Babe & Me Read online

  The game was still tied after six innings. Ordinarily, six innings is all we play in our league. But if the score is tied at the end of six, we’re allowed to play an extra inning—as long as the seventh inning doesn’t start more than two hours after the game began. Those are league rules.

  The sun was starting to set. The umpire told both coaches he would have to call the game in fifteen minutes on account of darkness. They’re always worried that some kid might not see the ball in the dark and get hurt.

  Coach Zippel whispered to our pitcher, Casey Tyler, to throw the ball over the plate and try to make the Surgeons hit it. The faster we could get them out, the sooner we would get our turn at bat. We rushed out on the field, and I took my position at third base.

  Fortunately, the first two Surgeons both swung at Casey’s first pitches. One of them hit a pop-up to me at third, and the other grounded out to second. Two outs. Their next batter struck out on four pitches.

  We dashed to our bench. We had ten minutes, tops, to score a run and win the game. Otherwise, it would go in the books as a tie. I grabbed a batting helmet and my batting gloves. I would be up second.

  “Go up there swinging, kids,” Coach Zippel instructed us. “We’ve got to score a run now.”

  Kevin Dougrey led off for us. He swung at the first pitch, too, and hit a dinky grounder to third. It should have been an easy out, but the third baseman didn’t get his glove down and the ball glanced off the webbing. Kevin was safe at first.

  “Nice hit, Kev!” Kevin’s mom shouted from the “mom” section of the bleachers. Mrs. Dougrey was clueless about baseball. She doesn’t realize it’s no great achievement to reach first base on an error.

  But at least we had a base runner. I picked out my favorite bat and hustled up to the plate. I didn’t want the ump to stop the game in the middle of my at bat.

  “Whack it, Joey!”

  I could tell from the sound of the voice that it was my mom. I scanned the leftfield foul line to check the “mom” section. She wasn’t there. I spotted her sitting closer to home plate. That was odd. She gave me a little wave and gestured with her hand to her right.

  I looked to the right of Mom. Sitting next to Mom was…

  Dad!

  Huh?

  I stepped out of the batter’s box and asked the umpire for time out. Dad had never come to one of my Little League games before. I shook my head to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It was Dad all right. He flashed me a thumbs-up.

  “Let’s go, Joe!” hollered Coach Zippel. “He’s gonna stop the game any minute.”

  “Are you okay, son?” the umpire asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, getting back into the batter’s box. Thoughts were flying through my mind. What was my dad doing here? Were Mom and Dad getting back together again? Or were they just sitting together to make me feel good? I tried to put it all out of my mind and focus on the pitcher.

  “Smash it, Stoshack!” one of my teammates yelled from the bench.

  “Five minutes, coaches!” yelled the umpire. “It’s getting dark out here.”

  “No batter, no batter,” one of the Orthopedic Surgeons hollered.

  I looked over to Coach Zippel. He touched the brim of his cap with his left hand. That’s our bunt sign.

  Bunt?

  That took me by surprise. The last time I bunted, the coach told me I’d made a big mistake. He told me what a good hitter I was and said I should have swung away. Now he was telling me to lay down a bunt? It didn’t make sense.

  I looked over at Coach Zippel again just to make sure I had the sign right. He touched the brim of his cap with his left hand again. Yeah, he wanted me to bunt.

  I thought about the situation. Kevin was on first base with nobody out. Casey Tyler would be coming to bat after me, and he was the best hitter on our team. If I laid down a quick bunt and advanced Kevin to second base, he would be able to score on a single by Casey. But if I got a single, Kevin wouldn’t be able to score all the way from first. He would only make it to third, and the umpire could stop the game at any time.

  I had to admit Coach Zippel’s strategy made a certain amount of sense.

  I set my feet in the batter’s box. The pitcher looked in for his sign. As he went into his windup, I squared around to bunt.

  The pitch came in. It was perfect, right down the heart of the plate. When you’re swinging the bat well, the ball looks bigger and slower, for some reason. It looked like a big, fat melon floating up to me in slow motion. Or an ice cream sundae. With marshmallow sauce.

  What a shame it would be to waste such a juicy pitch on a dinky little bunt.

  Attack the ball! That’s what Coach Zippel always tells us when we have batting practice. Pretend the ball is your worst enemy. The schoolyard bully. That cousin you hate. This is your chance to teach them a lesson. Attack!

  I couldn’t resist. I attacked.

  I brought my bat back far and whipped it through the strike zone as hard as I could. I swung so hard that I almost fell down.

  Somehow, I made contact, and it felt good.

  Sometimes when I hit the ball, the vibration from the bat stings my hands. There was no sting this time. I hit it right on the sweet spot. The ball took off toward rightfield.

  At first I didn’t think it had much distance. But then the ball got up into the wind and it carried. I took off for first.

  Nobody has ever hit a ball out of Dunn Field. When I saw the rightfielder backpedaling, I knew I had a chance.

  “Go!” my teammates were shouting. “Go!”

  The rightfielder had his back against the fence. The ball was over his head. It made it over the Moyer Dry Cleaning sign. Over the Karjane Hardware sign. Over the Biros Used Cars sign at the top of the fence.

  Then it sailed out of Dunn Field and everybody went nuts.

  There was a bang in the parking lot behind the field. A bunch of little brothers and sisters went running off to retrieve the ball.

  They can never say that nobody ever hit a ball out of Dunn Field again, I thought, because I just did.

  I slapped hands with the first-base coach. The kid playing shortstop for the other team didn’t shake my hand or anything, but he did say “Nice smack!” when I jogged past. Then I high-fived our third-base coach. The Yellow Jackets mobbed me when I jumped on home plate with both feet.

  “Okay, let’s call it a game,” the umpire announced.

  My heart was pumping so fast and I was on such a high that I couldn’t think straight. Everybody was shouting and pounding me on the back and taking pictures of me. The little girl who’d retrieved the ball came over with a pen and actually asked me to sign it for her.

  I saw Dad coming down from the bleachers to congratulate me, but Coach Zippel got to me first. He put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Boy, you bunt hard,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Coach,” I replied. “The pitch was coming in like a big lollipop and I just couldn’t resist taking a cut at it.”

  “It’s okay, Joe,” the coach said. “It worked out for the best. Who taught you to swing like that?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. My dad was next to us now, and I was a little tongue-tied. I still couldn’t get over the fact that he’d showed up for the game.

  “Must’ve been Babe Ruth,” Dad said, squeezing my shoulder.

  Everybody laughed, but Dad and I knew the truth.

  To the Reader

  EVERYTHING YOU READ IN THIS BOOK WAS TRUE, EXCEPT—of course—for the stuff I made up. It’s only fair to tell you which was which.

  Joe Stoshack and his dad are fictional characters, and there’s no evidence that time travel is possible. (Too bad, huh?) But most of the events described in 1932 were real.

  Franklin Roosevelt did throw out the first pitch at the “called-shot game” on October 1, 1932. Five weeks later he was elected President of the United States. Coincidentally, just nineteen days after Roosevelt took the oath of office, Adolf Hitler became the dictator of Germany.<
br />
  Each of these very different men led his nation for twelve years. To pile coincidence on top of coincidence, they died within three weeks of each other in 1945—Roosevelt of a cerebral hemorrhage and Hitler by suicide.

  While President Roosevelt and the Allies were aware that the Nazis were committing atrocities, nobody knew the full extent of the Holocaust until German concentration camps were liberated at the end of World War II.

  I tried to paint an accurate picture of the Depression in this book. To give you an idea of how tough times were in America, consider the following statistics for 1932: One out of every four men was unemployed. The people who did have jobs earned an average of $17 a week. Thirty-four million Americans had no income at all. Twenty thousand businesses went bankrupt that year, and 1,616 banks failed. Twenty-one thousand people committed suicide.

  Even the great Babe Ruth suffered in the Depression, seeing his salary drop all the way from a then-enormous $80,000 a year to $35,000 when he left baseball in 1935.

  To describe the Babe’s personality, I read many biographies of the man. Most helpful were Babe Ruth’s America by Robert Smith, Babe Ruth and the American Dream by Ken Sobol, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer, Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend by Kal Wagenheim, and The Life That Ruth Built by Marshall Smelser.

  I tried to show that Babe was a complicated man—fun-loving yet sad, impulsive but generous, immature and incredibly talented all at the same time. Babe’s appetite and poor driving skills are exaggerated in this story, but only slightly. He will, in all likelihood, always be the most famous baseball player in history.

  Babe began getting painful headaches in November of 1946 and he was diagnosed with rare nasopharyngeal cancer. He was just fifty-three years old when he died on August 16, 1948. He is buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

  Did He Point?

  The question of whether or not Babe Ruth truly called his shot in Game Three of the 1932 World Series can only be answered if we do someday figure out a way to travel through time. Even eyewitnesses to the event disagreed. But, for the record, here is what they had to say about it.

  “What do you think of the nerve of that big monkey, calling his shot and getting away with it?”

  —Lou Gehrig, Yankee first baseman and on-deck batter

  “Ruth pointed with his bat in his right hand, to rightfield, not centerfield. But he definitely called his shot.”

  —Lefty Gomez, Yankee pitcher

  “He was pointing at Root, not at the centerfield stands.”

  —Bill Dickey, Yankee catcher

  “Yes, he pointed to the fence. Ruth, after two strikes, got out of the batter’s box, dried his hands off, got back in the box with his bat in his left hand, and two fingers of his right hand pointed in the direction of centerfield, looking at the Cubs bench all the time.”

  —Joe Sewell, Yankee third baseman

  “Ruth pointed toward the centerfield fence, but he was pointing at the pitcher.”

  —Ben Chapman, Yankee rightfielder

  “Before taking his stance he swept his left arm full length and pointed to the centerfield fence.”

  —Doc Painter, Yankee trainer

  “I’m not going to say he didn’t do it. Maybe I didn’t see it. Maybe I was looking the other way.”

  —Joe McCarthy, Yankee manager

  “Babe Ruth did not call his home run.”

  —Woody English, Cub third baseman

  “Ruth did point, sure. He definitely raised his right arm. He indicated where he’d already hit a home run. But as far as pointing to center, no he didn’t. You know darn well a guy with two strikes isn’t going to say he’s going to hit a home run on the next pitch.”

  —Mark Koenig, Cub shortstop

  “He didn’t point, don’t kid yourself. If he pointed, do you think Root would have thrown him a strike to hit?”

  —Billy Herman, Cub second baseman

  “I hesitate to spoil a good story, but the Babe actually was pointing to the mound.”

  —Charlie Grimm, Cub first baseman

  “Ruth did not point at the fence before he swung. If he had made a gesture like that, well, anybody who knows me knows that Ruth would have ended up on his ____.”

  —Charlie Root, Cub pitcher

  “Of course I didn’t see him point. Nobody else saw him point, because he didn’t. Charlie would have thrown it right at his head.”

  —Dorothy Root, Charlie Root’s wife

  “If he had pointed out at the bleachers, I’d be the first one to say so.”

  —Gabby Hartnett, Cub catcher

  “Don’t let anybody tell you different. Babe definitely pointed.”

  —Pat Pieper, broadcaster

  “Sure he called the shot. No doubt about it.”

  —Robert Creamer, author of Babe: The Legend Comes to Life

  “He pointed in the direction of dead centerfield.”

  —Tom Meany, author of Babe Ruth

  “Where he pointed is a subject of debate.”

  —Kal Wagenheim, author of Babe Ruth: His Life and Legend

  “A single lemon rolled to the plate as Ruth came up in the fifth and in no mistaken motions, the Babe notified the crowd that the nature of his retaliation would be a wallop right out of the confines of the park.”

  —John Drebinger, The New York Times

  “RUTH CALLS SHOT AS HE PUTS HOMER NO. 2 IN SIDE POCKET.”

  —New York World Telegram, October 1, 1932

  “He pointed like a duellist to the spot where he expected to send his rapier home.”

  —Paul Gallico, New York Daily News, October 3, 1932

  “He called his shot theatrically, with derisive gestures towards the Cubs dugout.”

  —San Francisco Examiner, October 2, 1932

  “Why don’t you read the papers? It’s all right there in the papers.”

  —Babe Ruth

  Permissions

  The author would like to acknowledge the following for use of photographs and artwork:

  “The Called Shot” by Matt Kandle, copyright © 1990 by Kirk Kandle, all rights reserved: 2; Nina Wallace: 25, 27, 39, 87, 109; Library of Congress: 31, 51; National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.: 36, 56, 75, 81, 96, 106; Babe Ruth Birthplace and Baseball Center: 38, 102, 126; National Archives: 113; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library: 117; Brace Photos: 122; Associated Press/Wide World Photos: 136.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to SABR—the Society for American Baseball Research—and, in particular, Morris Eckhouse, John Zajc, Bob Bluthardt, Bill Carle, Rich Topp, and Neal Poloncarz. Also, I appreciate the help I received from Kirk Kandle, Mary Brace, Barbara Perry, Pete Williams, Paul Dickson, Nina Wallace; from David Kelly at the Library of Congress; from Elise Howard at Avon Books; from Greg Schwalenberg at The Babe Ruth Birthplace and Baseball Center; from Bill Burdick at the National Baseball Hall of Fame; from Mark Renvitch at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library; from Joan Carroll at Associated Press/Wide World Photos; and from Tony Conte of Conte’s Card Castle in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

  About the Author

  DAN GUTMAN is the author of many books, including HONUS & ME, THE KID WHO RAN FOR PRESIDENT, VIRTUALLY PERFECT, and THE MILLION DOLLAR SHOT. When Dan is not writing books, he is very often visiting a school. Dan lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife, Nina, and their children, Sam and Emma. Visit Dan’s website at www.dangutman.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Other Books by Dan Gutman

  HONUS & ME

  JACKIE & ME

  SHOELESS JOE & ME

  JOHNNY HANGTIME

  Credits

  Cover art © 2000 by Steve Chorney

  Cover © 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Copyright

  BABE & ME. Copyright © 2000 by Dan Gutman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By paym
ent of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061973222

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