![]() ![]() Caldwell complied and won 20 for the only time in his career. Struggling with the bottle, Caldwell was told by Speaker that he could get soused-but only on the night after he started. The case of Caldwell was an especially peculiar one. 388, while three veteran pitchers-Jim Bagby, Stan Coveleski and Ray Caldwell-all chimed in at over 20 wins apiece, with Bagby continuing on to 31. Speaker the player was helping Speaker the manager by hitting. In Cleveland, another Red Sox expatriate, Tris Speaker, had doubled his duties to become player-manager and immediately elevated the Indians to contender status. The Yankees were not the only AL team serving notice to the defending AL champion White Sox as a team on the rise. 847 also smashed a major league record opposing pitchers, desperately trying to find a way to disable his strength, generally conceded him a base to the tune of 148 walks, another record. Louis Browns’ George Sisler was second in homers-with 19. And when the season finally ran out, he was forced to stand pat at 54. Fans had perceived 30 homers as an unbreakable barrier, but Ruth blew right through it without pause. He eclipsed his own season home run record of 29 with the season barely halfway over. ![]() Here was the man of unlikely build-broad shoulders, rotund waist, skinny knees, a trot that seemed to mimic a tip-toeing tyrannosaurus rex-who with 54 massive swings of his bat knocked the deadball era into absolute oblivion.Īfter going powerless in the first two weeks, Ruth connected on his first home run as a Yankee on May 1-cruelly enough, against the Red Sox-and from there quickly heated up. Ruth’s performance in 1920 dropped jaws everywhere. If the powers that would be were looking for someone to take attention away from them, they found him in a big way with Babe Ruth. Ban Johnson already believed he was that man but the AL’s founding father didn’t fit the NL’s ideal profile since he held stock in several AL clubs-which, not coincidentally, made up the minority of clubs trying to restore the power Johnson had lost as a result of the Mays controversy.Īnd so the league went into the 1920 season with, essentially, no one with the authority to lead it. The NL had already thought up the idea of a non-baseball man, an outsider with no direct ties to any ballclub, to be the game’s “commissioner.” Landis was on a wish list of names that included former President William Howard Taft. A series of meetings to discuss the Mays matter got so tumultuous, it nearly split the AL apart, with three teams-New York, Boston and the Chicago White Sox-threatening to join the National League. The controversy brought into the open the hatred some AL teams had for Johnson and his dictatorial powers. When American League President Ban Johnson nixed the effort to place Mays in Yankee pinstripes, the team sued and won. Intensely surly yet very proficient, Mays stormed off the field during a game in 1919, vowing never to pitch again for a Red Sox team he felt gave him no backbone. Landis’ name had first come to the forefront thanks to another Red Sock-turned-Yankee: Pitcher Carl Mays. Though the so-called “Rape of the Red Sox” by the Yankees was far from over, it had just suffered its most serious molestation. That wasn’t all the Yankees gave cash-strapped Red Sox owner Harry Frazee a $350,000 loan with Fenway Park as collateral. Ruth had already become the center of attention throughout the sporting world well before the new season approached the New York Yankees bought him from the Boston Red Sox for $125,000-doubling the previous record purchase price for a ballplayer. ![]() They had both made earlier contributions to baseball in ways few people realize: Ruth as a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, Landis as a judge whose 1915 ruling on the Federal League helped lay the roots for the game’s antitrust exemption.Īnd it would be these two men who, starting in 1920, would essentially define the game of baseball for generations to come. And there was Landis, the frail-looking, crusty disciplinarian of a judge.īoth had flamboyant, if not self-serving, personalities, never afraid to flaunt their traits. There was Ruth, the big, fun-loving troublemaker who lived life to the fullest-and then some. George Herman Ruth and Kenesaw Mountain Landis will never be accused of being separated at birth. ![]()
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