Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox: Babe Ruth and the World Champion Boston Red Sox - Softcover

Wood, Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595148263 ISBN 13: 9780595148264

Publisher: iUniverse Star, 2000

Synopsis

1918. The date resonates with every Boston Red Sox fan the year their team won its last World Series championship. But beyond the franchise's legendary curse, what is known of the men who were crowned baseball's best on September 11, 1918?During that tumultuous summer, the Great War in Europe cast an ominous shadow over the national game, as enlistments and the draft wreaked havoc with every team's roster. Players and owners fought bitterly over contracts and revenue, the parks were infested with gamblers, and the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs almost called off the World Series. And a Boston player known as The Colossus 23-year-old Babe Ruth began his historic transformation from pitching ace to the game's greatest slugger.Allan Wood has written the first complete account of Boston's last champions, mining 80 years of history and illuminating the season in which the Red Sox won an unprecedented fifth World Series title. And befitting a modern-day Red Sox fan's pessimism, Wood poses a chilling question: Was the 1918 World Series fixed?

About this title

About the Author

Allan Wood began rooting for the Red Sox in 1975 while growing up in Vermont. He has been writing professionally since age 16, and has worked as both a sportswriter and a music critic. His writing has appeared in Baseball America, New York Newsday, Rolling Stone, Sportsjones and the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, among other publications. He lives in New York City with Laura Kaminker and their two dogs

Reviews

The 1918 season was momentous for the Red Sox. It was played under wartime restrictions; it saw their fifth World Series crown the last to date; and the Bambino began to change from ace pitcher to slugging outfielder. Wood, a Red Sox fan and sportswriter, backtracks to George Herman Ruth's youth as a rebellious urchin who was reoriented to his Hall of Fame career under a mentor at a Baltimore orphanage. Wood proceeds to provide an admiring story of the Red Sox triumph, despite depleted rosters and threats of a government shutdown and players' strike. Sure to attract Boston area libraries and most sports collections elsewhere. Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tucson, AZ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Victory

It was a fastball, a waste pitch left too far out over the plate. As soon as it left George Tyler s left hand, Babe Ruth picked up the ball s rotation, and his eyes lit up.

With a sharp intake of breath, the young Boston Red Sox slugger stepped into the pitch. In his mind, the crowd at Fenway Park 20,000 fans, staring, howling, imploring fell away to silence as he cut the air with a ferocious swing. All he heard was hard wood hitting old leather.

It sounded like a rifle shot. The ball went screaming over the second baseman s head, not rising more than 10 feet off the ground. In right field, Max Flack of the Chicago Cubs took one step in then suddenly realized his mistake. He turned his back to the infield and started running as fast as he could. He leapt, but the ball sailed over his glove, bounced once and banged up against the bleacher fence.

Fenway Park erupted. Straw hats sailed through the air. Scorecards and bags of peanuts flew skyward. Men slapped each other on the back and cheered their hero with lusty, proprietary roars. On the field, everyone was in motion: Flack chasing the ball to deep right field, Dode Paskert sprinting over from center, Charlie Pick coming out from second base to relay the outfielder s throw, Charlie Deal straddling third base, watching the action unfold. Boston runners George Whiteman and Stuffy McInnis crossed the plate, both turning to watch Ruth tearing around second, dead set on third.

Babe slid hard into the bag safe! Deal tossed the ball back to Tyler. The crowd yelled even louder. Ruth stood on the bag, hands on his hips, the ovation echoing in his ears. What a remarkable season it had been for the 23-year-old Boston pitcher. His dreams of playing every day finally had been taken seriously and he had thrived. His name had begun appearing in newspaper headlines around the country and hundreds of people came out to games for no other reason than to see him in uniform. For seven weeks in July and August, he achieved a streak of sustained excellence unmatched in baseball history. It was fitting that Ruth s first World Series hit was a triple, because deep in his heart, Babe knew that nothing felt better than smacking a three-bagger with men on base.

As Tyler walked slowly back to the center of the diamond with his head down, the triple was replayed in 20,000 minds and its importance began to sink in. The Red Sox now held a 2-0 lead in Game Four of the 1918 World Series. Boston would go on to win the game 3-2, widening its lead over Chicago to three games to one.

Two days later, on September 11, the Red Sox won their third World Series championship in four years, their fourth in seven seasons, and became the first team ever to win five World Series titles. Of course, none of the 15,238 people in Fenway Park that Wednesday afternoon could have known the significance that Game Six victory would eventually hold. If they had, they might not have filed out so quietly afterwards, their overcoats buttoned against the early autumn chill. If any of those fans could have foreseen the future, they might have lingered a little longer, tried to burn a stronger imprint of the game into their minds.

Exactly two months later, the Great War in Europe would come to an end. No one could imagine that after that beleaguered 1918 season a summer in which the eventual champions battled clubhouse dissensions, threats of a players strike, the bumbling ineffectiveness of the game s ruling body, a possible shut-down of the game by the government, and a tragic, untimely death Red Sox fans would wait and wait and wait now 82 years and counting for another World Series title.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse Star
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0595148263
• ISBN 13: 9780595148264
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 438