The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

by Lawrence S. Ritter

Some people still have it fixed in their minds that the reason I didn’t break Ruth’s record was, because I was Jewish, the ballplayers did everything they could to stop me. That’s pure baloney. The fact of the matter is quite the opposite: so far as I could tell, the players were mostly rooting for me, aside from the pitchers.

Anyway, it really doesn’t matter too much as far as I’m concerned. Roger Maris and Hank Aaron broke Ruth’s home-run records, but nobody pays much attention and rightfully so. Babe Ruth was the ultimate home-run hitter of his time and of all time. He was the greatest player in the history of the game, and whether someone breaks this home-run

record or that one can’t change that fundamental truth.

Gives you an idea of how wild Feller was, a right-handed pitcher throwing behind a left-handed batter. Later he developed a terrific curve and then he was just unhittable. You couldn’t hit the curve so you’d wait for the fastball, but that would be by you before you knew what happened!

Del Baker was our manager that year. Cochrane had been let go in 1938. Baker, remember, had been my manager with Beaumont in the Texas League back in 1932. Del’s claim to fame was that he was an expert sign stealer. I mean he could stand on the third-base coaching lines and read a catcher’s signs or pick up on a pitcher’s mannerisms and let you know in advance what

kind of pitch was coming: fastball or curve or what have you.

World War II came along the next year and that was the end of my baseball career for four and a half years. Hugh Mulcahy was the first and I was the second major-league

league ballplayer to go into the armed forces. I was drafted into the Army on May 7, 1941, and didn’t get back into baseball until July of 1945. I was 30 years old and at the peak of my career when I left, and 34 years old and a bit shopworn when I got back.

I rejoined the Tigers on July 1, 1945, and I had the two biggest thrills of my whole career that season. One was on my first day back, July 1st: 50,000 people came to the ball park to welcome me home and I hit a home run that day to help win the game.

doubt if I really earned my salary on the field that year, even though I hit 25 home runs and drove in about 75 runs. I brought in a lot of money at the gate, however, and I think I earned my pay

by training my own successor, so to speak. I worked a lot with Ralph Kiner, who was still a baby then, and helped him become the great home-run hitter he eventually became. I still feel as close to Ralph as if he were my own son.

After I finished playing, I had a whole second career on the management level. I met Bill Veeck at the 1947 World Series, found a kindred spirit, and joined him in the Cleveland Indians’ front office in 1948.

When Veeck became ill and had to sell the White Sox in 1961, I had an opportunity to increase my stock ownership and acquire a majority interest in the club. After a lot of thought, I finally decided against it. What tipped

the scales against buying was the other owners: I recognized then that there was a lot of prejudice against me. I’d have had my life savings tied up in the club, and I realized that if I ever needed any help, I sure wouldn’t get it from my fellow owners. It would be closed ranks against me. Strangely enough, that was the first time anti-Semitism really affected me adversely in baseball.

You want to talk about real bigotry, that was what Jackie Robinson had to contend with in 1947. Teammates asking to be traded rather than play with him, opponents threatening to strike rather than play against him; in many places he couldn’t eat or

sleep with the rest of the team. I never encountered anything like that.