Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?

Paul Aron

Description

Advance Praise for Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?

"Aron has found the Rosetta stone to all of baseball's enduring mysteries, and he skips it along the pond with utter disregard for the ducks. His fortunate readers will have so much fun they may not even notice that they are becoming, page by page, real experts. Here is surefire water-cooler ammo."
--JOHN THORN, editor of Total Baseball

"Paul Aron puts a distant replay on the most famous controversies in baseball history. This is more fun than if he'd been there with a camcorder."
--ALLEN BARRA, author of Clearing the Bases and Brushbacks and Knockdowns

"Paul Aron has hit a home run for baseball fans. He dissects the evidence on baseball's 28 most charming mysteries. The result is a well-written, enjoyable, enlightening tour of the last hundred years of baseball history."
--ANDREW ZIMBALIST, author of Baseball and Billions

"Paul Aron's book on elements of baseball is both wise and fun, illuminating and entertaining."
--ROBERT ADAIR, author of The Physics of Baseball

"The essential last word for every fan who loves to debate baseball fact and fiction."
--MICHAEL SHAPIRO, author of The Last Good Season
Preface.

1. Who Invented Baseball?

2. Who Was the First Black in the Majors?

3. Who Was Casey at the Bat?

4. Was Ed Delahanty Murdered?

5. Did Merkle Touch Second?

6. Did Cobb Win the 1910 Batting Race?

7. Did Shoeless Joe Throw the Series?

8. What Caused Ruth’s “Bellyache”?

9. What Caused the Home Run Surge?

10. Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?

11. Was Moe Berg a Spy?

12. What Caused the Feud between Williams and the Press?

13. Why Did Rickey Sign Robinson?

14. How Old Was Satchel Paige?

15. Did Thomson Steal Branca’s Sign?

16. Why Did the Dodgers Move?

17. Why Didn’t Castro Sign with the Senators?

18. Why Was Steinbrenner Banned?

19. What Took the Red Sox So Long?

20. Why Can’t the Cubs Win?

21. Who Threw the Spitter?

22. Does a Curveball Curve?

23. Where Did “Fungo” Come From?

24. Can Small-Market Teams Compete?

25. Does Clutch Hitting Exist?

26. Were Yesterday’s Players Better?

27. Do Managers Matter?

28. Does It Pay to Steal?

Index.

Sujets

• Sports
• Recreation
• Paul Aron
• History
• Babe Ruth
• Baseball

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470322123
• Langue: English

Extrait

MORE ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DID BABE RUTH CALL HIS SHOT?
Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot? is a lively, intriguing contribution to baseball literature. Delving into stories both familiar and unfamiliar, Aron s work is remarkably current, refreshingly well-balanced and always entertaining.

-Jules Tygiel author of Baseball s Great Experiment
Aron has written a compelling series of essays attempting to solve the most vexing 28 mysteries associated with the great game of baseball. Does he solve them once and for all? You ll have to read this fine, enjoyable book to find out.

-Paul Dickson editor of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary
Has Paul Aron read everything ever written about baseball? This appears to be the case, and he s therefore able to answer all the age-old questions and new ones as well. I m almost afraid Aron has taken the fun out of the game. There are no more mysteries. With this fiendishly clever book, everything is revealed.

-Mike Bryan author of Baseball Lives
And Other Unsolved Mysteries of Baseball

Paul Aron

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Copyright 2005 by Paul Aron. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone].
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Aron, Paul, date.
Did Babe Ruth call his shot? : and other unsolved mysteries of baseball/Paul Aron.

p. cm.
ISBN 0-471-48204-8 (cloth)
1. Baseball-United States-History. 2. Baseball players-United States-Biography. I. Title.

GV863.A1A76 2005 796.357 0973-dc22
2004009417
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Contents

Preface

1 Who Invented Baseball?

2 Who Was the First Black in the Majors?

3 Who Was Casey at the Bat?

4 Was Ed Delahanty Murdered?

5 Did Merkle Touch Second?

6 Did Cobb Win the 1910 Batting Race?

7 Did Shoeless Joe Throw the Series?

8 What Caused Ruth s Bellyache ?

9 What Caused the Home Run Surge?

10 Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?

11 Was Moe Berg a Spy?

12 What Caused the Feud between Williams and the Press?

13 Why Did Rickey Sign Robinson?

14 How Old Was Satchel Paige?

15 Did Thomson Steal Branca s Sign?

16 Why Did the Dodgers Move?

17 Why Didn t Castro Sign with the Senators?

18 Why Was Steinbrenner Banned?

19 What Took the Red Sox So Long?

20 Why Can t the Cubs Win?

21 Who Threw the Spitter?

22 Does a Curveball Curve?

23 Where Did Fungo Come From?

24 Can Small-Market Teams Compete?

25 Does Clutch Hitting Exist?

26 Were Yesterday s Players Better?

27 Do Managers Matter?

28 Does It Pay to Steal?

Index
Preface
You d think it would be pretty easy to figure out whether Babe Ruth called his shot. After all, there were almost 50,000 witnesses at Wrigley Field. There were also sportswriters from across the country, and most of them filed stories within a day or two.
This was how Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News reported it: Ruth pointed like a duelist to the spot where he expected to send his rapier home. Bill Corum of the Hearst newspapers was less flamboyant but equally clear. Ruth, Corum wrote, pointed out where he was going to hit the next one, and hit it there.
Ruth s called shot -coming as it did at a crucial moment in the third game of the 1932 World Series between the Yankees and Cubs-immediately became part of his legend. Yet from the start, there were skeptics, among them Chicago catcher Gabby Hartnett and pitcher Charlie Root.
Ruth did not point at the fence before he swung, Root insisted. If he had made a gesture like that, well, anybody who knows me knows that Ruth would have ended up on his ass.
What really happened?
That s the question this book asks, not just about Ruth s called shot but also about Ed Delahanty s death and Moe Berg s spying and Satchel Paige s age and Fidel Castro s tryout. This is not the place to find out who were the best first basemen or what were the greatest teams or whether Pete Rose or Joe Jackson belong in the Hall of Fame. Those are important and fascinating issues, well worth discussing. But whatever your opinion on these issues, it s undeniably a matter of opinion .
Here, instead, are the facts. Ruth s called shot is by no means the only baseball fact open to dispute. Indeed, from the moment Abner Doubleday didn t invent the game, baseball history and legend have been inextricably intertwined. Maybe it s because when you gather 50,000 people at Wrigley or anywhere else, each is going to have a different view. Maybe it s because there has been so much written about baseball, so many good stories told and retold, that it takes a bit of detective work to uncover what really happened.
But the premise of this book is that it can be done. We can search for the original Casey at the Bat, maybe find Mudville on the map. We can investigate whether owners secretly introduced a rabbit ball to boost home run totals in the twenties and nineties, whether Branch Rickey was as good and Walter O Malley was as evil as Brooklyn Dodger fans believed, and whether there was any truth to the smear campaign George Steinbrenner launched against Dave Winfield. We can examine the evidence against Gaylord Perry, who once said he didn t throw the spitter anymore. (To which Gene Mauch retorted: He doesn t throw it any less, either. ) We can look at the work of physicists experimenting to see whether a curveball is an optical illusion, of etymologists digging for the origins of fungo, of economists studying the viability of small-market teams, of statisticians figuring out whether it pays to steal or makes more sense to play for a big inning.
And here s the best thing about all this: what really happened, at least when we re talking baseball, turns out to be just as fascinating and fun as any legend could hope to be.
Acknowledgments
For their advice and encouragement, thanks to Robert Adair, Jae Aron, Stephen Aron, Thomas Aron, Nick Bakalar, Allen Barra, Paula Blank, Mike Bryan, Rusty Carter, Paul Dickson, William Drennan, John Harvey, Bill O Donovan, Steve Price, Ruth Sameth, John Simko, Mike Thompson, Bill Tolbert, David Wolff, Andrew Zimbalist, and especially John Thorn.
Thanks also to my agent, John Thornton, and my editor, Stephen Power.
Who Invented Baseball?
Albert G. Spalding was determined to establish that baseball was as American as apple pie and, well, baseball.
Spalding devoted his life to the game. As a pitcher, he led Boston to four pennants, and ended up 207-56. He went on to own the National League s Chicago White Stockings (who became the Cubs, not the White Sox) and the A. G. Spalding Company, which supplied baseballs to the American League and sporting goods to the rest of America. He was a publisher, too; the annual Spalding s Official Base Ball Guide was the game s most important record book. But his greatest and most lasting influence was as baseball s mythmaker.
There s the story he told, for example, about a delegation of Republicans who arrived in Springfield, Illinois, to inform Abraham Lincoln that the party had nominated him for president. Lincoln, Spalding explained, was engaged in a game of Base Ball. So Lincoln informed the delegation they would have to wait a few minutes until I make another base hit. As with most Spalding stories, this one was often repeated and never verified.
His most famous contribution to baseball mythology was, of course, Abner Doubleday. Doubleday, Spalding insisted, invented baseball. The time was 1839, the place small-town America. More specifically, Cooperstown, New York.
Cricket is a splendid game, he wrote, for Britons. Our British Cricketer, having finished his day s labor at noon, may don his negligee shirt, his white trousers, his gorgeous hosiery and his canvas shoes, and sally forth to the field of sport, with his sweetheart on one arm and his Cricket bat under the other, knowing that he may engage in his national pastime without soiling his linen or neglecting his lady.
Not so the American Ball Player, he continued. We have a game too lively for any but Americans to play.
Others, most notably the Spalding guides English-born editor Henry Chadwick, disagreed. Chadwick argued baseball evolved from a British bat-and-ball game, though not cricket. Baseball s ancestor, Cha