2019 starter. His teammates Guy Bush and Burleigh Grimes led the heckling from the Cubs\u2019 dugout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth, 37, and in his 19th season, had never played a game in Wrigley before, and during batting practice (in which he hit a reported nine home runs), he said, \u201cI\u2019ll play for half of my salary if I could hit in this dump all the time.\u201d (Ironically, he had actually faced the Cubs in the 1918 World Series \u2013 as a pitcher with the Red Sox \u2013 but those games had been shifted to Comiskey Park for its larger capacity.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the start of the game, players from both teams marched in with a large American flag, and New York\u2019s governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, running for president, threw out the first pitch from his seat. Although they carried the flag together, there were bad feelings between the two clubs, largely over former Yankees\u2019 third baseman Mark Koenig being voted only a half share of World Series money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Koenig, a member of the legendary Murderer\u2019s Row lineup, had been traded to Detroit in May, 1930 and purchased by the Cubs on August 5, 1932, just as Grimm became manager. In 51 days with the Cubs, he played 33 games, and batted a zesty .353, delivering some key pennant stretch hits. A half-share for under two months was not unusual then, or now, but the Yankees chose to show support for their old pal and let the Cubs (\u201ccheapskates!!\u201d) know it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Called Shot Home Run\u201d, forever to be a part of baseball lore, was accomplished just after 4 pm. With the count 2-and-2, Ruth pointed his bat at the heckling Cubs dugout, held two fingers aloft, and proceeded to hit one that settled under the Wrigley scoreboard, the longest home run ever hit to that point in that park. (Roberto Clemente, not thought of as a tape-measure homer guy, surpassed it in 1959, and others since.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Warren Brown of the Herald-Examiner<\/em>, thought the ball might have landed in a booth under the scoreboard, since there was no mad scramble for it. (The ball has never been produced.) But the fans went wild, knowing they had seen \u201ca moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did he \u201ccall\u201d his shot?\u201d There was no definitive consensus, just a lot of speculation and conflicting stories in the days long before replay. Gabby Hartnett, catching, thought he heard Ruth say something like \u201cIt only takes one to hit it,\u201d and denied he pointed to the bleachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth, by then a master at publicity and promotion, never suggested that he hadn\u2019t called the home run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grimm, the Cubs\u2019 manager, said Ruth was pointing at Root. Koenig said he pointed, but \u201cYou know darn well a guy with two strikes isn\u2019t going to say he\u2019s going to hit a home run on the next pitch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI give him the benefit of the doubt but I don\u2019t think he actually pointed to center field. I think he was acknowledging that he had two strikes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The media was hardly in agreement on what happened, some ignoring it altogether, others like Pegler and Drebinger, acknowledging it immediately. Red Smith of the St. Louis Star<\/em> only made note of the abuse showered on Ruth and his signaling balls and strikes in mock gestures. Years later, Newsday<\/em> columnist Stan Isaacs surveyed the available coverage and decided that the prominence given to the event by some, especially Joe Williams of the New York World-Telegram<\/em>, (headline: Ruth Calls Shot As He Puts Home Run No. 2 in Side Pocket\u201d) led others, including Grantland Rice, to play catch-up and embrace the story in the days that followed. Paul Gallico wrote \u201c\u2026the point is, he didn\u2019t miss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, present with his father as a 12-year old, said \u201cHe\u2026hit the ball out of the park after he pointed with his bat\u2026.it really happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Root maintained Babe never pointed to the bleachers. \u201cIf he had, I\u2019d have hit him the ribcage,\u201d he said. (Guy Bush hit him on the wrist the next day. He would later give up Babe\u2019s 714th<\/sup> and last home run).<\/p>\n\n\n\n And 16 years later, still sticking to his story, Root turned down a request to play himself in The Babe Ruth Story<\/em> movie, saying \u201cI won\u2019t be a party to a falsehood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Said Grimm in his 1968 autobiography, \u201cLet\u2019s face it \u2013 a great guy hit that homer, the greatest slugger of all time.\u00a0 And if you want to believe he really planned it that way, you just go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Marty Appel The Chicago Cubs, buoyed by a heritage that had the poem \u201cTinker to Evers to Chance\u201d in the minds of fans everywhere, had seen the Frank Chance era end in 1912, followed by a stretch of mostly… Continue Reading