Art Rust's Weekly Round Up

Changing of the Guards?

Joe Torre said last week that he’s unhappy with George Steinbrenner for meddling in the demotion of Jose Contreras. The Yankee skipper, who claims the boss told him to handle the situation, told the reliever that he was being sent to Columbus, only to have general manager Brian Cashman, on George’s orders, send Contreras to Tampa.

I’ll reminisce about the future and project that this will be Torres last year as manager – whether it should be or not…

Look for Lee Mazzilli to become the next Yankee Pilot.

Reflections on Babe Ruth (Part 1)

…I remember the continuing argument between my father and his friends about the racial “purity” of George Herman “Babe” Ruth. The first time I saw Babe was when I was just a little kid – as I mentioned before, opening day at the Polo Grounds, 1935. Then I saw him as a first-base coach with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938 at Polo Grounds. Over the years I recall his rasping voice on the radio. The next time I saw him was in 1947 on Madison Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. Ruth was wearing his luxurious camel’s hair coat and matching cap. I walked up to him wearing my awed expression and shouted, “Hi, Babe Ruth.” He looked at me, surrendered a faint smile, and with that gravelly voice responded, “Hey, kid! How you doing?” He shook my hand and then he walked on. I was in a trance for days. After I finally settled down, I distinctly recalled that he looked like a lighter-hued replica of my Uncle Johnny. That broad face, large flattened nostrils, full lips – and I remembered the spindly legs that supported that massive body and thought that maybe my father’s friends were right. Maybe the Babe was just a “high yallow” black guy. I didn’t believe it, even though I wanted to. Ruth certainly wasn’t acknowledging it. In fact he went out of his way to deny the almost constant harassment about his heritage that plagued him throughout his career.

Any opposing team could get his goat. The bench jockies had a field day with him. Bench jockies would yell from the dugout, “Hey, nigger, can’t you play today?” “Say, nigger, what part of dark town you gonna be in tonight?” Stoically Ruth would respond with amazing calm. “Listen you guys, call me anything, but don’t call me nigger.”

Ty Cobb, Detroit Tiger outfielder and KKK member, refused to stay in a hunting lodge with Ruth when they went on a special trip together. Ty, the old racist, said he had never slept under the same roof with a “nigger” and he certainly wasn’t going to do so at that time, especially not in his hometown of Georgia.
When Ruth was playing winter game in the Caribbean, he berated the darker-complexioned players and called them niggers and incompetent. His biographers swear up and down that he was truly pure white, and perhaps they are correct. According to the writer he was born to an upper-poor-class family in Baltimore who owned a small restaurant catering to those of German descent. Because of the constant pressure of a mom and pop business, Ruth was out on his own at an early age. His frequent skirmishes with the law finally led his family to place him in St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys of the City of Baltimore, where he remained from 1902 until 1914 (with occasional visits home).

Come back next week for part 2….